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Update: April 2006
Heroes, Honeymoons and Disillusionments
There are three phases of disaster relief.
The first is when all sorts of organizations and
volunteers race in to a terrible situation and
share in the glorious and news-worthy adventure of
saving immediate life and looking at incredible
destruction.
The second is when such organizations assume that
they are going to make a commitment to "be there a
long time", and make all sorts of assessments and
careful plans of how they are going to return the
situation to "normal".
The third is when, after months and months of
work, everybody realizes that very little has
changed; that the people are still living in tents
and shacks, that the infrastructure really has
been destroyed, and that that lives--and
cultures-- have been permanently affected and that
public attention and the flow of resources has
dried up.
This is when many organizations pull out,
congratulating themselves that they have "really
tried'.
Robin Lim's Yayasan Bumi Sehat has now entered
this phase of true, sober service. Many of the
larger, more well-known NGO's (non-governmental
organizations) have pulled out of Aceh Province,
where the tsunami of 2005 slammed the brunt of its
destruction.
It is not "fun" to work there, Robin says. There
is a problem with volunteer burn-out; funds dry
up; it becomes exasperating to work, loneliness
and desperation set in . But it is work that needs to be
done, a long task involving real commitment.
See her story of the
Big Decision, in which the real service
or seva has been started.
On the average, her Ache clinic sees 1600 patients
per month, involving childbirth (including pre-and
post-natal care), medical treatment and in
psychological counseling. Two of the other biggest
efforts of her team are:
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"capacity-building", in which the local
population is trained to keep up its own clinic;
and
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Youth training and development, to prepare local
teenagers for new and productive lives.
It takes a long time to actually re-build a
society, to treat individuals who have been deeply
traumatized by the loss of nearly everyone in
their family, and to make mothers comfortable in
having children once again.
For this, Robin needs your support.
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