Its been a long day...
I am sitting on the rooftop of my Banda Aceh hotel. Its just passed midnight and the sounds of congested traffic and bumping night clubs has diminished, while the humidity remains the same.
As I look across the city scape, I think about all the people I met today. Behind their gracious smiles I saw a deep sadness. Not for themselves, but for what they lost.
Looking out at the city now, it appears to be like many other cities I have seen before. Yet only four years ago this city was destroyed and countless people died within a matter of minutes.
On December 26th, 2004 a 9.2 magnitude earthquake inside of the Indian Ocean rocked the coast of the Indonesian Island of Sumatra. The northern city of Banda Aceh was closest to the epicenter. Minutes after the quake a tsunami hit the city in two separate surges, killing well over 100 thousand people (some estimates are above 200 thousand).
What was left were mothers without children, husbands without wives, broken lives, a flattened city, and a sudden surge of international attention to a place that had before been isolated from the rest of Indonesia and the world.
As we held our clinic today this sense of loss dominated the stories our patients shared. Elderly, middle aged, and teenagers all began to explain their symptoms with the same introduction. "Ever since the Tsunami...."
While we had anticipated treating diseases and conditions typical of tropical and developing countries, many of the people here suffer from anxiety and depression.
As a young woman waited in line with her five year old child, she told me why she had come. "Sometimes my heart just starts beating so fast and I don't know why. My face gets hot and my hands get sweaty." She lost her husband and was left to raise their child on her own. Together they have lived in "temporary" housing for the past four years. Her story resembles many we heard today.
LCMS World Relief and Human Care has been working in Banda Aceh, in partnership with the Batak Protestant Christian Church in Indonesia, since the immediate aftermath of the Tsunami. After meeting the immediate needs of food, water, and material support Word Relief and Human Care has remained in Banda Aceh to help local communities recover economically.
"We like to know we have not been
forgotten"
As large organizations like the United Nations and the Red Cross were able to initiate large infrastructure projects and Macro level development projects, some of the smaller communities were left out. As a smaller organization we have been able to fill in some of these gaps and offer assistance to communities on a micro level. As larger organizations have all but left, we have stayed behind.
That is why we were here today...to help our partners and projects offer medical services to the beneficiaries of these long term projects. Today we saw over 300 patients from these targeted communities.
This video below gives a quick glimpse of the typical MMT clinic
Today, like every other day so far during this trip, we served two locations. The community we visited second was a "temporary housing camp" for individuals who had been displaced by the Tsunami.
As with the other communities we have visited so far, we were met with a polite and respectful smile. Yet I could sense a degree of skepticism. The population in Banda Aceh is over 99% Muslim and for the most part these individuals practice a particularly conservative version of Islam. To them any attempts to proselytize would not only be inappropriate but also illegal.
This presented a challenge for us. We understand the laws and have had no intention of handing out materials or conditionalizing our services with a bible study, yet we had to be careful not to say too much in day to day conversations. A mere conversation could appear to be a "soap box" sermon.
As challenging as this has been, however, the team has remained professional and has shared their faith and values as Christians through their vocation and works of compassion; motivated by Christ's mercy and love.
As the people began to realize that it really was from love that we came, their smiles came through even more clearly and the volunteers were able to break through the barriers created by culture and interaction with the unknown.
As Hilke Schirmer, a nurse from Connecticut, saw each new patient she would look into their eyes, look down at the triage sheet, and call them by name. Each time she did this, patient after patient would walk away smiling with a sense of dignity.
When I asked a man who had been waiting a very long time if he had registered, he said, "I'm not feeling sick I just like to see the people...we like to know we have not been forgotten".
So far this trip has not been easy. We wake up each day and carry all of our supplies from our hotels rooms...boxes and boxes of medications. The heat has been intense. The food has been intimidating. But I wasn't expecting this to be easy, I don't think anyone was.
Yet the opportunities presented by the trip seem to have been outweighed by the difficulties. Each evening as our group congregates to share impressions and experiences there is an obvious and silent consensus that its all been worth it...its definitely worth it.
Break for prayer time, Banda Aceh Clinic
