Feb 23 2010
So Long Sumatra, Thanks for the Fruit Shakes
I’m sitting here in Kuala Lumpur on a comfy couch in front of a giant TV showing Olympics results while surfing on a remarkably quick internet connection with a belly full of Mexican food. It’s a far cry from the last three plus months I’ve spent in rural Sumatra hauling rubble, throwing rocks, knocking down walls, building houses and being generally dirty and sweaty working with Hands On Disaster Response but I think I could get used to it. While I think I’m ready to move on, I really had a great time volunteering in Sumatra and will miss it a lot.
Here’s a bit of a summary of my time there:
The Work
The first couple of months were filled with rubble removal, rain or shine. It was tough but getting behind a shovel and wheelbarrow again was an amazing feeling. The salvage part of the work wasn’t quite as inspiring but separating river rock and bricks from crumbling mortar and saving tin and wood from the roof was important to be able to give people some materials to start with to rebuild their homes. Leaving people with an empty concrete foundation and a pile of rocks and/or bricks was kind of a bittersweet feeling but seeing them use that space and materials to build shelters was very cool.
I had a few attempts at joining deconstruction teams to bring houses safely to the ground but it wasn’t my thing. There is far too much pointing at things and thinking involved for me. Plus being responsible to bring down a giant structure scared the crap out of me, to be completely honest. But we had a bunch of people who stepped up to lead the decon teams and pulling down unsafe buildings as a team was always an exhilarating experience.
This past month has seen us building temporary shelters with a really awesome design. Wooden frames are built, chain link fence is wrapped around the outside and thin layer of concrete is put on top to create the look of a concrete house with more flexibility and less weight to fall on people if there’s another earthquake. I love the design and I love working with concrete so it was great to be a part of this process. I also got to work on prefabricating the pieces for the wooden frame which meant fun with circular saws. I feel like a learned a lot of handy new skills beyond just being a wheelbarrowing monkey (although I do love wheelbarrowing) and these are things I hope to build on when I head to Haiti.
The People
I loved the locals I came into contact with during my time on the project. Our translator Rena is always smiling and giggling, our driver Hamdan is so quick to jump in and help out with anything, and Rose the cook busted out meals and washed laundry in record time. A bunch of Indonesians came through the project as volunteers and it was great to meet them all, especially Redha, our first and most frequent volunteer who helped whenever he could on his breaks from university. Arman was a great addition later in the project and he taught me the way of the concrete wall and it was just really inspiring for me to see this older guy with a family to show up for work each day. The ice cream men on motorbikes were two of my favourite people each afternoon and Welly the fruit shake master was a lifesaver next door with some refreshing fruity creations after a long day at work.
I have made a lot of friends through Hands On with my time with them in Bangladesh and Haiti and it was great to see a lot of them in Indonesia. There seem to be a bunch of us who follow the organisation around and these people have become a sort of family on the road for me and knowing I can count on seeing them each time I head to a new project certainly makes my choice to go a lot easier. I made a bunch of new friends on this project as well and I’m convinced that HODR attracts people with a certain level of craziness that means I will always have people around who I have something in common with.
The Culture
The community in Sungai Geringging is rural and religious and there were a few issues with us descending on them to help out. Drinking beer in town was outlawed fairly early on. Boys and girls had to sleep in separate places which meant the construction of the ‘man tent’ outside and a girls-only sweet deal on the inside. A group of volunteers unwittingly caused a near-project-ending incident by walking down to a river late at night in boy/girl company. Old guys apparently were against us from the start, no matter how good the work we did was. Signs were erected saying ‘Volunteering, yes! Christianity, no!’ and the powers that be were paranoid that we were there to convert them. The work ‘Christmas’ was banned over the holidays. And so on, and so on.
Yay to culture! Boo to having to tip toe around it and having it affect our ability to do work there. It was probably inevitable that we would screw up from time to time. Things have always worked out in the end, but there have been some stressful moments in between. On the other hand, learning about the culture in rural Sumatra on such an intimate level was pretty fascinating and something I’m grateful to have experienced, even though it frustrated non-religious me at times.
While my time with HODR in Sumatra is over I don’t have much time to relax with a flight into Port-au-Prince, Haiti on March 15th. Between now and then the plan is to hang out with some volunteering friends in Malaysia before shipping off to the chilly UK to spend a couple of weeks visiting friends and family in London and Scotland. My ankle is still sort of screwed from when I hurt it a few weeks ago, my clothes are all gross, the cuts on my hands are still unhealed, my websites are neglected, and my bank account is hurting from expensive plane tickets but Haiti is where I want to be and, while two and a bit weeks between HODR projects could be a bit of a killer for my body and business, I can’t wait for the challenge.
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Wow Kirsty, sounds like an amazing experience in Indonesia! Good luck in Haiti, sounds like a great opportunity to help out!
Thanks for the info about Hands On Disaster Response. I’m looking for ways to volunteer around the world and that one seems good.
Awesome and inspiring Kirsty! You rock!
Sounds like your having a blast as always
Will you be passing by my way on your way to Haiti?
After nearly 4 years I have handed my resignation in with plans to leave end of May so will be finally taking the plunge in the summer probably off to SE Asia first by way of the UK.
Sounds like a great experience, I’ve bookmarked the agency for future use!
Roy Jones
It’s great what you do. There is always going to be people against you, but I’m glad you don’t let them get to you. You seem to have a strong vision of what you want and really go for it, very inspiring!
Kirsty, I admire your willingness to help people and to make a contribution and a difference. Good luck.
On a different note, don’t forget to keep your 2012 Olympics site updated. I’m counting on some good info to help me when the time comes.
What’s the status of the ebook? I want to buy one to help out.
I’m curious why Hands On doesn’t hire locals to do this manual labor. I’m sure they could use the money? Is there a shortage of labor there? Or is the work not something they would do?
I’ve been thinking alot about aid work (inspired by you) but I have some real questions about sending outsiders into a place that needs the economic development that good wages doing local work could bring.
(I sent you some links on these topics)
I think this topic of imported, western-educated, manual-labor volunteers vs. paying locals decent wages to do the same thing would make an insightful post.
Here’s a good link: http://informationincontext.typepad.com/good_intentions_are_not_e/2010/01/how-to-evaluate-volunteer-opportunities-in-haiti.html
Cheers!
Thanks for the well-wishes everyone.
@Fish Care I won’t be passing your way… I’m flying in from NYC. That’s great news about your move/travels! Keep me posted on how everything is going.
@steve One of my many projects to catch up on. I don’t know when I will get to an update but it’s on my list! I’m hoping to get the ebook out within a couple of weeks… for sure before I get to Haiti. Well, hopefully. It’s pretty much done and out for proofreading but I also need to build a simple landing page type site for it, set up the distribution and attempt to generate some buzz in that time. Lots to do!
@erik Thanks for the email, I know a few of those sites. I actually touch upon this topic in my ebook and suggest that people head to a couple of other sites to read more on the topic as it’s too broad and complicated for me to tackle. I raise some of the major issues but I leave the ethics of international volunteering up to each individual.
In the case of Hands On, I will say that employing locals to do the work would be great except that that would be the end of Hands On very quickly. They aim to provide a great volunteering experience so that the volunteers will donate money and get their friends and family to donate money. This leads to more projects, more volunteers and more donation money. No international volunteers = substantially fewer funds to do the work with. I totally get where this argument is coming from but someone has to pay the locals to do the work and it can’t be organisations like Hands On because they would die. Plus the type of work that HODR volunteers do is on such a small scale that government programs would be unlikely to fund workers to do them. But ya, these are the types of things potential volunteers should look into to make sure they’re ok with how it all works.
Nice work Kristy! Helping needy peoples is great thing. I have just saved the link of HODR for future.
Hello Kristy, You’re really a great person, travelling around the world to help others. Love to read the article here about my country.
thank you,
regards
kangtatang
Travel the world helping people? Sounds great I am going to start following your blog it is very interesting.
Looks it was quite an experience. Too bad about the overly conservative people that kept on suspecting you but I guess that is only to be expected sometimes. I can’t believe how green the surroundings are. Working in that forest surely boosted your health for sure.
Till then,
Jean
visiting other countries can be quite the learning experience. Its cool that you help out the less fortunate.
Always enjoyed reading your thoughts & feelings after each place! Lookin forward to the post on Haiti !
I just see your blog from about an hour and i enjoyed reading it and i like your action on helping people
I wish I could do stuff like that. It would be awesome to go help out with relief in other countries and travel the world. I wanna visit so many different places one day.
That’s great to hear about the work that you’ve done Kirsty, Kind of shocked to hear about the culture differences, but I guess that’s how it is, hehe.