West Sumatra: Volunteers Working Round the Clock
NEWS STORY: Rainer Lang UPDATED: October 7, 2009
PHOTO: ACT International
SUMATRA, INDONESIA — Since the earthquake hit the coast of Sumatra, Santi Laia has been working round the clock. She sleeps only three or four hours a day. The 20-year-old is one out of two dozen volunteers with the regional council of churches. The student is helping with the distribution of food and tents. The emergency of the churches is implemented by ACT International member YTBI. Other ACT members are supporting the actual appeal for the Indonesian earthquake which has just been issued.
When she started, Santi Laia packed the food packages. Now she is responsible for the lists of beneficiaries and ensuring that every one of them gets a package. She carries two mobile phones. There is always something to organise. At one time, there was a shortage of rice for the food packages. The stock was empty and a delivery of rice had to be organised quickly otherwise the distribution planned in the morning would have to be cancelled. But fortunately, further supplies are arranged and it’s not necessary to cancel the morning distribution.
Santi herself has experienced how an earthquake can affect people. Coming from Nias, she was a survivor there in 2005, at the age of 16. She believed it was a miracle she survived. After that earthquake, she got a lot of help. A foundation from Germany enabled her to get higher education at university in Padang. She wants to become a veterinarian. All this support she has got she wants to give back. Therefore she came to the compound of the Presbyterian Church in Padang where the Regional Council of Churches and ACT International have set up an emergency centre to organise and coordinate their response. The volunteers have packed the hundreds of food packages lined up on the floor waiting to be loaded on a truck. One packet contains rice, nutritional biscuits, drinking water, canned fish, vegetable oil, salt and sugar as well as soap, washing powder, a tooth brush, a blanket and some clothes, Victor Rembeth from ACT International says.
Within the next two days more than 500 food packages, different in size according to the needs of the communities, in Padang and in Pariaman district are being distributed as well as 300 tents because of the urgent need for temporary shelter. Still many people have to stay in the open. The distribution starts in a poor community in Padang, called Bencana. Here the houses are small and made of cheap materials.
About 300 people live here, according to community leader Noverry. “They do not earn much and they have no savings,” he says. An example is factory worker, Sunarno, who is still in shock. But already he has shifted the rubble that was his house. Edi Firman is living with his wife and five children in that part of the house which is still standing. The front of the house is totally broken.
ACT International has brought aid to poor and heavily destructed communities in Padang and Pariaman districts. In one day alone they distributed 500 food packages and 300 tents because of the urgent need of temporary shelter. More aid is on the way to the communities in need.
