Geoff in Nias

Last posting for Nias

2008-11-07T00:15:00.000-08:00

I left Nias on 1st November so this is the final posting. I am not expecting to go back. The next blog will entry will be for Uganda, I will be back in Patongo on 24 November.

Some people were very happy with what we had done. Below is the Hiliweabu community, a celebration of the opening of their clinic.

This was the same day that we evacuated Tuhemberua due to threats from another community where we had built a clinic.

The same day we also handed over bathing shelters in Sambulu - part of the project brought clean water from a protected spring to 2 parts of the village. These people were happy to have clean water in their end of the village for the first time.

The contractor completed the staff quarters for the clinic in Tuhemberua in just 6 weeks but then he demanded payment of the fee for completing the construction and the retention fee due in January.
In Ko'olotano, we built latrines, protected a spring and created a water tank

We completed mosquito distribution so that every household in Lolomatua and Lolowa'u has one or two mosquito nets. Here's a girl collecting her nets.

Every household has been registered so we know who gets one or two nets.
We had a party on Sunday 19 October to celebrate the end of the programme. In the picture is our doctor, Reksa, my boss, Hylton, the desk officer, Katharine and an independent evaluator, Kevin. And in the middle the traditional pigs head.
Nias people seem to be great musicians. Yusman, our translator, brought his band and led the singing.
And finally, some children peering out of the window of thier home in Tuhemberua

Post cards from Calang

2008-09-21T06:52:00.000-07:00

I travelled to Banda Aceh to register for a temporary residents visa. Our base is 5 hours drive along the cost in Calang. The roads are quite rough and when they are near the ocean, it is clear that the old road was washed away in the tsunami. In some areas the coast line is now 100m or more further in land than before the tsunami. Evidence of its destructive power is everywhere to be seen.

This used to be a 2 story building, its made of reinforced concrete.

The twigs in the background are thousands of dead palm trees. My back was to the sea, these trees used to be on dry ground. The tsunami bent them over, stripped them of leaves. Now it looks like a convention for telegraph poles. The roots are in salt water so they are doubly dead
The stumps of palm trees where the sea has reclaimed the land
You can just about see dozens of new houses that have been built, just as vulnerable to a tsunami as before. They are almost all the same design, set out in neat rows like a cheap European suburb. I wonder what it will do to culture and community adhesion ?
It's an islamic country so of course there are mosques, I think this one is a gift from Saudi Arabia
The Medair compound in Calang is right on the coast, very attractive

The compound is large, there is a reasonably reliable electricty supply, running water (pumped up from a well), hot water in the shower (propane gas heater), internet access (satellite), satellite TV, plenty of living and office space. We took over the compound from another NGO that has left (there are other vacant compounds nearby).

On the right is a palm tree with nothing on top, stripped by the tsunami - one day it will simply topple over. They are about 20m high

Traditional houses and other pictures

2008-09-10T06:31:00.000-07:00

Nias is very prone to earthquakes so over the years, local people developed earthquake resistant houses. The village of Tumori is 30 minutes from the Medair office and there are several there. And on the road that we take from Gunung Sitoli, we have found 9 such houses. They are built on wooden supports without foundations. The stilts and cross beams rest on rocks. So when the earth moves, the house is meant to float over the ground. The high roof is meant to absorb the stresses in the structure. Nias is heavily forested so wood is available and the roof is covered with palm leaves. The houses are typically over 100 years old so they have survived some major earthquakes in their time.

These are in Tumori

These on the road to Tuhemberua- most are still lived in, although the one below belongs to a museum in Gunung Sitoli

Old and new - this house is in Gunung Sitoli with its idol in the front garden (there is traditional veneration of ancestors) and a satellite TV dish behind.

Arjan Buitenhuis is with me for 4 weeks, his job to build 2 clinical waste incinerators. He is an industrial designer by training so the first thing he did was to build a scale model

Last week I went to Teluc Dalam in the south of Nias and the administrative centre of Nias Selatan of South Nias. You have to cross some interesting bridges !

This was taken from one of the bridges

But there are some lovely parts of the coast line.

Images from Lolomatua

2008-08-25T05:19:00.000-07:00

Some more photos so you can see some of the people and environment in which I am working.

This is Kathleen Hagen Bakker, married to Pieter Bakker the construction manager. Kathleen manages the Gunung Sitoli and Lolomatua bases and is responsible for Beneficiary Accountability which means ensuring that the community know what we are doing and why and are able to give us feedback, positive and negative.

This is the Lolomatua kitchen where 2 cooks prepared lunch and dinner for about 15 peopl each day. Lunch today was delicious pork cooked in a rich spice mix. It's all cooked over the 2 gas rings you can see.
The main office, the front door is behind me, 2 offices off to the left, an office/dining room/meeting room ahead and beyond that the kitchen. Sitting is Sonyah who does hygiene promotion.
Mr Tema, the admin/finance officer. The custom is to call everyone Mr or Miss so I am Mr Geoff. Mr Tema speaks good English, he is very bright and will be standing as a candidate in the 2009 national elections
Sadymina has been doing mosquito distributions and running training at vaccination posts called posyandus. She is short of work at the moment, we are still waiting for more mosquito nets to be delivered. 4500 were due in Nias this week but an email today said there are customs problems and they are still in Jakarta.
Off the kitchen is the rain water harvesting tank - most houses rely on collecting rain water off the roof. Ours is a large tank, perhaps 10,000 litres when full. It was raining heavily when I took this photo as you can see from the flow of water. Of course you can't drink the water but we wash in it - that means a bucket and a dipper. You can have a warm wash if you boil the kettle !
Pieter Bakker at the Sambulu protected spring. We are building bathing shelters in Sambulu and we were not sure if the spring was properly protected so we walked about 2km up hill through rice fields and cassava fields and found a well protected spring built in1996. The water flows in a 1 inch plastic pipe to the village and provided the pipe is in tact, the water would be good to drink
And here is one of the 2 bathing shelters being built, one side for men, one side for women. Inside is a small tank of water filled from the spring - you take a dipper and wash in the spring water.
We handed over 2 clinics to the local authorities on 13 August. Proceeding started in front of the clinic with me reading my speech in Bhasa. Then the pastor read from Jeremiah 17 and prayed. Then the Camat cut the ribbon and declared it open.

The rest of the proceedings were at the next door school.
The contractor handed over the keys to Medair

Medair handed over the keys to the Camat

Then we had lunch. A Nias tradition is to present a cooked pig's jaw which is in front of the CamatAnd another pig's jaw.
After lunch it turned into a singing session with the clinic staff leading the way. Pieter sang a humourous Dutch song.

17 August was Independence day. We were invited to join the Camat's party. He was resplendant in a white suit with white shoes but it looked more like a S.American dictatorship of the 1980's.

After a lengthy process to raise the Indonesian flag, there was a competition between school choirs. We lasted till the end of round one (13 choirs) and left at 14.30 - we had arrived at 10.00

First post from Nias

2008-08-06T07:21:00.000-07:00

This is the team house and office in Gunung Sitoli. It is home to me and Simon my logistics manager. And Rebecca is expected to join us as HR/Admin manager at the end of the month. There are coconut palms in the garden, we are 150m from the beach.

And here is the beach looking north
and looking south. Fishing boats work off this section of beach
And this is the house in Tuhemberua, about 2 hours drive from Gunung Sitoli. The first half of the journey is on new tarmac, the second half on rough stone tracks with some very steep and bumpy sections. This is home to Kathleen (beneficiary accountability and base manager) and her husband Pieter (was project manager moved to construction when I arrived) and Allison the health manager. We rent 4 Mitusbishi Strada 4x4 pickups which come with contract drivers. There are 3 rooms upstairs and downstairs are offices, meeting room, kitchen etc. Most of the water comes from rain water harvesting, that is collecting water from the roof into a large open concrete tank called a mandi - perhaps 10,000 litres of water.
The office is on the left, this is the road you come along to approach the office.
But 100m in the opposite direction is this hole which appeared on 28 March 2005 when there was an 8.7 earthquake. The road dropped 20 metres

Allison celebrated her birthday last week- we got her chocolate, rambutan and a cake.

Allison and I walked along a beach about 20 minutes drive south of Gunung Sitoli. Not quite tropical paradise but coconut palms over the beach give a good impression !

This is a creek near the Gunung Sitoli house - quite tropical.
And belwo the same beach again that Allison and I walked

This is typical of houses in the jungle - thatched roof over wooden plank walls. Most people farm - rubber, cocoa, cassava, rice and some thing used for perfume but I haven't worked out what it is. And pigs.

This is also typical but this time stone built and with a TV dish a wealthier family. There is another design, a wooden structure built on legs which rest on rocks - it's meant to survive quakes well. I'll get a photo of such a house soon.
Cocoa pods, one of the cash crops.
Now to the work. This is a Pustu, a local clinic, this one in Sifaorasi. We had to sack the contractor on this one and appoint another. We have built 4 pustus and we are in process of equipping 8 of them with all the equipment they need. You cannot drive to some pustus, we will employ local labout to carry the equipment.
And this is the puskesmas, a regional health centre, which we built in Tuhemberua about 10 minutes from the team house/office. It's complete and fitted out.
The white block is a rain water harvesting tank at Hiliowatua school about 10 minutes in the opposite direction from the house, one of 4 at the school which Medair installed. The tank feeds the latrines with the red roof. But the tank is really about 1m too low and the latrines and the new school building to the right unfinished due to a dispute with the contractor. The school was built under BRR the official reconstruction agency for Northern Sumatra. It makes me angry to see donors money not well spent.About an hours drive from the house and across a river is Sambulu. The road stops there. If it rains you have to be careful that you can cross the river to get back. This is a communal bathing shelter, the old one was destroyed in the quake. Water is piped from a spring in the hills. There is a male and female section and a second bathing shelter 200m further down the village to the right which will be fed with the same waterBehind the Tuhemberua Puskesmas is a protected spring - that means there is a natural spring behind the bamboo to the top left but by piping it away from the spring itself and covering the spring over, we protect the water from contamination from animals and soil. So the clinic will always have a supply of clean water. They also have a rain water tank to supply the toilets (but please don't think flush toilets - porcelain hole in the ground flushed with a bucket of water from a smal tank in the toilet which is replenished from the rain water tank.
So there are some intial visual impressions of the tropical island of Nias, 0.5degrees north of the equator, about the most westerly part of Indonesia and nominally Christian