Travel Blog

February 2009 Nadine Hoover, Coordinator

Aceh is braced for upcoming elections in April, which will seriously test the standing peace accord. Prayers for peace and advocacy for U.S. withdrawal of military aid are requested. The Free Aceh Movement (GAM) that resisted national rule for nearly thirty years has formed several political parties. Many questions hang in the air: Will people feel intimidated by either or both sides—the Acehnese parties and/or the national party, Golkar? Will the Acehnese parties win? If they win, will they be allowed to operate fully or be tethered by the national government? If they win, will they actually bring change or just take their turn at taking advantage of the populace? Will provocateurs take advantage of the tension to reengage armed conflict? Only time will tell.

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The rocket stoves are all complete now. Amir, Sabaruddin, Marti, Mislan, Mislan’s father and I all have rocket stoves drying now. Pak Ali from Bustanul Fakri, an orphanage in Langsa, is a brick maker, so Jamie let Ali lead the kiln building and firing. We started firing when things began to cool off in the afternoon. As the evening wore on, Jamie and I kept trying to get Ali to pick up the fire. At 11:30, Jamie and I finally jumped in. We drug five huge piles of dry palm branches to the kiln and loaded them on. The fire went from red to blue to white. We piled enough on top to get a solid foot of ash to close the top then we closed the air vents for it to fire for the rest of the night. We probably picked the fire up from 330 degrees centigrade to 600 or 650. Pak Ali was shocked. In the morning I tried to get Pak Ali to help me open it up. Jamie was sound asleep. Pak Ali told the other Indonesians it would be three days before we could open it up. So I went down and began pulling the ash off the top to let the heat out. Slowly we lifted the bricks off the top and set them out. The bricks were great! Light, orange, strong…perfect! Everyone was shocked again. Their firings are basically just drying out the clay, not actually firing as we would think of it. We made 350+ insulated bricks to contain the fire box and heat chambers in six rocket stoves. Then we went from house to house and made enough cob for each house from clay in their yards, sand from the river and dry grass from the fields. We then did drawings, laid up the stoves one by one, set the cob, cut and prepared bamboo chimneys and built metal racks for the fire box, pot skirts for the pots and chimney tops to keep the rain out. We were all filthy for a week and people were shocked to see foreigners working in the mud! Everyone in the families from the toddlers to the great grandparents all helped.

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Layers and layers of politics determine recognized land rights in Indonesia—traditional, colonial, provincial and national impositions of power reign to varying degrees in various places at various times. Without recognized land claims, the fruits of one’s labor and survival becomes tenuous. Short-term returns replace longer-term strategies. Yet who exactly has the power to decide is not always clear either. I am working closely with the leaders of all the camp’s divisions to write a statement from them. We have looked at the requirements for lodging complaints/requests with the United Nations and for requesting advocacy through Global Response, an international environmental network. With these in mind they are trying to put on paper their voice. Once we have that, I have offered to send it to QUNO Geneva and to Global Response to ask them to review it, send questions or suggestions, and direct us to any steps they could take to secure rights to land. This in complicated since they live on the edge of the international bioreserve, Leuser Ecosystem. We are making headway and they are honored and pleased at our support in framing their voice in writing and translating it.

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Two days ago I went to ChildVoice International. It all happened quickly. On Sunday afternoon I met Lowna and Diandria. My first impression of the two of them was positive. Knowing that organizations are their personnel I was curious to find out more about their organization. I called Lowna on Monday and asked what her organization was and if I could visit and have a tour. She called me back and said sorry this is short notice, the only good day would be Tuesday, which is tomorrow. So I rearranged my schedule and went to the ChildVoice International office on Tuesday morning to drive out to the site of their program which is roughly a 40 minute drive outside of Gulu on the edge of the Lukodi Internally Displaced People (IDP) camp. The place is for formerly abducted child mothers. Their program is to provide these mothers, roughly 30, and their children with all their needs. The girls and their children live on this compound of ChildVoice International (CVI) and CVI provides them with housing, food, education, health care, and other rehabilitative services.

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1. Abe and Myself 2. Auze, Deborah, Me, Lamwaka, Becky

Here are a few pictures of the 12 children I have been spending time with. The first picture is of me and Abe, pronounced Ah-Beh. I like all the kids, but it has been easy to get to know and spend time with Abe. She is one of the older kids at the house, she is a girl, her English is good and she uses it, and we have free time that overlaps. I like her very much. Her and Auma are both in Primary 7. They are both apprehensive about these test results that they will found out maybe on Monday of whether or not they will take their Primary Level Exam (PLE) from their school, Uper Nile Institute for Apropriate Technology (UNIFAT), or from another school. There are 99 Primary 7 age children at UNIFAT and only 90 of them will sit the PLE from UNIFAT, 9 of them can either choose to repeat Primary 7 at UNIFAT or they can take their PLE from another school. Both Abe and Auma are stressed about this. In fact it is important. They both say though that if they are not selected to sit at UNIFAT they will take the test through another school rather than do the whole year over again. In the second picture is Auze, Deborah, myself, Lamwaka (Santa Lamwaka), and Becky (Abitimo Rebecca Odongkara, the exact same name as her grandmother, the woman I am living with). (The thing is, they have the same name, and the same birthday). In this picture you can see Deborah and Becky the two girls I sleep with each night.

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The Indonesia Initiative of Friends Peace Teams is overjoyed to announce that Indonesians have done the first Alternatives to Violence basic workshop on their own without any facilitators from the outside!

The team that conducted this latest workshop was comprised of facilitators from both sides of a life-long armed conflict. They conducted the workshop in East Aceh, an Acehnese nationalist strong-hold, where Javanese farmers were born, raised and run out of. The participants were from Peureulak, East Aceh, considered the "heart of the war" that has a very hard, fishermen’s culture in which people are easily suspicious and hateful of outsiders.

This was the first time perpetrators were brought together to participate equally with victims of the war. One of the Acehnese facilitators told a story about experiencing transforming power on a night he was certain he would be killed. It turned out that two perpetrators of the violence that night were in the workshop! He says it was really powerful to sit in the room and share what was going on for each of them that night. The Javanese were able to see that they were not the only ones who felt like they might die that night. The meditation at the end of the workshop was amazing.

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I have been reading Listening Efectively to Children by Patty Wipfler a publication of the Re-evaluation Counseling Communities.

The thing that struck me was the section on healing Children’s Fears. This is a paragraph from that section: "When a child feels frightened, she has difficulty staying in close contact with her loved ones. She can’t hold your gaze for long, and will either be slow to experiment and to trust people, or will be constantly “on the go,” unable to slow down and enjoy your presence in a relaxed way. Fear also makes children edgy and hard to please: things have to be “just so” or the frightened child flares with impatience or anger. Life does not roll easily from one sunny pastime to the next for the young child who is afraid."

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Yesterday I attended the Primary School Athletics Compition. I do not know if it was nation wide or just the district. The stadium was just a large area closed off by the concrete wall surrounding it. The track was just a circle of worn out dirt and grass. There was nodifinitive line between the watchers who circled the track and the track itself. There were dull black lines about two feet wide to show the starting point for each person. I watched relay racing, and there were four places on each corner of the track where the starting places were staggered, that is why they used the black lines. The crowd was around the track watching. Each school had a tent connected to the outer wall, not a tent, but a large piece of plastic connected to the outer wall and then connected to two large sticks or poles stuck into the ground away from the wall. This provided shade and a designated area for different schools. The crowd was detirmened by these tents. The viewing students from each school sat roughly in front of their school tent expanding or contracting depending on the number of students at that school and the neighboring schools. I watched relay racing and javelin throwing.

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So much has happened. I have come to Uganda. I am living with Abitimo Odongkara and the many relatives and orphans that she supports. The school, Upper Nile Institute for Appropriate Technology (UNIFAT), is not 1,500 orphans as I had thought, but somewhere around 1,300 or 1,400 children, some of whom are orphans or returning child soldiers. The returning child soldiers may or may not also be orphans. Abitimo and I arranged for me to lead an art time during the schools midday break and after school. This has not started yet but hopefully will begin on Tuesday after Easter. The times of the art class will be from 1:30 to 2:15 and 4:00 to 4:45 Monday to Friday.

Living here at the compound with me are 11 primary school age children and one three year old. I have been playing and working with them. This morning I spent and hour and a half shelling peanuts with three of the older ones: two girls, Auma and Abe, and one boy, Auze. There were two kinds of peanuts. The two girls and I were shelling one kind of peanut and the boy another.

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Due to limited time, I will upload pictures now and add stories later.



Left: smoke from coal making, Right:the computer room where I am right now.



Left:George Fox School, Right: A meal



Left: houses on a hill driving to Cyangugu Right: John Damascene (I'm not sure on the spelling)