Average citizens go to Aceh to help, despite difficulties

Tertiani ZB Simanjuntak, The Jakarta Post, Banda Aceh

Zainal waved goodbye to his wife, children and relatives in Bandung, West Java and left for Jakarta where he stayed for a night at a friend's house.

With a bag of clothes and not much money in his wallet, he continued his journey taking a free flight on the military's aircraft Hercules to a place he'd never been before.

"I watched the news of the natural disaster in Aceh on Sunday and I felt called upon to become a volunteer for as long as I am needed. I registered myself, but no organization was willing to take me because I don't have any expertise and am too old to be a body retriever," the thin man at his 40s told The Jakarta Post on Tuesday.

For three days he wandered around the capital of Banda Aceh, looking for something he could do to help the Acehnese who are suffering following the devastating earthquake and tidal waves that killed over 100,000 people and left thousands of others homeless.

He stopped at the tent of the International Scientology Assist where he at first helped cleaning up the place but then took training to help ease the trauma and fatigue suffered by other volunteers, aid workers, journalists and locals.

Zainal is one of thousands of volunteers from all over the country -- who were either deployed or came on their own initiative, both those well-prepared and totally unprepared -- who realized they were about to deal with death and sanity itself.

Torang, who heads the body retrieval team of the Ratna Sarumpaet Crisis Center in Banda Aceh, said he was asked several critical questions after registering as a volunteer.

"I was asked whether I was ready to go without food and sleep, and if I was prepared for possible aftershocks and tidal waves. I was also asked whether I was prepared to take the risk of being exposed to disease," he said.

Torang and 58 friends, nine of them women, said yes.

After about 10 days in Aceh, the young people who had never seen a corpse before developed an ability to detect whether there were bodies under the rubble, opting to remove their face masks to tell the difference in the smell in the air, although they knew they should have been vaccinated and needed basic standard equipment to protect them.

It was on Tuesday the disaster coordination team based in Banda Aceh told the 140 groups of volunteers in the capital not to evacuate bodies unless they were well equipped.

The call was made after two volunteers sent by a political party suffered from a gangrenous infection after retrieving bodies without wearing rubber gloves and had to have limbs amputated.

However, most of the over 6,000 volunteers are well-prepared, or at least well-organized.

Pepen, 25, is a member of a outdoor activities club at Bung Hatta University in Padang, West Sumatra. He and his friends have had experience evacuating victims of landslides in their home province.

Masks, rubber gloves and boots, as well as medicine are the must-have items in their backpack. They also abide by the discipline of never entering their base camp without first soaking themselves with liquid antiseptic at the makeshift sterilization unit provided by foreign donors at the front of Banda Aceh Museum, which had been converted into a base camp of Media Group volunteers.

"Maybe because we're here under the National Search and Rescue Body (Basarnas), we were vaccinated before evacuating bodies and we have regular medical checkups," Pepen said.

Zulham, 24, a Jakarta resident who volunteered for the Media Group, said making friends with other volunteers helped him through the ordeal.

"There are many of us from all over the country with different backgrounds and mother languages and we are all here for one reason. We exchange jokes and make fun of one another so we don't feel the fatigue and get stressed," he said.

But Rafiq of Bung Hatta University's student club said a call home consoles him. "I'm glad we can use the free telephone line provided at the disaster coordination team command post," he smiled.

The volunteers acknowledged that many of them had toughened due to the work.

"They go crazy if they are told to take a day off since it prevents them from retrieving bodies. They will sing out loud at night," one of them said.

Joel Taher, who leads the Ratna Sarumpaet Crisis Center, said the team's strong motivation and passion for the Acehnese made it eager to complete the task so as not to let the dead bodies stay scattered on the ground a day longer.

"Lack of equipment won't stop us ... We put our faith here in God's hands."