Yaspem foundation helps Maluku refugees, the poor

JAKARTA (JP): Maria Mediatrix Mali, a resident of Maumere, East Nusa Tenggara, and director of the Society Development Foundation (Yaspem), dashes to a pig sty in nearby Kewapante village.

She has been informed a baby has been abandoned by its parents in the sty. And there it is, a small baby lying on the ground, surrounded by pigs. Maria quickly picks up the baby and brings it to her house.

She later finds out that the baby's parents are refugees from Ambon, Maluku, and very poor.

"The mother was very depressed. Knowing that she couldn't afford to look after her baby, she placed the baby in the sty so the pigs would eat it," Maria told The Jakarta Post during a recent visit to Jakarta.

Because the mother was so shaken by her anguish, she was admitted to the hospital, said Maria, who was able to find a couple willing to adopt the baby.

"Since the parents are not rich, we promised to provide them a subsidy every month. That's why I came here, to help raise funds for the baby, refugees and many others suffering from poverty," she said on the sidelines of a seminar hosted by the Jakarta archbishop.

According to Maria, there are approximately 250 refugee families from Ambon and East Timor living in Maumere, who have the shared experience of violence.

"The refugees mostly came from East Timor. Only 10 percent are refugees from Ambon," she said.

These refugees add to the burden for the already poor residents of Maumere. Located on the east coast of Flores island, Maumere is home to about 51,000 families totaling approximately 250,000 people.

"Around 78 percent of those families are classified as poor," Maumere Regent Paulus Moa told the Post by telephone.

Most of the residents make their living as farmers and fishermen, but they still use traditional methods to work the land and sea. There are almost no other natural resources in the area besides the sea, with the majority of the territory savanna.

"The dry season here is longer than in most areas in Indonesia. It could be eight months," Maria said.

Over the past several years, conditions have been worsened by earthquakes, floods and annual tsunami storms, all of which have destroyed farmland.

"Many people here have ended up in debt," Maria said.

The natural disasters also orphaned thousands of children. "We have three orphanages here, all of them run by the church," Paulus said.

Maria also said there were thousands of widows living in Maumere. Most are old, but they still remember the dark days of the 1970s when their husbands were killed for alleged ties with the now outlawed Indonesian Communist Party (PKI).

"Those people were peasants. They didn't know anything about politics or communism. They supported the PKI because they thought it was the Indonesian Catholic Party," she said.

The Indonesian Catholic Party, a minor party during the era of first president Sukarno, was not commonly referred to by an acronym.

Most of the widows live in poverty, and their children only made it through elementary school, if that far.

For these widows and their daughters, Yaspem provides training in such skills as sewing, weaving and making accessories.

"We train them so they have skills and can do something to earn money.

"Their products are beautiful, especially the woven cloth. The problem is we don't have anyone who can sell them on the market," Maria said.

The foundation also trains school dropouts, in coordination with the Ministry of Industry and Trade. (hdn)