IDP camps

Took a journey today out to one of the IDP camps (Internally Displaced People, i.e., refugees). Chatty Kathy from Utah wanted to go there to try to find a guy she met in a hospital in Medan, who said he was going to that camp. Janine, one of the PCI VPs, wanted to take some pictures. I said, "Hey, Kathy, are we going to go empty-handed? Shouldn't we bring those baby clothes and toys you lugged with you from America?" So we piled ourselves and the gear into the van and sped out along the road past lush rice paddies and jungles of palm trees, with the foggy green mountains in the distance.

The camp (with about 150 IDPs) was housed in what used to be a boarding school, and already had a Turkish team there delivering rice and a British woman who had ventured solo to Indonesia to help coordinate medical and refugee programs. The kids, as anywhere in the world, were not shy about getting their pictures taken, while their mothers held their hands out for offerings. I tried out my few phrases in Indonesian but they only got me so far when I wanted to know everything about them - where had they been living before the tsunami, how many people in their family had they lost, where do they expect to go next, what do they need the most now?...

There were girls' dresses and baby blankets and toys and bracelets with beads in the bag Kathy brought - not enough to ensure their longterm survival or fix their physical wounds, but a new dress brings dignity and a toy brings a smile. It's a very small thing, and I wished we had more. I had to remind myself that the thousands and thousands of dollars PCI had invested into its programs WERE going to bring medicine and shelter and jobs and food for SOME IDPs, although we certainly can't save the world.

As we emptied the items one by one from the bag into tiny grasping brown hands, I wondered if the mothers and fathers in the camp felt shame or gratitude or a mixture of both, or perhaps they were just too numb from grief still to feel anything. Soon enough, though, a few women approached me smiling and trying out their few words in English. We laughed as we tried to pronounce words in each others' languages. I showed a boy how to use a spinning top he had just received, and an audience of a dozen onlookers studies my wrist movements in rapture, then cheered as the top spun.

When I saw one mother crying, it became too much for me and I had to go back the car, waving "Da Da!" for bye-bye. Kathy found the Indonesian man she had been looking for, and gave him the boots she had promised him a week ago in Medan - they were her own pair. The British woman promised to bring a doctor tomorrow for a girl whose arm was in a home-made splint of bamboo and leaves.

These are the types of camps our mobile clinics will be visiting in the interior of Aceh to do medical assessments and deliver treatment, and our boat crew (which departed today with its cargo of family kits) will be visiting along the west coast of Aceh. We're staying in town to run the show and to keep getting more goods for the next sorties.

Tonight is the first time I have been alone in almost two weeks - everyone's off somewhere and the house is empty. Strange how I got used to the hustle and bustle of so many people working all the time.