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TechnoratiChris Olver is a videographer with World Vision in Australia. He has flown to Indonesia to document the devastation caused by the recent earthquake. This is his blog.
The aftershock Tuesday [October 6] was magnitude 5.4, the biggest tremor since the earthquakes last week. The epicentre was in Padang Pariaman - the worst affected zone - so it seems that sometimes when it rains, it pours. On the actual rain front though, it's good news. 24 hours of clear skies have resulted in unhampered rescue, relief and rehabilitation work.
On this trip, I've learned about the "three R's" of disaster response -- rescue, relief, and rehabilitation. It seems that rescue defined the early stages of this emergency response, relief closely followed and is being distributed by World Vision widely, and Tuesday we turned our attention to rehabilitation.
In the aftermath of natural disasters, particularly those as powerful and widespread as last week's dual earthquakes, it is sometimes hard to see past the physical devastation and to take the time to help people, especially children, heal emotionally and psychologically. World Vision has long employed a unique initiative in its emergency response work of setting up "Child-Friendly Spaces" (CFS) in areas where children have suffered through traumatic experiences. We toured the first of these Child-Friendly Spaces in Kota Padang Tuesday.
The site for this CFS was located in one of the worst hit areas, where countless houses and four schools were damaged beyond repair. As the school week restarted this week, hundreds of children in rural areas literally have nowhere to go throughout the week because their homes and schools are gone. And for those whose parents must work through the week, this poses a precarious situation. Further, when you take into account that many of these children lost both their school and house, and that they are currently hesitant to re-enter any building for fear of further collapses, a designated CFS is of the utmost importance to the mental and physical well-being of these children.
The CFS is essentially a day care centre inside of a well-stocked tent. Usually in an emergency, pre-stocked tents and supplies are sent from World Vision warehouses around the world to the affected zones and CFS's are set up as soon as possible after a disaster hits. However, transporting these pre-stocked tents into Padang has been problematic to say the least. This is where the staff here got creative. It's wedding season in Indonesia, and hundreds of couples use this month before the rainy season to host elaborate weddings in large tents. World Vision Indonesia procuredone of these wedding tents and, using locally sourced material, set up this first of 13 Child Friendly Spaces just days after the earthquakes.
Arriving at the site of the CFS, I was struck by just how necessary this initiative is. The large wedding tent was erected between two demolished school buildings. A site that hundreds of children would have been coming to under ordinary circumstances had first been converted to a disaster zone by Mother Nature and had now been restored to a safe place of learning and fun by World Vision. The kids were coloring, playing tag, making paper airplanes and singing songs. Trained child care workers, community volunteers and child protection officers monitored this play, ensuring that this remains a safe space where children can experience a bit of normalcy after the disruptive and often traumatic experiences of the past week.
All the kids we spoke to told stories of loss and grief, but also of hopefulness. They said that they wished more than anything else that their school buildings could be rebuilt and that they were overjoyed that this brightly-colored tent had arrived, giving them a place to play, learn and socialize. All of the children wanted to take us back to their house and show us what was left after the quake, and for the families who we did visit, we were all once again struck by the devastating impact these quakes had. Many houses ceased to be recognizable and almost all showed cracks in the walls, broken roofs or unstable foundations. Tonight, almost every family will sleep under tarps and blankets strung up between trees, some by necessity and for others, whose homes survived,by their fear of another earthquake that they may not escape.
