From HODR--Indonesia!

From HandsOnDisaster Response (Scuba's report)

"This is a very preliminary report. TC and I will continue to seek information and provide facts over the upcoming days.

Our hotel (Ishiro) is in an unaffected area of Yogyakarta (pronounced Jogjakarta - or Joeg ja for short). We found this college town to be virtually fully functioning with only random pockets of damage. All services needed can be found here. Supplies, accommodations, food water, shopping, internet, transportation are all offered. We have been told that it might be difficult to find hotel accommodations, but haven't found that to be the case....TC and I have been touring the area with the help of a knowledgeable, fluent English speaking, taxi driver cum guide named Suparman. We have driven through Bantul and Klaten extensively, stopping dozens of times to speak with health care providers, church officials, and villagers, as well as visiting several hospitals and one large distribution center....

When viewed from a distance the number of 60,000 homes destroyed does seem to pale in comparison to the mega-disasters we have seen in the past year and a half. It is an altogether different matter however upon driving through village after leveled village. Regardless of the total number of deaths, destroyed homes, etc., these people have still lost their homes, their businesses, their villages, and their loved ones. It is our opinion that just as every disaster differs from every other in some way, a "smaller" disaster would not seem to warrant no response as much as it would an appropriately scaled deployment, applied in an equally fitting manner.

(out of order)This need not be a "massive" deployment. If we had a consistent number of 10-15 volunteers (depending on the number of sites we decide to set up) for 2, maybe 3 months, we would be through the debris removal phase and possibly be into the rebuilding phase. The work would be hard and hot but well within the reach of "non-skilled' vols who simply want to help."

MUCH more available here.

From an email from Dave Campbell:

" We are excited at the opportunity to help and look forward to seeing
some of you here, SOON! We anticipate this will be a 2-3 month event
for our volunteers.

INFO AND FAQ'S

OK GUYS, THIS IS INDONESIA. You will be in the middle of a village
in the middle of a disaster zone in the middle of a developing
country. Please allow your expectations to be realistic. To say the
least, it is hot and dirty, the work is hard, the traffic is
chaotic, and living conditions can be uncomfortable at times. You
will be living and working in a rural hamlet which sustained
extensive damage, in a country in which the majority of the
residents follow a relaxed form of Islam. Bearing all this in mind,
the recovery effort is being driven by a spirit of solidarity within
and between the villages, based on a model of communal action. We
believe this will be very much a "hands on" experience, and judging
by the response that TC and I have had from our neighbors so far,
the experiences gained will far exceed the hardships endured.

WHERE ARE YOU WORKING? We are living and working in a village called
Sawit, situated halfway between the cities of Yogyakarta and Bantul
in Central Java, Indonesia"