it's midnight.
leaving for bali at 4.
AM.
time for bed.

in the aftermath

finally, here are my pictures from the two villages i’ve been to in the past 2 weeks, both of which have never seen white people before and both of which are within 4 km of the peak of merapi. praise God, both these villages are on the side that received the least damage. the only victims were animals, fields, and some houses. but even so, all the residents were in evacuation camps for 3 – 4 weeks, and as they all move back into the villages and start to rebuild their lives, they’re facing a lot of trauma and loss.

(new growth pushing up through the ash)

(this area didn’t receive as much ash as some, but when it mixes with rain, it is like 3 inches of cement over the top of everything, effectively killing all vegetation. these mountain villages are comprised solely of farmers – they lost everything.)

(what merapi looks like now. black and sooty.)

(the still smoking peak)

(some of the thousands of plant starts we took to one village to help them start replanting.)

(the village toilet! in the field!!)

(a very timid puppy with his fur burnt off.)

(i wonder how many major eruptions this lady has lived through.)

(rolling and smoking.)

(“how to roll a cigarette” lessons! i think this was like step 3. this guy was so excited that i wanted to take his picture!)

(quite possibly the first car this kid has ever seen)

(“take our picture with the plants!”)

(the women in these villages get married after middle school – or elementary school for some – and start having kids. lots of young mothers.)

(three of the oldest ladies in the village)

(us – a group from school – with the village women and children!)

(we taught them to say cheese. some of them were really into it.)

(posko = command post for the distribution of supplies and aid)

(looking up one village’s only street towards their mosque and the peak of merapi hidden in the clouds)

(this is lady 2 from the conversation i posted a few days ago)

(the village leader on the left and some friends who went to this village)

the food groups

me: what else do you want to eat (for christmas dinner)? we need some fruit or vegetables.
aswan: yeah... ice cream.

in the desa

i went back to the desa yesterday - the desa i went to wednesday where i was the first white person they'd ever seen. i talked with a different group of ladies this time.

lady 1: do you think she speaks indonesian?
lady 2: maybe. ask.
lady 1: i don't think she does. she doesn't understand us.
lady 2: i think she does. look at her.
lady 1: hey! do you speak indonesian?
me: yeah.
lady 2: do you speak javanese?
me: not much.
lady 1: ooooooh... but you speak indonesian.
me: yeah.
lady 3: where are you from?
me: america.
lady 3: but you live in salatiga?
me: yeah.
lady 2: (to lady 3) she knows a lot.
lady 2: how long have you been in indonesia?
me: two and a half years.
lady 2: oh. so you're fluent.
me: not quite...
lady 3: but you know a lot.
me: thanks!
*awkward pause*
me: (to lady 1) is this your kid?
lady 1: yeah.
me: so handsome! (seriously, the kid was adorable) how old is he?
lady 1: it's a boy.
me: mmhmm.....?
lady 1: he's 2.
me: he's really cute!
lady 1: *laughs*
me: so i'm wondering... what is the religion here?
lady 2: muslim. all of us.
me: 100%?
lady 3: yeah! *excitedly* but in the next village, there's FIVE *holds up 4 fingers* catholics!
me: oh. wow.
lady 2: yeah, that's our mosque *points down the village's one street*
me: ok, i see it. so when we were driving here, i saw an elementary school. do you have a middle or high school the kids can go to or do they start working after elementary school?
lady 3: we're all farmers!
lady 2: there's a middle school. but it's brand new. they just built it in the next village.
me: what year? is it too far to go?
lady 2: 2007, and no, it's not far. most of the kids go there.
me: what about high school?
lady 2: there's 2 high schools in selo.
me: that's too far!
lady 2: yeah. those who are able send their kids there.
lady 3: but now *motioning with her hand to the piles of ash everywhere* nobody is able.
me: how far are we from the peak of merapi?
lady 1: 4 kilometers.
me: what about the kids who don't go to high school in selo? what do they do?
lady 1: we get married and work in the fields.
me: how old are girls when they get married?
lady 2: 15 or 16 or 17 or 18.
me: wow! i'm 24 and i'm not married! old, huh?
lady 1: if you lived here, you'd have 2 kids by now.
me: how old are you? *said to lady 1 with the 2 year old son*
lady 1: 18.
me: aish.... wow. do you want more kids?
lady 1: *laughs a beautiful laugh* i don't know. this one is a lot of work!
me: for american culture, you're really young to have kids. we normally get married around 24 or 25 maybe then have kids even later than that.
all exclaim: really? so old!!
*a man, who i assume to be lady 1's husband comes over*
man: where are you from?
ladies: america!
me: right!
man: do you want to teach us english?
me: uhhhhh.....
man: all we know is one, two, three (numbers said in english) because that's all we learn in school. one until ten.
me: uhhhhh......
man: come teach us english! are you a teacher? a professor?
me: a teacher. at the international school.
man: so come teach us!
me: if i taught you english, where would you use it? in your fields? with your cows?
man: hmmmm.... maybe!
me: well, i can't now because of my job, and it's too far to drive here a lot. two hours. but maybe in the future?
man: ok.
me: *trying to get the attention off me* (to lady 2) how old is your baby?
lady 2: one month.
me: wow! so new! boy or girl?
lady 2: girl.
man: she was born in the refugee camp.
me: which one?
man: magelang.
me: wow..... how long have you guys been back?
man: 24 days.
me: was anyone in your village killed?
man: no, praise Allah.
me: homes destroyed?
man: a few, but not many.
me: good...
man: you should go inside and wait. *points to the village leader's house behind me* i'll make you tea.
me: *not knowing where anybody else in my group was at this point* maybe i'll just wait here.
ladies: no! go inside! it's getting cold out here!
me: uhmm..... ok.
*i went in the house and didn't see any of them again. but i did get tea.*

where no (white) man has gone before...

yesterday after school i found myself in a random village on the slopes of merapi. my church has set up a posko there... which is a... umm.... i’m not really sure what it is in english. like a command post? because my church is in this for the long haul. these people have months – if not years – of recovery ahead of them. they’re back in their villages, but many of them are without homes, family members, crops, livestock, and access to food and water. and many are dealing with trauma and living in fear. i've now been to 3 of the villages closest to the peak and heard some of the stories there... and i can't blame them.

a friend of mine from church smsed yesterday afternoon saying that he was heading over to a village to drop off some supplies, but everyone else who was supposed to go backed out. so, having nothing to do all evening and not wanting him to be alone on the 2 hour drive, i volunteered to keep him company. so off we went, me still in my teacher clothes.

i brought my laptop with high hopes of getting some finals written in the car. bad choice. the roads were so rough that i was going crosseyed trying to see the screen. oh well.

we came up over merbabu, the mountain that we live on, and just drove straight toward the peak of merapi, which is still smoking and completely blackened with layer upon layer of ash. it was one of the clearest views of merapi i’ve seen lately and totally awe inspiring. just a month ago, the ground there was shaking and fire was shooting out of that mountain!

anyways, as we got closer and closer, i started to notice rocks EVERYWHERE... some the size of my fist, some the size of my head. when it was erupting, i heard stories of “hujan batu” (raining rocks). these were the rocks they spoke of. lots of houses had rocks piled up on their roofs and many had caved in under the weight. there was hardly a tree left standing, and those that were had their branches stripped because of the raining rocks and the weight of the ash. and speaking of ash, it was piled up along all the roads as if someone had come through with a snowplow to scrape it all up. hills and hills and hills of ash.

what shocked me the most though was the shock of the people! the suv we took didn’t have tinted windows, so everyone had a very clear view of me riding along in the front seat. jaws dropped. literally dropped. kids abandoned whatever they were playing with and ran to the roadside to just stare as we drove by. i got an awesome view of a middle aged guy bathing in his front yard in his skivvies. i think he was so in shock at seeing ME that he didn’t realize how shocked i was to see HIM!

when we got out of the car, my friend went to unload the car, and the village ladies just swarmed around me. they wanted to touch me and talk to me. so i had lots of hands holding my hands, my arms, feeling my hair. and they just kept coming and coming and coming. every time i turned around, there were 5 more women with babies on their hips, all gaping at me in wonder.

lady 1: salam alaikum! (muslim greeting)
me: walaikum salam, bu! (the correct response)
*we shake hands, then about 5 other ladies come over and i shake their hands too*
me: aw, how old is she? (referring to a baby in a sling)
lady 2: 5 months.
lady 1: she's 6 months.
lady 2: 6 months.
me: wow! she's tall! and so pretty!
lady 2: thank you!
lady 1: *to lady 2* wow. she knows so much indonesian!
me: haha... but not yet fluent!
all ladies: FLUUUUUENT!
lady 3: where are you from?
me: america, but i live in salatiga.
lady 4: why are you here?
me: i came with my friend over there. we brought supplies.
lady 2: how long since you left germamy?
me: um... germany?
lady 5: america.
lady 2: america. or whatever.
me: oh, i've lived here two and a half years.
lady 1: so THAT'S why you know indonesian.
me: right!
lady 1: can you speak javanese? *asked in javanese*
me: not yet *answered in javanese*
all ladies: SEE?! YOU CAN!!!
me: i have to focus on becoming fluent in indonesian first!
lady 2: are you a student in salatiga?
me: actually, i'm a teacher at the international school.
all ladies: wooowwwwwww.
lady 1: why can't you speak javanese? you've lived here 2.5 years.
me: well, it's hard to find time to learn. we only use english at school.
lady 1: well, if you want to live on java, you have to learn javanese.
me: oh, believe me, i want to! i'm learning... little by little. what's the baby's name?
lady 6: rati.
me: *turn around and see like 30 kids hiding behind a wall staring at me* so.... i guess you guys don't get many white people around here, huh?
lady 7, 8, 9: ooooh, miss..... NEVER!
lady 2: only you.
me: really? there's never been a londo (whitey) here before??
lady 1: we've never seen a white person.
*my friend finishes unloading supplies and calls for me to go*
me: sorry, i have to go...
lady 1: come back, ok? please come back?
me: i'll try. *shake hands with everyone and leave with lots of waving from the car*

Silence

I haven’t written in too long.... As a comeback, how bout these apples?

i love the weather this week. (btw, it’s about 10 – 15 degrees cooler in salatiga than it is in semarang on average since we live halfway up a mountain. but i can’t find online weather info for salatiga.)

in other news, we’re currently in the home stretch before exams. this is dead week, and finals come next week. then.... BREAK! the sheer hecticness of the past 2 weeks accounts for my silence as of late. also, not much worth sharing has been happening.

when it rains....

thing one - there is a guest from america coming to stay at my house with me until monday or tuesday. i have never met said person, but her son is a good friend of mine. she's in town for the wedding of her son's good friend.

thing two - tomorrow tiff will also be joining us in my house and staying for the remainder of the weekend. three people in my 20' x 20' apartment. it will be... cozy?

thing three - the electricity is scheduled to be off from 8:30 - 14:00 today. oh, good heavens.

thing four - following the sudden death of her nephew on tuesday, my house helper has been given indefinite time off to be with family.

thing five - so far this week, the longest amount of time i have spent in my house after school and before sleep (which has been no earlier than 11:30) is 45 minutes. and i do not anticipate that changing in the near future.

this means: i have no clean towels. i have only one set of clean sheets (though i did manage to procure a second bed and wedge it in my bedroom). i have no food. i have no ingredients with which to make food (unless thanksgiving leftovers count). aaaaaand... i have 2 guests coming. aish.....

in an unprecedented move....

i.
just.
cooked.
a.
TURKEY!

just another day in indonesia...

1. wake up, no thanks to my alarm clock that didn't go off.
2. go to church. hold hands across the aisles, and sing together, tears running down our faces:
kuucapkan berkat (i speak blessings)
atas indonesia (over indonesia)
biar kemuliaan Tuhan (so the glory of the Lord)
akan nyata (will be obvious)
bagi bangsa ini (for these people)
kami berdiri (we stand)
dan membawa doa kami kepadaMu (and bring our prayer to You)
sesuatu yang besar (something big)
pasti terjadi (WILL happen)
mengubahkan negeri kami (change our country)
hanya namaMu Tuhan (only Your name, God)
ditinggikan (is raised)
atas seluruh bumi. (over the entire earth)
i was the only white person there.
3. come home and change clothes.
3.5. go back to church and help unload a semi filled with boxes of food, school supplies, bags of rice, and bottled water for the refugees.
4. go to the atm pavilion because i am down to 60 cents in my pocket. find that EVERY SINGLE atm is broken.
5. go into town to find another atm.
6. eat mie pangsit (boiled noodles and meat dumplings) for breakfast.
7. go to pasar hewan (livestock market) in ambarawa.
8. find the ONLY turkey in the entire 5 acre lot packed with animals and people trying to sell them, and try to convince the owner this scrawny bird is NOT worth rp300.000.
9. decide not to buy a live turkey for thanksgiving after all. it's not worth it.
10. watch a cock fight.
11. go hang out with all the guys selling goats.
12. walk through the cattle barns.
13. watch aswan be absolutely thrilled by the cow that can lick its own butt. he made me take a picture.
14. stop at an old dutch train station abandoned in the 70s. sit on the rails and contemplate life.
15. take the long way through the rice fields/coffee plantations/rubber forests/random villages back to salatiga.
16. come home. change clothes.
17. realize that there is really loud music playing. and it is reog (horse dance).
18. take ben (new teacher and photographer by trade) to photograph said horse dance.
19. get bit by a demon possessed man.
20. walk home over a river gorge 3 hours later in the pouring rain.
21. fall asleep watching the office.
22. get woken up 5 minutes later by my neighbor.
23. take my neighbor to get the hole in her arm taped shut after her elephant altercation.
24. chicken sandwich and a really lame movie.
25. write this blog.
26. bedtime.

out of all the people in the entire world, i'm so glad that God called ME to live in salatiga, indonesia.

quotes of the day

guy 1: so are you a model?
me: no.
guy 1: no? tell me you used to be a model.
me: no.
guy 1: really!?!
guy 2: he's trying to flirt on you. it doesn't work well for him.
guy 1: i'm straight.
me: ok.....?
guy 1: so did you ever want to be a model.
me: uh... no.
guy 1: oh. well, what do you teach?
me: math.
guy 1: wow.
guy 2: ya, pintar nih. (ya, this one is smart)
me: *laughs*
guy 1: you speak indonesian?!?
me: ya.
guy 1: why am i trying to flirt on you in english?! this isn't working...


student: wanna go to the christmas party with me?
me: only if you buy me flowers.
student: ok.
me: what??!


student: maybe she got a caucasian and forgot who she is.
me: a concussion?
student: oh yeah....


a junior: i think right now larissa is our valedictorian and jimin is our salutatorian.
me: wow...
same junior: and i think that the valedictorian and salutatorian should be people who represent our class well.
me: well, right now your valedictorian thinks a caucasian is a medical condition...


guy 1: i always said i will marry a woman with blue eyes and blonde hair.
guy 2: her hair isn't blonde.
guy 1: i always said i will marry a woman with blue eyes who is black.
me: who is black? what?
guy 1: i mean brunette.
me: i think you're making it up.

concentration camps, food poisoning, and everything in between

this week has kind of been a blur... here are some highlights.

1. concentration camps. ok, so not really, but for some reason, that's what i keep calling the evacuee/refugee camps. i went to 4 different camps on saturday and sunday. one of them was a camp i went to the week before, and it did my heart good to see far fewer people there this time. after asking around, i learned that the first time i was there, about 500 refugees were living in this indoor badminton court. but several of them had already moved back home. sunday, there were only 120 people still living there. awesome! this means the volcano is quieting down and rebuilding is about to start. rebuilding homes and rebuilding lives. i met some pretty cool people in my time there, even one friend that i still keep in contact with. i also discovered that i am really, really overly sensitive to ash. i kinda learned that the hard way when merapi decided to erupt while i was INSIDE the evac zone. awesome. but hey, i have now seen a volcano erupt, so that's something. five days later, my lungs are still clearing themselves out. oh, and i also learned that when ash gets wet, it makes a kind of cement mixture. that day it erupted, it also rained... and we were outdoors. guess how long it took me to wash the ash/rain mixture out of my hair? ugh.

2. food poisoning. ya, that's right. third time in two years. i'm really not sure what i got in to as the day before i started erupting, i ate every single meal as part of a group and nobody else got sick. the nice thing was that tuesday was when it was just coming on, so it mostly only meant a panicked jog to the bathroom every 45 minutes or so. disruptive to class, but manageable. and we're not shy about things like that here, so "sorry guys, i've gotta run to the toilet. again" is an acceptable reason to dash out in the middle of class. it wasn't until that night that all hell broke loose, and then we had school off on wednesday, so i had plenty of time to rest and use my OWN toilet. i'm thinking it's a sign of growing up when you're thankful that you're sick on your day off so that you don't have to miss work... thursday i was feeling nauseous, but the worst was over, and today (friday) i'm back to 100% again!

3. the reason we had school off wednesday was because it was idul adha, the muslim day of sacrifice. tuesday night, i drove by the mosque down the street and noticed 2 live cows standing on the porch. weird sight. the next morning, i drove by the same mosque, and the same 2 cows were still there, but in much smaller pieces. idul adha is like a huge party where all the men gather at the mosque to slaughter the cows, sheep, and goats, then they share the meat with the poor, with their neighbors, and with their families. everyone eats heartily on this day. and the cool thing is that a LOT of the sacrificial animals were bought from the merapi area as a means of supporting those people. buy their cow so they have enough money to rebuild their home.

4. a pastor from kalimantan came to visit this week, and i got to spend some time with him. pretty neat guy. he went to the refugee camps with us. and he commented that this disaster in many ways has been good for indonesia, especially in that it has caused the people of this nation to pull together as one and take care of its own. not much help is coming from the government, though many promises have been made. it's neighbor taking care of neighbor. and that's been awesome to see.

5. while on the way to one refugee camp, we passed a big military truck. and clearly stencilled on the sides was "U.S. ARMY"... is our military here? or was this the indo army using an old US truck? hmm... it was cool to see though.

6. i got asked to the christmas party by a 10th grader. i said, "sure, if you bring me flowers." i thought he was joking. but now he's telling everyone i'm going with him. then at lunch, a 10th grade girl came to me, kinda upset, because SHE wanted to go with him. oops. gotta rectify this. though i secretly suspect he asked me so that she couldn't ask him first. oh, high school...

7. tomorrow i'm doing photography work for a really nice resort in town. they need shots for their future promos. i'm a little nervous. i was also invited to have dinner with the owner (an american, actually) and the investors afterwards. i declined. partly because that sounds horrific, but also partly because i'm hoping to finish early so i can go to semarang.

8. today at lunch, a junior came up to me and said, "i noticed you seem like something is wrong lately. is there anything i can pray for you for?" aaah... i love this community. and that wasn't even a student i teach this year! amazing.

9. ok. that's all for now. the final bell of friday's school day just rang. hello, weekend!

you know you live in a third world country when...

... after working for 3 hours in a merapi refugee camp, and being completely covered head to toe in ash, you drive into jogja to a mall for lunch and one of the indonesian people in your group asks if she can wash her feet off in the fountain inside the mall.

oh, but it gets better.

i told her that probably wouldn't be very polite... later we had to go to the bathroom before making the 2 hour drive back home, so we went together. i finished first, and when she came out, i noticed that her feet were soaking wet and very clean. i peered curiously in the stall she had just come out of to see if there was a bucket of water (often used for flushing toilets) or a sprayer (because indonesians don't use TP, they hose themselves down). there were neither... so, already dreading her answer, i asked, "uhm.. where did you wash your feet at?" to which she cheerfully replied, "in the toilet! ok, let's go now!"

oh, dear...

oh, blessed cellphone

so for the first time in my life, i have a cell phone that is actually nice. it takes decent pictures, and it holds 2 GB of music, which is nice since my ipod recently broke and even hotjaga couldn’t fix it for me. anyways, the point is that i just now dumped all the pictures from my phone camera to my computer. even i am amazed at the things i choose to take pictures of. and i decided to share them all with you.

indonesian bacon. at lunch one day. yum. or not.

BANCI! a crossdresser in jogja. dancing for money in traffic at a stoplight.

yup. those are all dudes.

bayang. shadow.

a really weird bug outside my house that i apparently thought was cool.

ASH CLOUD! i actually took this picture YESTERDAY. you can see an ash plume going up into the air on the left by the trees. this was on my walk to school. merapi, the erupting volcano, is behind merbabu, the mountain in the foreground.

my helper had some extra grocery money and bought me MILK this week! i have had at least one glass of fresh milk EVERY DAY this week! so yum. this is a rare treat.

opor ayam – one of my favorite meals – and milk. so enak.

boy cat is so snuggly. sometimes i feel guilty for being allergic to him. because he used to be wild. i made him snuggly. and now i don’t even let him in the house.

in an indonesian geography book i found. “washington” appears to be located in.... ohio? and there’s a chance LA has relocated to mexico.

in the same book. each red dot represents an active volcano. or a place where tectonic plates meet. i forget. either way, oh, hey, look – THAT’S WHERE I LIVE!

a book on famous philosophers. his real name – karl popper. i laughed pretty hard over this one.

i needed notebooks to give to some kids in this one village. the bookstore tried to sell me these. i just couldn’t do it. the small letters say “Pissy 2 (indicating plurality) baby is having fun.... they are starring at the rainbow.... it looks beautiful.... wanna join them?” i’ll pass....

oh, pirated movies.... it’s A. definitely A.

oh, wow.

i just got a piece of mail addresed to the "head of mathematics" of my school. i hadn't thought about it. i AM the head of mathematics. at the most prestigious international school in indonesia, or so i've heard.

that's right.
i am 24.
and i dominate.
: )

refreshing nights

last night, i had to dormsit until 9 pm. after i got home, i felt really restless, so i decided to go for a drive.

there's this spot i know of. it's just a little ways up the mountain. from this one spot, i can sit in perfect solitude and darkness and see the lights of my town pulsating in the valley below me. perfect solitude is hard to find on the most densely populated island in the world. but that's the one place i've been able to find it. and sometimes i just need it. i love being able to hear myself breathe. i love watching the lights. i love being alone.

so i went there. but for some reason, the lights didn't captivate me like they normally do. so i laid down flat on my back. and i saw the stars. i had forgotten about those. i so rarely see them.

and those stars.... they spoke to me. they told me how big my God is. big enough to hang every single one of them over my head and hold them in their place. but they also told me, in spite of His bigness, how much He loves me. and not that distant kind of love, but that He'll never ever leave my side kind of love. and yesterday, i really needed reminded of that.

and i laid there, flat on my back, halfway up a mountain in indonesia, listening to the frogs, the crickets, and the gentle pinging of my motorbike engine cooling down, completely alone for the first time in months.... and i cried. tears of sheer joy.

He loves ME!



i laid there for awhile, lost in my thoughts, talking to God, praying for friends, praying for this nation. and eventually, i started to get paranoid about tiger attacks. so i sat up. and all the tears that had collected in my ears (since i was laying on my back) now ran down my neck. bizarre feeling. my ears were crying. so i wiped my neck off with my sleeve and came home. it's about a 15 minute drive back down the mountain.

i pulled up to the gate and one of my favorite jagas already had the gate open for me because he knows the sound of my bike coming down the road. we had this conversation, more or less:

him: hey!
me: hi!
him: *leaning in closer to scrutinize my face in the dark* feeling pretty tired, ya?
me: what? no, not yet. it's still early!
him: *squinting his eyes and looking even closer* well, your eyes are pretty red.
me: oh....?
him: maybe you've been crying? hahaha....
me: oh... um.... actually.... yeah.
him: WHAT? why?!? *with an "i'm gonna kill the guy who did this to you" attitude*
me: well, when i left, i didn't know where i wanted to go. i was just bored. so i went to this spot (explained the spot to him). do you know it?
him: yeah....
me: and i just laid down and looked at the stars. and there's so many. and they're so beautiful. and God made them. and our God is just so..... big.
him: yeah.... *visibly relaxing a bit*
me: and i was just thinking about how He's big enough to make the stars, but at the same time, He loves us and cares about all of us. and i guess i just.... cried.
him: that's strange. *completely relaxed but now confused*
me: ya, for me... i don't cry that much! but it felt good. i'm HAPPY. God loves us.
him: *smiling broadly* yes, he does!

so i came in the gate and parked my bike. and as i was walking to my house, i glanced over at the guard shack, but noticed it was empty. when my eyes adjusted to the darkness, i saw him standing in the yard, just staring up at the night sky. did he see what i saw?

what is this?

i just got home from school. i'm here in my house. i have an hour before i have to be anywhere. and i have no idea what to do... this sitting down thing, it feels strange.

weary

weary is the word i would most readily use to describe the looks on the faces i saw in the refugee camps yesterday. technically, they’re evacuee camps. but most of these people have nothing to go home to... so i call them refugees. right now the government is saying they’ll probably be there for months. but they’re running out of money to take care of them all. i got to visit two camps along with my church. they had things pretty under control, so other than picking up garbage around the camps and talking to various people, i mostly spent my time there taking pictures.

it wasn’t at all what i expected. not like what you see in the news. there weren’t people openly in mourning or walking around with haunted looks on their faces. if anything, they are bored. they are tired. they are ready to go home.

and i can’t blame them. they, along with what few possessions – if any - they managed to grab before evacuating, are crammed like sardines into buildings too small to house them all. the first camp i went to had 2000 people staying in one pavilion-type building. there’s not room for all of them to sleep, so the men sleep in the parking lot and road in front. they have no blankets, no pillows. and for these 2000 people, there is one bathroom. wouldn’t YOU want to go back home?

2000 people. one room. if you’re looking at this picture and thinking that this looks like a lot less than 2000 people, you’re on the same page as me. i had to ask someone where everyone was. and he told me that a lot of the people, men especially, go home during the day to try and salvage what they can, rebuild, guard what’s left, and take care of any animals that haven’t been scorched to death already. they come back down off the mountain to sleep here at night.

makeshift shower! the outdoor faucet!

something interesting that i learned is that the evacuation zone right now is set at 20 km. this camp is 17 km from merapi. there’s noplace for everyone to go. the government can’t constantly be moving 200,000 people from place to place every time they expand the evacuation zone. one man whipped out his cell phone and was showing me VERY clear pictures he took from just about right where i was standing of the mountain erupting 2 days before. eesh. toooooo close. they said the day before i came, it was raining rocks in that town.

even the people who aren’t directly affected by merapi are having their lives changed... their backyards have been turned into refugee camps. the kids can’t go to school anymore because there’s hundreds of people living in the hallways and classrooms. the kids in the camps are bored out of their minds. there’s lots of babies, and all the old ladies are having a ball packing them around. it’s impossible to tell whose kid is whose in these camps...

something my church has been awesome about in these camps is bringing stuff for the kids to do, beyond just the basic daily supplies. they’ve brought tons of books, toys, puzzles, etc. i even found a whole box of rubik’s cubes at the boyolali camp! there’s a whole tent devoted to kids activities. you can see it in the very first picture.

we spent a large chunk of yesterday afternoon trying to give the kids something to do. there’s about 200 elementary age kids in this camp. not everyone was brave enough to join in the fun with ridiculous songs and dances, but those who did were REALLY into it!

before we left, we made sure that everyone had some juice and milk.

another group came later and brought dinner for everyone. and in case you’ve never had to cook rice for 2000 people, here’s what it looks like. this is earlier in the day at my church. SIX industrial sized pots. filled with rice.

me and a buncha guys from my church. the one with the thumbs up is salim, our worship leader. awesome guy. and yes, we were actually wearing our masks all day. we decided to take them off just for this picture so that our smiles could be seen!

after we finished at boyolali, we drove to the next camp in muntilan... as we were driving, the ash started falling REALLY heavily. and even as i was writing that last sentence, i accidentally wrote snow and had to go back and replace it with ash... haha. but that’s what it felt like. snow.

it piles up on the roads and makes them pretty treacherous. it reduces visibility. it gets all over the windshield. it falls on the trees until they fall down. we drove through one town where the power was out, most of the trees had fallen, and every store and house was shut up. it was like driving through a ghost town. very post-apocalyptic.

the camp in muntilan was a lot smaller than the one in boyolali. it only had about 500 people. it was also much more efficiently run and well supplied. they have a small kitchen set up there where they take turns cooking for themselves (rather than an org coming in and cooking or delivering food for them). they have bathrooms and places to put their garbage.

they’re all living in what used to be indoor badminton courts.

even with as well stocked as this camp is, they still don’t have any blankets and pillows for the 500 people sleeping on the cement floor.

boxes of medicine.

my pastor. with a very cheesy grin. haha...

even in the well stocked camps, they are still having shortages. just about every camp i’ve heard of has plenty of food and water. this country pulls together and takes care of its own... but some things have been overlooked. what they don’t have are pads for the women (as a female, i cannot imagine being crammed in a room with a thousand or more strangers all sharing one bathroom, getting my period, and not having ANYTHING hygiene-wise), diapers for the babies (they have some, but in lots of places, each baby gets ONE diaper per day), formula (indonesians generally don’t breastfeed, so the babies are running out of food!), blankets and pillows (in the refugee camps farther up merbabu, i’ve heard that people are dying because of the elevation, cold temps, and no blankets), and basic things like soap, aspirin, toothbrushes, etc. please, please, please keep praying that God will provide for these people. already i have been so blessed to see how much love and help has been given, but so much more is needed!

and to end with, here’s some faces of life in a refugee camp...