Yogaykarta, Indonesia: hope in the earthquake’s quake
On the 27th May at 5.45 am Yogyakarta took on a new face! Houses, mosques, churches, buildings and people which were standing in their glory in the break of day within seconds were razed to the ground with the earthquake. The Azan or call to prayer from the mosques and church bells accompanied this natural disaster, therefore many victims were those who died in churches or in the mosques! Is the presence of God questioned as a result of this? You shall see this by the end of this reflection that you are now reading.
The whole of the 27th and 28th people were trying to contact their loved ones and of course the telephone lines were disrupted and the signal to the cell phones was not clear. We heard our parishioners speak of their families who now have no place to stay; all transportation came to a stop as the Airport was affected and the runway damaged. No trains as the routes from Jakarta to Yogya were experiencing tremors. Public buses did not want to take the risk so how would people go? They would either have to go by helicopter or private transport.
The morning of the 27th, six doctors and four nurses from the Atma Jaya Catholic Hospital left for Yogya. On the 29th after a meeting in the morning, the Atma Jaya Catholic University decided to send a group of staff and students. I along with three other staff members went to Yogyakarta with 43 young, energetic and eager students who volunteered to go to the place of the earthquake to give their all. At 8 p.m. a truck load of medicines, food, clothes, pots and pans, tents, toilet articles, blankets and toys, a bus of students, doctors and staff all depart as pioneers to make the mission and vision of Atma Jaya a reality.
We arrived on the 30th morning and the place where we were supposed to stay had just been struck by another earthquake that morning so we could not go there. All of us stayed on the road in front of a hospital where our doctors were needed, so while they went in and started to work the rest of us were experiencing in a small way what the victims were experiencing – no place to call home.
Help from all over Indonesia and the world came pouring in. This was the first group from the university so we had to find places to go to where no one else had already been. The needs of the people were incredible. The people needed food, shelter, medicine, love, attention and care all at the same time and all in abundance! On the fourth day after the earthquake we entered into an interior village where no help at all was received. The head of the village invited us to the mosque and made that the place where everyone could come for help. Within fifteen minutes, our doctors and psychology students were busy giving medicine and counseling services while the other students gave the 600 people who gathered there baby food and survival skills. We went from village to village not just to give food, clothes, blankets and medical care but to give our hearts which meant to listen to their stories and give time to share in their lives. In one village we were asked “where are you from and who are you?” when we asked them why they wanted to know their response was “you are different because so many others have just come and put in our village medicines, food and their banners but you want to know who we are. You will remain in our memory.”
The secret of this attitude was an evaluation and reflection every night. At first the students did not see any use of as they came to help and not evaluate! but which was the only thing they remembered after they returned home from the experience. They had to deal with being “not needed” as the village we went to had already had aid just an hour ago and with a smile asked us not to disturb them. Once a couple of enthusiastic students who ran to the village with water thinking the people there needed drinking water were in turn welcomed with fresh coconuts just plucked from their trees. The professional aid of fresh graduate doctors too was turned down because of the medical help they had received two hours earlier. However, all of this was looked at from the heart perspective each night. ‘Something has happened to me” were the words of several students on their return to Jakarta.
What was that ‘something’ that our eyes have seen and our hands have touched? – It was the people of Yogyakarta. The beautiful Javanese people whose philosophy of life lies in the depth and wisdom of nature. When one looked around, no trees were damaged, nature stood the same as before but houses were damaged, some razed to the ground, some shaken from the foundation, some whose frame remains untouched but whose whole roof has caved in. This has left thousands dead, children without parents, people in panic, shock, trauma, people suffering, grieving, sick, dumbfounded and most of all people with a strong sense of faith.
In all our encounters we did not hear even one person say “Where is God in all this?” They believed that God was with them and has lessons to teach them. To quote a few - in a village where all the houses had been totally damaged but only the cemetery was intact. A man said “God wants to show us that (pointing to the cemetery) this is the place where we belong, He is our owner, and He can give and take our life whenever He wants. We have been sent to the earth as a visitor.” Another explained with hope “our lives are made up of the physical, the soul, the body and the spirit, the earthquake has taken away the physical and the body but our soul and spirit remains” and yet another whose house had broken everything in it including a new set of chairs that he bought the previous night said to us “the chairs in my house have been destroyed but the chair in my heart where God sits is intact”. Several of them had much to thank God for and said it explicitly, “Thank God this happened at 5.45 a.m and not later when our children were at school” “How lucky we are that we just came out of our houses to go to the mosque or the church” “This could have been worse” “I have lost my house but not my children” and so on. This is Javanese culture to integrate the meaning of what they have experienced into wider frames of meaning. The people who are saying this are the little people who are the hidden treasures of our society, the people of the interior villages where no help from the government had yet reached! Whose wisdom not many know. Who still in their white robes place their prayer mat upon the debris and pray, who have placed the pictures of their loved ones in the church where they died, in the ruins of the church they still make do with an altar and have daily mass!
However, this does not take away the suffering from their hearts. They are aware of their losses, their pain and also that they cannot control the losses they experience but can choose what to do with them. This they do in a very Javanese way – gently, patiently, smiling, and going from one moment to another.
We cannot be with the people and not experience loss ourselves and so we are on the journey together: the journey of healthy, growthful grieving which includes three movements:
1. openly acknowledging what has been lost
2. expressing our feelings and emotions as we acknowledge the loss
3. choose to change the things we do that keep us tied to the loss
This is the task of the students and staff of Atma Jaya to be changed and to change. And not to lose the precious gift of compassion that God has shared with us, to weep with those who weep and rejoice with those who rejoice. So far every Friday a new group of students have gone to Yogyakarta to enter into the mystery of life lived so simply by people in suffering. Each group returns with their ‘own story’ the last one being a group of psychology students who accompanied about 100 children in a refugee tent, when the time came for the students to return the children cried and would not leave their ‘newly met sisters and brothers.’ We hope more students can go as a continued commitment to the people of Yogyakarta. The project of this commitment will include Medical aid, Education, Psychological help, Survival skills and Provision of food and clothing.
The first group whom I accompanied returned on the 4th of June, I stayed on to orient the second group and returned on the 9th June, six years since I came to Indonesia. Six years ago when I arrived at the airport from home I kissed the ground as a sign of my commitment to the Ground and Heart of my Being and this year I did the same but it was with a difference and at home!
We know you are with us on our journey not just in Yogyakarta but in Aceh and Nias where the needs of the victims are still being met.
Gerardette Philips rscj
Area of Indonesia
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