Aceh 3: Kg Suak Timah

I just received a 12 minutes Acheh clip from my Acheh pal, Atiqah, a while a go, which totally boosted my spirit to continue writing about my recent Acheh mission. You'll never know what could actually trigger you to start writing again until suddenly when you realized about it you're already eagerly typing every recollection of memories that crossed your mind.

Aceh 3: Kg Suak Timah
21 July 2005

MashaAllah it was a bright and wonderful morning in the small town of Meulaboh. We had our breakfast eating Acheh's traditional kuih muih with tea while discussing about the flow of the day at the PKS office. At about 7.30am we were all ready to move to our final destination, Kampung Suak Timah, which from what I heard has been the so-called 'kampung angkat' to Yayasan Amal for quite some times, since people from Amal has been staying there for emergency/relief works since the huge waves flattened most of the village last December.

Suak Timah here we come!

What was supposed to be an only 10 minutes journey turned out later to be a half an hour journey, and that was due to the horrendous road going into the village. Rumours told that this was the result of the undistributed enormous donations attained from various organizations that were given to the hands of the corrupted Indonesians rulers with hopes that they'd reached out to people in need, but as you could imagine likewise happened. And when rumours demand logics in this case, I'd say there's certainly a lot of logics there. On the way, one could already appreciate the scale of destructions that happened when the tsunami struck, the amenable damages that up till that very moment, 7 months later, there was only little efforts made in rebuilding the place back to what it used to be.

So we arrived there greeted by part of the group members who had already spent the previous night at the Balai Desa of Kg Suak Timah, one of few buildings that I could consider decently rebuilt post-tsunami. I put up one picture of the four guys posing in front of the balai desa here, and if you could see this place was built by World Vision, one of the largest Christian relief organization in the world. Well Naggroe Acheh Darussalam, well-known as Serambi Makkah, which populations are 99% Muslims, was never before being entered or having any influence from the Christians or any other religion whatsoever up till the Tsunami hit when these group of agencies saw the fast way to enter this sacred Muslim areas, that was by being one of the forefronts that offered helps when the locals were most in need. And that was one of the reasons why Yayasan Amal is still actively going in and out from the place, not only to reach out to the community material-wise, but also to help them to realize and to be aware of the hidden agendas these group of missionaries bring along with every little helps they offered.

4 Jejaka idaman gadis-gadis Acheh. He he (note the signboard)

We had another rapat umum shortly upon arrival, mainly discussing on the major activities going to be held the next day and also some brief introductions to the whole situations of the village. That was when suddenly we felt the house had a smooth circular shaking, at first I thought I was just felt dizzy, and at the same moment somebody was hammering nails on the wall outside the house so I thought that must be the reason why the house was shaking. A moment later I realized how stupid I was being, it was a brick-based house so there was no single chance it could be shaking like that by the force of hammering. Earthquake!! No wonder there was silence for a split second! So there it was our very first experience of earthquake, which lasted for about 5 minutes or so, which later I heard brought worries to most of the locals who were still traumatized from the previous episodes. And there we were feeling excited on our very own first earthquake experience! Anyway shortly after that the medical team had our own small meeting to go through the details of our mobile clinics, and we opened the pack of medications we brought along for the clinic, contently!

It was followed by gotong royong and cleaning of the area works. I went for a change and went out of the room finding few elderly ladies who came to help the cleaning works. Then many more people came with brooms and knives in their hands, I was happy meeting the locals for the first time. Dr Hatta told us that most of the ladies and kids had been coming to the place we stayed asking "Mana ibu-ibunya?" since the previous night when part of team first arrived. For once, I reminded myself not too be overly sensitive when being addressed as ibu, for that's a norm to call female adults that way (though sometimes it hit me straight to the heart, is my wrinkles that obvious?). So I helped in the kitchen to prepare the lunch, some went out with the ladies to clear the areas, and most guys did the manual labour works in front of the house; angkut pasir, batu-batu, which I could expect them to now understand the feelings of mat-mat Indon at the construction sites we find in our country. Anyway, good efforts guys!

Gigih berusaha. Chaiyo!

1. Mengulit air masak dengan penuh kasih sayang

2. Kitchen at a glance

3. Ketam yang diorang cakap makan orang. He he

I was busy cooking ketam masak cili padi (after pak Chef suggested that otherwise he'd just cook ketam masak air if no one wants to cook them in a different manner, well you know that crabs are just too precious to be wasted like that) when I heard voices of few kids outside the kitchen. I went out seeing 5 kids in school uniforms and got excited. At that time Dr Din Suhaimi was talking to them while recording the conversations with his camcorder, so I decided not to interrupt and just listened instead. He asked each kid to say their names and age, and asked some general questions about Acheh, health etc. Then slowly he started querying about what happened during the tsunami and that was when it started to catch me by the heart. It goes by something like this;

Dr Din: Masa tsunami ada dibawa ombak nggak?
One of the kid: (Smiled, nodding her head)
Dr Din: Iya, boleh kamu cerita sikit pada Doktor bagaimana keadaan waktu itu?
Kid: Dibawa ombak tinggi selama 6 jam.
Dr Din: Jadi bagaimana kamu selamat?
Kid: Pegang pada kayu.
Dr Din: Alhamdulillah, sebenarnya Allah SWT hantar kayu tu untuk kamu kan?
Kid: (Smiled again, nodding)
Dr Din: Ada tertelan air tsunami?
Kid: (Nodded) Banyak.
Dr Din: Ahli keluarga ada yang tewas?
Kid: Ada, sekarang hanya tinggal ayah sama datuk saja..

I was heavily touched by the conversations, she's just merely 6, yet she had been going through a major life event that one could predict the everlasting scar that would cause her inside. 2 other kids revealed the same experience as hers, and also lost many of their family members in the huge waves. It's things like this that made me want to slump onto my knees, pleading forgiveness from Allah the Almighty for the family members I have taken for granted. Inside I prayed to Allah, reward those kids' parents and siblings place in Jannah, and give them strength to live on with their lives without their loved ones. I gave them some sweets that mom and I bought a day before leaving KL, and I guess that would at least gave them some temporary enjoyments in their hearts. U know kids and sweets. Later they went home to change their uniforms and came back after that with more kids, looking more casual and cute in their little Acheh jilbab. So we were busy entertaining them, learnt some Acheh words and made them laugh trying to speak Acheh and Indonesian. It was somehow funny that most of the kids adopted Malay slang very fast, they said that was because they've been seeing many Malaysians since the tsunami happened so they've been basically speaking Malay most of the times if not in Acheh. And there we were trying very hard to sound like fake-Indon with "Mengapa ya itunya jadi begitu?" and them replied "Takde ape ape kak..."

The extraordinarily brave kids

Tents built on what used to be home, the view from our backdoor

After eating our lunch, we were busy packing up the medications into small packs for our first mobile clinic later in the evening. I was a little bit high, it felt like some sort of kongsi gelap jual dadah at times (we worked on a cemented floor, zinc roof on top, and large empty room). When it all finished, the guys were already loading the boxes of medications into the van and went to the place first. Farah and me followed not long after that on foot, I was basically enjoying the serenity of the evening with my little stroll. From far I could see the team settling down under a huge tree, few tables were arranged and long stools beside them. Many kids were noisily playing nearby, as if nothing been bothering them at all. It was a pure bless looking at them, reminiscing the good old childhood days when the world evolves on games, junkfood and throwing tantrums when not getting what I wished for. The only difference with these kids and myself is; I'm used to see disasters happen in typical American movies while they themselves have had a role playing in one, a major one.

We started the clinic with the multi-talented Dr Din putting up an informal oral health talk with the kids. It was a good one, and I am really stressing on that. He was the most spontaneous unpretentious doctor I've ever met, definitely the one a less than ordinary medical student like me should try squeezing every knowledge from. So he went on talking about the correct way of sikat gigi (read: gosok gigi), entertaining the kids unwearyingly which later been adopted and imitated by most of us (at least the ladies) as a way to build up good rapport with the kids. Then patients started coming in, I did my first history taking with Tiqah which later presented to Dr Faidzol. Few more patients after that, then only I passed the honour of hanging the stethoscope around the neck to Imran (if I'm not mistaken). So most patients presented with simple cases like gastro-intestinal discomforts, difficulty breathing, skin problems like scabies and headaches. Some of the cases were organic in origin; meaning they have the underlying pathological problems, but I could say most of them were actually psychological in origin which symptoms were exhibited in somatoform manners (it's like you have a financial problem that causes you a lot of worries that make you ended up having headaches). Alhamdulillah most of the patients I saw weren't as bad as others, like this one elderly lady who just started crying the moment one of the students opened her mouth to interview her. Pity that lady so much, she lost her children in tsunami and that kept coming back to her mind causing her a lot of physical illnesses. There was also one pneumonia (read: inflammation of the lungs caused by bacterial infections) case with fine crackles on auscultations, which I only knew the day after that about it. And if you're still interested to know most pneumonia cases were as the consequences of patients swallowing the sea water when being drifted in the waves.

Dr. Din's famous sikat gigi tale

Mobile Clinic Series 1

So the evening went on. Few students were clerking the patients with some basic physical examination followed, and later presented the cases to the cool doctors who confirmed the diagnosis, and then sent to Shu'ib our pharmacy guy to collect the medicines. Shu'ib was so good in looking after the medicines that I remembered he was the only one who knew everything about them for the whole mobile clinic series (which left me still confused which painkillers to be taken before or after meal). Out of the scene, there was Dr Hatta happily riding one of the kids' bike on the road, Tiqah giving some sort of informal health education to a group of kids, and Jaz fooling around with a kid with my stethoscope.

I almost forgot to mention that there was a bunch of American ladies playing with the kids just near our clinic (note the picture above). I've already heard about them since I set foot in Kg Suak Timah, just never expect to meet them on the same day. So I went to talk to one of the ladies which I have forgotten the name, out of curiosity. She said they were from the IFS, stands for the International Friendship Summit. They've been there for about 10 days and were actually leaving the day after that. Purpose of staying? She said they planned to help the villagers building the boats in order to get them back to the sea catching fish again, but oh well who knows the major intentions behind this whole building boats thing. Initially, I actually felt guilty for once for being so judgmental, but it diminished soon after I discovered the truth when I chatted with few kids later on. It was revealed when Rahmi, a 15 years old girl asked me whether it was good to received a small book on Jesus from them. They've actually been preaching to the kids about the Prophet Jesus as being the last prophet, and also the son of God. Another kid then asked me whether it was OK that the Americans taught them to sing few songs in school, but she didn't particularly knew what kind of songs were they as they're all in English. A-hah, so are these people been building their own "boats" at the schools instead? (huge question mark with an innocent face) Wallahua'lam. At least we were grateful that those kids had the hunch to tell us about this, so at least we could do something rather than letting the condition getting worst out of our concerns. I then asked Rahmi to bring me the book she mentioned later so I could have a look at it.

As the sun set down, we packed up and decided to have a tour of the village by van. We were back at the balai desa just before the very last red lines on the horizon disappeared, finding pak Chef and few more people were cleaning the meats from the cow that was slaughtered that evening. That night many ibu-ibu came to help cutting out the meats, peeling the onions and such, like Malaccans call it upacara merewang. And all of those were solely for the few huge occasions going to be held the next day.

Sunset in Suak Timah

End of Part 3