Sunday, 30July06

Highlights: volunteering in Bantul, 1st time movies

I met up with a German girl, Vanessa, at 8 this morning, whom I met last week & expressed an interest in volunteering in Bantul. We scootered down to Ena’s house to start another project.

Vanessa is a reporter for a German newspaper in Cologne (I forget which), and actually did an interview (in bahasa Indonesia) with Ena and her family. It was an interesting walk-through of the day of the earthquake.

A couple things jumped out at me about the timing of that quake.
On the disadvantage side: it was raining at the time of the quake, which happened around 6am on a Saturday; medical facilities are far away, and almost everyone here has a scooter as their primary mode of transportation (not conducive to carrying injured victims).
On the advantage side: it happened as summer break was beginning, so kids were out of school & fewer people had to take time off work to help recover; it happened during the dry season (the misery factor would be a lot higher if this was the rainy season);

We went for a walk through the neighborhood after that, to look around & meet the neighbors.