Global Mobility Finland Volunteering in Indonesia, Earthquake Tragedy part 2
09/08/2018 Thursday. Arrival in Bali Airport around midnight and having an accommodation near airport.
10/08/2018 Friday Day 1. Bali. Kuta.
The plan was to sleep one night in Bali and continue the trip next day in the morning to Lombok by plain and from there to Gili Air to help the people around there. The Gili Islands has been evacuated and there is no access for the non-residents to the islands at the moment, and Lombok is too dangerous. Aleksi, a Finnish dive instructor of Dream Divers from Gili Air, a victim of the earthquake, who has lost his home and job, came to pick me up from the airport. After all he had experienced, he looked pretty ok. He was in the evacuation vessel on the 8th of August to Bali. On Friday afternoon, we changed accommodation to center of Kuta. We decided to take it easy on Friday by just communicating with loads of organized to help the victims of the earthquake. It took a while also to go through the happenings and what is needed and where.
11/08/2018 Saturday. Day 2. Bali. Kuta
The tiredness after the travelling and the jetlag started to move away, but we were becoming more and more anxious and nervous. The common thought was, that we must do something. We cannot just wait and wait and do nothing. We were thinking of going to the refugee camps in Lombok and help there. We contacted different organizations such as Red Cross of Finland. Obviously, the office was closed during the weekend, so we had to wait till Monday for an answer. We started to think what we would need for ourselves at the camps to survive. One of the biggest ad hoc concerns was our friend who got stuck with his family in the refugee camp in Lombok. The family is Finnish Indonesian, who was also interviewed by Hämeen-Sanomat, a Finnish newspaper who wrote a story with the pictures and a video, which will also be attached to my report. They got out of the camp and got the mother of the family to hospital care for medical exams. In the evening we took a car to visit the family and see how they are. Whole family was shockingly devastated and traumatized. When the father of the family just sat on the bed the 5-year old son got scared and asked his daddy to not move so the bed would stay still. Any little wind or noise from outside, the whole family jumped. Luckily the daughter is only five months old, so she is still sleeping like babies do. After listening the family, we started to have second thoughts about going for Lombok island to help in the refugee camps. Could there be anything we can do from Bali to help the people in the camps, for example collect money and start buying and sending supplies.
12/08/2018 Sunday. Bali. Kuta. Day 3. 550 dead in total.
After discussions and well slept night, we decided to not leave to Lombok, instead start helping the organized here in Bali for now. I’m working with the name of my company Global Mobility Consulting Finland, which has more connections than I do personally. It has started to rain in Lombok, so the most urgent supplies now are the tarpaulins to give cover and shelter for the people at the refugee camps. There are no sanitary so with the rain water the ground gets mixed up and the risks of diseases are increasing heavily.
We took the tarpaulins on our responsibility. We needed to find as many as possible. First, we searched all the possible suppliers in the area and called them by asking how many they have in stock and which sizes. For the moment being, there are over 270 000 households destroyed and tens of thousands of people have no other option than live at the camps. There are lots of people still missing. After we listed all the shops, we needed to find a transport to be able to go around the city and buy the items. We needed a van or a pick up with a driver. That was not a difficult task, and all went very smoothly. We paid for the driver 350 000 Indonesian Rupias and gathered during the day twelve tarpaulins, because there were no more stock available in local stores. We asked them to order as much as they can for the next day and we’ll come to pick them up.