Freeman (second from left) in a planning meeting

Aceh Clam Chowdah

(continued)

By Freeman Anthony

The Banda Aceh airport meeting goes akin to Jakarta, but on a smaller scale with placards up from just about every NGO I've ever heard of and some new ones, as well. My driver this time had less English, but made up for that in personality. We stopped at a mass grave, where two Japanese men in khaki safari vests had stopped to take photos with a bazooka-sized Nikon. The large red painted gate was part memorial and part health warning. There were over 2,000 buried there. I learned from my escort with a pen and paper, as verbal communication wasn't cutting it yet.

Half an hour later we arrived, and the main IRD office in Aceh where Michael greeted me with the excitement and energy of a kid on Christmas morning that I have become accustomed to in our dealings. In the last month Michael hd found water engineering adventure and romance alongside a Yankee girl he felt destined to marry. She sat at the table with several nationals and a couple expats that couldn't be more than five years my senior. There were the warmest of welcomes on what was my de-facto first day at the office. There was a quick tour of my home for the next five weeks, along with a dinner of rice, watery vegetables and curried fish before shooting off to the Lambaro Water Treatment Plant where our primary work was ongoing.

It was Tuesday night, and a shut-down of the plant from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m. had been arranged so that a smaller reservoir could be cleaned of sand and silt. There were also fecal reminders of the recent occupation of the plant by the Indonesian Riot Police, known as the Brimob, who left only days before by order of the mayor. The plant was calm when we arrived, but momentum built as various key players showed up with gear in tow. THW, the German aid outfit showed up with a large generator, tanks of petrol and heavy-duty submersible water pumps. The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) arrive in their left-hand-drive ute with more generators and lighting equipment while the staff from the utility district (PDAM) prepared to turn off the distribution pumps to the city.

Michael and I equipped the manual labor team with shovels, brushes and sacks for cleaning. Everyone smoked constantly. The work was well underway when Michael drove me home at 2 a.m., the only time us expats could safely navigate the streets of this town. En route, he informed me that I had to clean the main three storage reservoirs the same way while he was gone and that he still couldn't figure out how to isolate two of them. I sprayed my room for the malaria-laden mosquitoes and tried to wrap my brain around this before slipping off to sleep to the hum of the air conditioner. At 4:45 that same morning, I was awoken by something like Frank Sinatra through an alphorn from the mosque down the road. These calls to prayer for the mostly Muslim region of Aceh served as a dreamlike reminder of my recent change of setting.

I spent my first day on the job, struggling to learn the many new names of our large staff of nationals that monitored the water, sanitation, livelihoods and health programmes in Aceh. Later on, Michael and I met up with the players from USAid, WHO, Unicef and others and finised up by reviewing all the project paperwork to date. The last call to prayer at sunset found my eyes on my laptop while most were turned westward to Mecca. The few Muslim eyes that looked elsewhere belonged to our night watchman making the rounds. When he found me typing e-mails at a furious pace, we commenced an exchange of language lessons. The local tongue was a rough-hewn blend of Dutch, Islamic, and odd-ended English words. It was pretty simple compared to our dear Latin-based language, and if all else failed, you say the word in English with "oosi" at the end and see what happens. When the day's work was done at 10 p.m., I rambled out to share a smoke with the guards and watch four chickens meet their maker for the evening barby. They really do go on for a while sans noggin.

The first week passed with new tasks each day as I attempted to determine the worst parts of the city's decrepit water supply system. The source wells along the foothills of Aceh were patrolled by the TNI (Indonesian Army) who gave access after a few words with my driver. Thirty minutes later I was scribbling down a forensic analysis of concrete tanks, filters and valves of an unknown vintage, whilst monkeys and insects of unusual size occuped the jungle canopy above me. I sketched my guess at the pipework layout on an asbestos panel with a toothless plant operator, and he corrected my observations with surprising confidence. In recent years, the lawless attitude in Aceh has funneled public funds into personal accounts while the water supply systems have been left to rot. Treatment is fully overlooked, provided the water still gets from point A to point B. I did my best to get the full story from plant operators and PDAM directors of dubious disposition and character. It was not easy as a gringo, but I could sense that they were keen to improve conditions.

There were a half a dozen expats here in our Banda Aceh office with diverse levels of humanitarian experience ranging from none (myself) to 15 years at work saving the world. These career aid workers had been neck deep into the nighttime CNN features all over the show. Christoph from the SDC had spent recently time in Iraq and was aghast at how the "adolescents" in the U.S. military would approach a busy street market in their Humvees. It appeared as if it were all a big video game to them, without real consequences.