Gifts
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By JEREMY MEYER
[Editor’s Note: This article originally appeared in The Denver Post]
Meruk Lamreudep, Indonesia - Dan Curran was supposed to be skiing the back bowls of Vail last week. Instead, on Thursday, he walked a gravel road through a village that was wiped out by the tsunami.
He liked what he saw.
Four days before, when Curran visited this village, he couldn't walk through the debris pushed inland by the Dec. 26 tsunami.
It covered roads and footpaths throughout Meruk Lamreudep. Corpses floated in standing water, wood from demolished homes was wrapped around palm trees, and splintered boats were tangled in fishing nets that had been pulled in by the waves.
There was no good route in or out.
"This is amazing," said the 36-year-old Colorado native, who has spent more than a decade learning how to manage disaster-relief efforts and identified a usable road as a key to recovery.
Today, thanks to Curran's direction, there's a nice, clear pathway in and out of Meruk Lamreudep. And villagers are beginning to return.
Curran, who lives half the year in Littleton and plans a Winter Park wedding this summer, is helping to manage the relief efforts in Banda Aceh for the humanitarian organization Mercy Corps. Based in Portland, Ore., it is one of more than 100 aid groups operating in the area.
The tsunami killed more than 100,000 people in Aceh province, located in northern Sumatra, and left an estimated half-million homeless.
The first need was to help people survive, give them food, water and shelter.
Now, Mercy Corps is trying to get them working again.
Its Cash for Work program uses donated funds to pay Indonesians for simple, crucial work. The intention is to return more than 6,000 people to the labor force by March, which workers hope will provide a spark for an economy that was washed away with the waves.
In Meruk Lamreudep, Mercy Corps gave 774 voluntary participants basic tools and about $3.50 a day - the average wage for unskilled labor - to clear roads and trails and to collect wood.
The wood will become part of a program that Curran devised. Food-aid groups need pallets to store their supplies in warehouses. Who better to construct the pallets, Curran asked, than out-of- work Indonesians? Wood also will be used to build school desks.
Around Banda Aceh, Mercy Corps has started Cash for Work recovery projects in seven villages and 14 schools, which are scheduled to reopen Wednesday.
In a devastated fishing village south of Banda Aceh, Mercy Corps pays workers to repair and move 79 boats that had been washed more than a mile inland by the tsunami.
"The natural tendency is to come into a place like this and start building barracks and installing water systems, but that doesn't create sustainability," Curran said. "We're trying to work with the entrepreneurial spirit of these people."
Curran also is hoping to provide loans to small, family-owned brick plants in the coastal areas. The factories usually employ about 30 villagers, who use water buffalo to churn mud that is molded and kiln-dried into bricks.
Hundreds of the plants were destroyed. If they can be rebuilt, they might help both the economy and the physical mending needed here.
Before the tsunami, Curran had planned to be skiing at Vail. But he canceled his vacation when he saw the magnitude of the devastation.
After all, this is what he does.
Curran, who splits his time between Littleton and Boston, heads the Humanitarian Leadership Program at Harvard Business School, which trains leaders from international development and relief organizations.
He has worked on relief projects in Rwanda and Bosnia but says this is worse.
"I remember seeing (U.N. Secretary-General) Kofi Annan on TV after he had toured Aceh, and he looked rattled," Curran said. "I told myself ... it's never as bad as it is on TV. But I was shocked."
Despite the challenge of managing relief efforts for a disaster of this scale in a poor region filled with civil strife, Curran is enthused.
"I would be bored managing a business," said the recipient of a Harvard Business School MBA. "That seems too simple."
Here, Curran applies an interesting strategy. If 90 percent of kids in a village, for example, are malnourished, Curran advises looking at the 10 percent who aren't and learning what their families are doing right. Then bring that solution to the rest.
On his return to Meruk Lamreudep, Curran saw people using the cleared roads to return to their village. They rode on bicycles and on motorcycles, waving to passers-by.
"There were no people here before," Curran said. "We cleared the road, and they've all come back. It's a wonderful thing. To see the speed and energy here is amazing."
Yusri Yusuf, owner of a brick factory that was damaged, approached Curran.
He wore a blue T-shirt that said, "Salt Lake City, USA." He took Curran to his nearby factory, where the kiln was damaged and mud and debris covered most everything. It will take about $1,500 to get the business running, Yusuf said.
For now, he is working on pallets. Curran said they will talk later about a loan.
"We've still got some work to do here," Curran said.
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