Contributor: Debbie Tomasowa

Jakarta, Indonesia - "Thank you so much, Alhamdullilah!" said 30-year-old Arsinah as she maneuvered to accept a pink plastic sack while also holding her 11-month-old baby. The pink plastic sack contained several items that would help Arsinah, a flod survivor, take care of Rafli, her baby boy. She was one of 600 women who received these items as part of a "Baby Kit" distributed by Mercy Corps as part of its emergency relief response to flood-affected families.

"It's been five days since the rain came pouring down, and thank goodness at my house the water is gone now, but we have to hang so many things to dry," Arsinah continued while walking briskly toward her house.

Not long afterwards, we reached a narrow alley containing four little concrete rooms that house four separate families. One of them is rented out to Arsinah for about $25 a month. Arsinah, a housewife, lives in this room with her husband and their three children, including baby Rafli.

The place Arsinah calls home is just a small room that measure just over 36 square feet. It has no windows, just the door.

Arsinah laments that the monthly rent, which is often a stretch for them to pay, doesn't include much. Their home doesn't have a bathroom, has little air circulation and offers cramped quarters for her family and their meager belongings.

"You can still see the line where the water was previously," she said while pointing at a faded brownish line on the wall, about knee-level. "Things are worse just a few meters from here. The water there has not completely subsided."

As her three children sat and played on a dirty mattress covered partly with a wrinkled bedsheet, Arsinah curiously opened her packet.

"I sleep here with my husband and our children would usually sleep on the top bunk," Arsinah said. "Now we all sleep together here because I moved our things to the top part of the bed."

The baby kit Arsinah received included a bar of baby soap, one bottle of baby oil, one bottle of baby powder, three packs of baby biscuits and two baby t-shirts and two pairs of baby pants.

"These are great!" Arsinah said excitedly as she held up the two baby outfits inside her sack. "I'm truly thankful for everything that is in here." she said.

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Jakarta, Indonesia - Thousands of items laid on the floor on a cloudy Saturday afternoon. Toothbrushes, towels, soaps, and t-shirts were stacked in separate piles at Mercy Corps' warehouse at North Jakarta. Bright blue and red stacks of plastic buckets added a splash of color to the front part of the warehouse where thousands of wrapped bundles of supplies were stacked neatly on wooden palettes. Fifteen people sat on the concrete floor, earnestly engaged in putting specific items into the plastic buckets.

"We are assembling what is called a hygiene kit," said Victor Sigilipu, one of the Jakarta flood emergency response team members. "This hygiene kit includes household items needed to survive at least for the first few days after their houses got flooded."

Each hygiene kit includes a bucket, two towels, three sarongs, four t-shirts, three toothbrushes with toothpaste, water purification packets, two bars of soap, one package of feminine sanitary napkins and ten packages of mosquito repellent.

For Mercy Corps staff, emergency response means long hours and a different kind of work environment - but many welcome the change.

"It's such a change from working inside at the office," said Karen Pesjak, Mercy Corps' Monitoring and Evaluation Manager who joined the packing crew on the second day. "It gives you a sense of reality about the people we're trying to help. Especially during this flood, you see a lot of women, children and people with disheartening conditions after their homes were flooded. This is just a little part that we can do to speed up the recovery process."

"For this first distribution, we gave around 500 hygiene kits to families in need in the Kapuk Muara area of North Jakarta," said Helmi Urzais, who came all the way from Indonesia's northern provinces to join the emergency team in Jakarta. "We chose that neighborhood because we're operating a program there, and it is also one of the areas worst affected by the flood."

"Mercy Corps decided to distribute hygiene kits because they can help keep diseases from spreading," said Lynn Renken, Mercy Corps Indonesia's Program Director. "It is also essential that we work with the local government authorities and existing systems to deliver and distribute these items to the people that need them most."

Over the course of several days, the stacks of blue and red buckes steadily diminished as they were filled with critical supplies.

As of February 7, more than 6,000 flood-affected people had opened a red or blue plastic bucket to serve the immediate needs of their families. And, as the floodwaters persist and needs remain in Jakarta, Mercy Corps will continue to fill and deliver them.

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Padang Pariaman, Indonesia - At 10:00 a.m. on a sunny morning exactly two years after the Indian Ocean tsunami, the squall from a siren defeated the noise from a bustling market. Immediately, the town's streets were choked with citizens - many of them laughing.

On the morning of December 26, 2006, Mercy Corps helped eight communities around Padang Pariaman, an area devastated by the 2004 tsunami, conduct a simultaneous earthquake and tsunami drill. Despite visible smiles and notable camaraderie between the neighbors, the participants took the drill very seriously.

About five seconds after the sirens blared, school children clad in uniforms, businessmen and women toting young children slogged through the muddy market roads up to higher ground, following the evacuation route established by local authorities.

Afifah, a lady in her mid-twenties - as well as five months pregnant - had her two small children in tow as they hurried towards their destination, a concrete school building with enough room to accommodate a few hundred people.

"My daughter is crying because she thinks that there is real trouble," Afifah said, a little out of breath. "She's a little scared. But this drill is important, so that we know what to do when the actual time comes."

Mercy Corps, along with the Padang Pariaman district government and a local partner organization called Kogami, conducted the drill to prepare surrounding communities for future earthquakes and/or tsunami waves. Approximately 10,000 people from eight communities participated in the drill.

The simulation in Padang Pariman was part of a nationwide simulation event commemorating the two-year anniversary of the deadly Indian Ocean tsunami. The event, which took place across many vulnerable areas of Indonesia, was kicked off by Indonesia's President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono.

These drills coincide with the launching of an Early Warning System that includes the installation of sirens in coastal areas, implemented by the Meteorological and Geophysical Agency of Indonesia.

The simulation event is one of the activities included in the Emergency Capacity Building (ECB) Project, funded by The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. ECB is the collaborative effort of seven humanitarian agencies, including Mercy Corps, to address and resolve common problems in emergency response and preparedness. Mercy Corps is leading ECB's pilot project in Indonesia.

"Mercy Corps especially applauds the government of Padang Pariaman and our partner, Kogami, for their tireless effort to encourage all these communities to participate today," says Helmi Urzais, Mercy Corps' ECB program manager in Padang. "This effort shows the seriousness and priority of the local government and their willingness to partner with others that have specific expertise in the area of emergency preparedness. Their support in preparing these communities will ultimately save lives that would otherwise be unnecessarily lost."

Together, we're preparing for the worst while hoping for the best.

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When I arrive in the tiny village of Panjangrejo, not far from the epicenter of the Java earthquake, I see only towering clusters of bamboo and sparsely growing trees. I have to peek through the jungle foliage to see the village itself. It's only then that the devastation of the earthquake comes into focus.

On May 27, nearly every house in Pajangrejo was either destroyed or severely damaged in just a few violent seconds. Families here are still living in the shells of their broken houses, but Mercy Corps is here trying to shelter them until they can begin to rebuild.

Juari, 50, and his wife are two of the dozens of survivors in this village bravely facing the uncertainties that each day holds.

"You see these," Juari says, gingerly holding up his hand. "A wooden cabinet in our bedroom collapsed and fell on my hand as I was trying to keep my balance when the earthquake happened."

Three of his fingers are still wrapped in bandages and the other two remain visibly swollen, making it hard for him to start the cleanup he knows must come.

For now, Juari and his wife are living in the only part of their once-modest house that still stands. The roof, however, is gone. It collapsed during the earthquake, leaving them and their meager belongings to be soaked by Indonesia's relentless rains.

A roof over their heads

Soon after the earthquake, Mercy Corps provided large tarpaulins for Juari and other local families to protect them from the rains. Before the agency distributed these temporary roofs and other shelter supplies, families like the Juaris were left to the elements.

After the earthquake struck, Juari, his wife and their 13-year-old daughter were living on the village's main street with several other displaced families. They sheltered themselves with empty rice sacks.

"People were nice enough to give us rice, noodles and some used clothing items. But the shelter supplies that Mercy Corps provided are helping us to live together as a family by giving us a roof over our heads."

"Right now, it might not seem like much, but this is still our home," Juari says, smiling.

Relief shifting to rebuilding

Almost three weeks after the earthquake, Mercy Corps continues to respond to needs, trying to meet the most urgent - like temporary shelter and critical hygiene supplies. Our emergency teams have distributed tarpaulins, ropes, hygiene kits, mats and blankets to several severely affected villages in the most devastated, remote areas around the Indonesian city of Bantul.

A long recovery and rebuilding looms next for villages like Pajangrejo and families like the Juaris. Mercy Corps is committed to helping families through those arduous months with essential tools and much-needed support. Just like the Indian Ocean tsunami, our obligation to families in need doesn't fade with the headlines.

It's time for us to move on to the next village to assess ongoing needs. As we leave, Juari and his wife sit on a makeshift bench, looking unsure of what to do next, but confident the time for action is drawing near.

"Thank you for choosing us to receive the shelter supplies," Juari says, as I start to ease back through the bamboo. "With your help, we will stay here and build again. Where else would we go? This is our home."

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As the sun started to set, its fading light dimly illuminated scattered pieces of metal, wood and unrecognizable debris that were once shaped like houses for hundreds of Javanese families. This nightfall, people were once again preparing to live in complete and utter darkness, left with nothing but uncertainty about what the next day would hold for themselves and their children.

Pundong sub-district is one of the worst affected districts of Bantul, Central Java, Indonesia. Today is the fourth day that families in this area are living without proper shelter, clean water, food or electricity since an earthquake shook the city of Yogyakarta and its vicinity on May 27, 2006, leaving more than 6,200 people dead.

I am here with the Mercy Corps team: a couple dozen experienced emergency workers, some of them actually from this devastated area. As we did during the not-so-distant Indian Ocean Tsunami, we're working around the clock to ensure that survivors' most urgent needs are met. Their stories are often hard to bear.

Sifting through the wreckage

I approach a frail, elderly woman as she walks slowly through the ruins of what used to be her house. Mrs. Sugiyanti, as she prefers to be called, tries to scavenge for items through pieces of scattered glass, metal, wood and broken bricks with a troubled look on her face. She uses only her tiny hands and wears a disturbingly thin pair of yellow flip-flop sandals to wade through the jagged wreckage. I wince as she goes through the rubble and debris, risking rusty nails and other sharp objects.

After a few moments, she begins to tell me the story of how she lost her son in the earthquake.

"He just laid there, with heavy wooden bars falling on top of him," she says, choking on her words. "My son just called out to his older brother; help me, help me!"

Mrs. Sugiyanti visibly remembers the last moments of her beloved son before she breaks into tears.

"Not only have I lost a son…I also don't have a home anymore," she laments. Her story is all too familiar to most survivors of this devastating earthquake. So many lives are either lost or forever altered.

Survivors face challenges

Survivors here feel some measure of good fortune, but life after the earthquake is proving difficult for them.

Although she survived the earthquake that demolished her hometown of Pundong, Tugini, a woman in her late thirties, now lives in an army-issued tent with her son, husband and scattered members of twenty other families. From a glance, it looks like there must be about a hundred people sweltering in this small space. All of them have lost their homes; some have lost much more.

"We are the lucky to have survived this disaster," she says with a worried expression on her face. "My concern now is that the area's children can't go to school anymore."

Rina is another earthquake survivor sharing the same tent as the Tugini family. Here with her husband and three children, she is concerned about hygiene and the lack of a proper toilet facility.

"We now share the two old wells with the others when we have to take turns doing everything from taking a bath to washing our clothes," she explains. "People often don't remember, but we also have to live sanitary so that we will not be vulnerable to so many diseases."

"To me, we are lucky enough to have survived this," says Bambang Wintolo, a 44 year-old former security guard at the local public health facility. "I think we need to quickly move to get some help and get back on our feet again. The very first thing we need is a decent roof over our heads. It's still raining heavily here and we have all been having a hard time when it rains."

Finding their strength again

The Mercy Corps team is listening to these stories and taking immediate action. Our team has responded quickly during this emergency phase, providing 1,000 "survival kits" containing tarpaulins and blankets for families to use as temporary shelter.

In addition the agency has also committed to provide 1,000 hygienic kits that include a bar of soap, shampoo, antiseptic liquid, toothpaste, a toothbrush, a feminine napkin pack and a plastic water scooper, packaged in a functional plastic bucket. Specifically, the hygiene items are considered a critical solution to the community's concerns about the spread of preventable diseases.

Families here in Pundong believe that they will find their strength once again. They have tremendous willingness to move on and persevere to recover from this tragedy quickly.

Survivors here have an amazing attitude, summed up in a single stirring phrase: as with the tsunami, this too shall pass.

For more background on Mercy Corps' response to the Java Earthquake or to make a donation, please click here.

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