The main bug in my bear at the moment is that the UN's security wonks decided to order everyone out of their homes and offices a few days ago in reaction to Sunday's 5.6 magnitude quake. It was a solid hit, almost knocked me out of bed, but was over before you could get your act together.
Seems they want us to live in and work in tents for... well forever I suppose.
Which would be okay maybe if there was some rational reason for it and if we'd sugested to the powers that be that maybe the ACHENESE should follow suit. I mean, if we're so damn concerned about them shouldn't we let them know as well? Aside from the absurdity of building houses for internally displaced people to move into, even as we move out of million dollar palaces, has anyone considered how the news is going to be greeted? Let me tell you:
Q "Mr. Humanitarian Aid Person, why are you living in the mud and not in your $6,000/month home with a swimming pool?"
A: Because, little fellow, we are worried about earthquakes and want to protect our staff.
Q: So, there is going to be another earthquake and tsunami?
A: I didn't say that, what I said is that we are protecting our staff.
Q: So should my family move outside also?
A: We are only advising that UN staff move out of their houses.
Q: So you do have information about a new earthquake but you don't want to tell me?
A: Again, there is no information about another earthquake.
Q: I don't believe you. You are lying to me just the same way the Indonesian government lies to me.
Seems like the TNI and police are back to their old games. Even the most reserved, desk-bound of foreigners here is slowly starting to glom to the reality of dealing with these jerks. The newspapers here are full of stories about contact between TNI and Free Aceh Movement, but thes emust be taken with the requisite grain of salt as the army is the chief reporting line for the info and it is still prohibited for local journos to even speak to GAM.
Down the coast access is increasingly restricted, dusk to dawn curfews are in effect in some areas and armed soldiers are now checking baggage of UN staffers boarding UN aircraft. Some of the agencies are now prohibiting their local and national staff from driving around without a foreigner present because of all the threats and shakedowns. Anyone whose been here knows this is a fact of life for folks in Aceh. More distrubing are the discovery of bodies trussed up and shot in the bakc of the head, and the roll clal of disappeared. This too is starting to happen again after severla months of relative quiet.
Anecdotally, as I returned from a meeting the other day my marked agency vehicle was pulled over by police at a motorcycle-registration check-point and our driver questioned. In addition to asking for numerous pieces of identification and vehicle registration, the officer repeatedly asked the driver where the organization's office is, who the head of the office is, and who is “responsible for the Indonesian staff." My sense, and that of the driver is that he was looking for a payoff. That is a routine event, a small matter, but I am quite surprised that he approached this with a foreign national in the car.
One other item of note is the heavy rotation of senior UN and I-NGO staff in coming weeks as we approach the six-month anniversary. The meeting centered around turning the IASC into a decision-making body. I asked how many heads of agencies will be around six weeks from now. The tally is as follows:
UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Sumatra leaves after the Clinton visit and no replacement has been named. OCHA Head of Office leaves July 3; the job is posted. In addition, the heads of CARE, UNFPA, IOM, WHO and several others are all leaving by the end of June.
In addition, it has been noted that international staffing in most of the agencies are well below required levels. In OCHA’s case they are running at about 50 per cent capacity. The rest are between 60-80 per cent.
Explanations very but much comes down to the fact that there area finite number of qualified people prepared to commit to a place like Aceh for a year's minimum. We've fallen off the UN's hiring hit parade, its taking extra days for important phone calls to be returned, Dafur is blowing up again and Afghanistan is, well, Afghanistan. All very disappointing and inevitably going to impact the way we do things here.

The skies have opened and the rain we mercifully didn’t get in the weeks after the tsunami has now arrived.
For those fortunate enough to have found or built shelter it’s an aggravation. For the miserable masses huddled in flooded tents and beneath tarps the mind boggles. The temperatures have plunged from seasonal 34C to a damp, bone-chilling 24C. We’re living in a world of deep-chest coughs, flu, and I’m expecting inevitable spikes in levels of typhoid caused by overflowing latrines, and dengue and malaria as the mosquitoes take advantage of all the standing water: some Italian who has never left his office, contracted falciparum malaria in the seven days since he arrived. It almost killed me a couple of years back but he was treated before his brain cooked and seems to be on the mend.
Of course, if you can get that sick in our dry, WIFI-ed, air-con, environments I invite you to image how bad it must be in the camps and the loathsome government-built barracks.
I’ve been out of the loop for the past two weeks, sleeping in my Jakarta bed as I hammered together the first couple promotional videos the organization is putting out to highlight relief operations in Banda Aceh and Nias.
Returned to Banda a couple of days back, in time to celebrate my first wedding anniversary with the Haanster. Hard to believe just a year ago this time (4:20 pm, local) I was looking out the 17-floor window of our suite at the Mandarin at a slate black sky threatening our upcoming outdoor reception in South Jakarta…. The call from the restaurant manager asking if he should go ahead and put up the massive tents (“Do it, bubba.”) and me calculating another $600.00 on the bill while munching on an eight dollar club sandwich and watching the hairdresser (who'd earlier propositioned Tim's driver for a quicky in the garage before the Ulema arrivied to perform the service) weave flowers into my new wife's hair. Of course, once the beastly tent was up, driving the humidity level into the high 90s, it stopped raining, but that’s just the way things go.
It was a beautiful, memorable occasion and a year later there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t marvel at J and the life we’re living together. Here we are now, both having turned our backs on the freelance familiar to do our bit for these poor folk in Aceh. I’m happier now, more settled despite the 14-hour days and the stress of unfamiliar office environments. My contract has been extended by a further six months (has it been 10 weeks already on the Dark Side?) and job one is to find a house to call home.
Much news to on-pass but I’m gonna leave it for now. I will say this, though. The cops and the army are back to their old games. So bad have the shakedowns and harassment of national staff become that several agencies have prohibited their Acehnese employees in Calang, Lamno and Meulaboh from driving around without an ex-pat in the vehicle. The soldiers won’t fuck with whitey but the gloves are off when we’re not around.
Going to Banda Seafood tonight to celebrate our anniversary over tiger prawns, fresh snapper and cold beers. I’m shelving for one night thoughts about what 600,000 Acehnese will eat.