Category: General

We’ve had a couple of inquiries from friends about where to send donations to quake victims in Indonesia.  So far, we don’t know of any institutionalized clearing house for donations specifically for this calamity, but we do know that the Red Cross/Red Crescent is very much involved.  (Since Aceh is entirely Muslim, it will be going through the Red Crescent, but it’s the same organization.)  So, if you want to give some money to help disaster relief for quake/tsunami victims, you can go online here and do just that.  You can choose to donate specifically for the quake/tsunami, but not specifically for Aceh.  But any bit helps.

Here in Jakarta there are tons of ways to donate.  Political parties have people lining the streets with boxes for donations to help Acehnese and Sumatran victims.  The immigration office in South Jakarta had its own boxes out.  Members of the People’s Consultative Assembly have pledged to donate one month’s salary, and TV stations are donating all of their advertising revenue during news programs this week.  It’s quite extraordinary; it reminds us of post 9/11 when half of all Americans tried to donate blood.

The issues that they are facing in Aceh include the massive costs of identifying the dead, the need for rapid clean-up to avoid disease, and reestablishing destroyed infrastructure (water purification, electricity, fuel supplies).  They also need to establish shelters for the newly homeless–unlike elsewhere in the region, Aceh felt the effects of the actual quake itself, so many buildings even far from the water have been destroyed.

Our trials with immigration continue.  We will not be discussing them until we are sure that they have been resolved, though, so wish us continued luck!

This earthquake business is nuts.  President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono has declared a three-day national mourning period for the victims.  In our apartment complex we saw the Indonesian flag at half-mast–we thought that was only a Western thing, but apparently not.  There is still no word on what the situation is for many villages in Aceh and North Sumatra provinces, and no news is not good news in this situation.  The news we saw this morning suggests that the worst damage anywhere, though, is on the Andaman and Nicobar islands, some low-lying Indian islands south of Bangladesh.  Tens of thousands of people missing.

But again, business as usual in Jakarta, although things seem less frantic than normal because a lot of people seem to be taking time off for the Christmas holiday.  We are, yet again, involved in immigration haggling.  Yesterday we went to the Indonesian Academy of Sciences to get a letter to deliver to the immigration office to ask for yet another visa extension.  Strike one: the only person in the Indonesian government able to authorize such a letter was on vacation.  We’re about to go try again.  Can you imagine this level of incompetence?  It’s like the one person who issues driver’s licenses at the DMV calls in sick, so no one can get a driver’s license that day.  "That probably happens here too," JM mutters.

Primus has a song called "DMV," and in its lyrics, you might replace "DMV" with "kantor imigrasi" (immigration office).

"I’ve been to hell, I spell it, it’s kantor imigrasi. Anyone who’s been there knows precisely what I mean.  I’ve sat there and I’ve waited and choked back the urge to scream…"