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| 9 February/06 One Year Later |
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It's been a year since I first stepped foot on the tsunami zone in Aceh, Indonesia. What a year! This has certainly been one of the most challenging projects I've ever undertaken. Aceh has been troubled for many years. Before the tsunami, the Acehnese were struggling with general poverty, military conflict, pollution, corruption, and the destruction of their forests from illegal logging. After the tsunami, the military conflict ended but new problems arose. The flow-on effect from the broken infrastructure, missing people, loss of incomes of surviving families and lack of services ruined the economies of many communities outside the zone. The tsunami was a low blow to people already down on their luck, and its full impact is still not understood.
The influx of hundreds of charities and organizations rushing in to assist the victims of the tsunami was a needed relief at first. But as the months rolled on and people stabilized, the shock wore away and the depressing realities of being homeless in a harsh landscape set in. On top of the difficulties of living in rough camps with poor sanitation, aid-dependency became a common situation. Survivors in the zone became totally dependent on food handouts and other charity supplies to the point where many people stopped struggling to rebuild with the misguided belief that any day now, some NGO would come along and give them everything they needed. Survivors began to lose the will to help themselves. I'd seen this before in East Timor where I spent 5 years introducing permaculture to the world's newest nation. In Aceh, I was determined to build a project that made people strong and independent, not turn them into professional beggars.
Working in partnership with the Balinese NGO, IDEP (Indonesian Development of Education and Permaculture) I began planning the project needed. After my initial recon in February 2005, I was able to convince IDEP that the best way to help the Acehnese was to build a permaculture training centre in Aceh to assist the survivors to rebuild their communities using permaculture best practice methods. To make a project like this successful in these difficult conditions, it had to be a 'lead from the field' project. This meant that the field (me mostly) made all the decisions and the NGO administration supported them. This system is effective in situations of rapid change and poor communications, where the field team needs to respond quickly in a confusing environment. It's a bit scary for an organization to let the field make the decisions, but IDEP rose to the challenge.
I, Made Chakra (a Balinese eco-trainer) and a small team of volunteers from a local NGO called Green Camp rented a run-down house on the edge of the forest about a kilometre above the tsunami zone. We based our project in the village of Lamsujen, 50 kilometres from Banda Aceh, Aceh's largest city. We started the project by retrofitting the house to a livable but still very modest standard. The house had been unoccupied in a war zone for some time and was dirty and run-down. On the first night there, scores of rats and mice ran over us while we were trying to sleep. To add to the misery, this cement house was as hot as an oven at night.
The military conflict was still ongoing, so movement at night in our area was impossible. We could see both the Indonesian soldiers and the GAM troops moving about on the roads of our village after dark. We just smiled and waved to both sides.
Traveling through the zone was a real four-wheel drive adventure with numerous hazards and breakdowns. The coast was still unstable and sometimes the makeshift road was washed out or under water. The road received little maintenance as the many aid trucks churned it into a quagmire. After a 3 hour bone-jarring drive to Banda Aceh, my body felt like it had been run over by a bus. Our little pick up truck broke 2 sets of springs and several sets of shock absorbers in the zone, not to mention all the other bits that fell off it.
The quality of agriculture was poor, as the farms on the lowlands had been wiped out by the tidal wave several kilometres inland. The wave had razed the ground right up to the foot of the mountains. Whole farming communities were erased. Low quality produce was available at the local market but little else. I became ill many times from eating the local diet, in which everything was fried in old oil. Keeping my own spirits intact, let alone the team's, was a challenge.
Slowly we began to make progress. We built a vegetable garden at the house. We put verandahs around the house to cool it down. We built extra toilets and connected the existing one to the septic tank. There was electricity at night sometimes so we could pump water. Making our own paint from white cement powder, PVA glue and clay, we painted the depressing grey walls of the house, changing our mood as well.
Meanwhile we were dealing with various people in the community to acquire the land we needed. Not an easy task. The NGO frenzy in the zone had created unrealistic expectations and inflated prices. After a few months we finally were able to lease 2.2 hectares of land to build our training centre. This took a lot of negotiations the locals are suspicious of outsiders. We had to jump through many hoops to obtain a lease and get community approval for our project. The army was also wondering who we were and came to visit several times. Visitors to GreenHand Field School had to report to the village chief, the police and military intelligence. The rebels left us alone.
Our first job was to clear the land of woody weeds and fence it with a living fence of animal fodder trees. Here we cut fence post-size cuttings and planted them so they grew into a fence. Barbed wire was added to keep out the pigs, goats and buffalo. The people from the village were hired as a 'cash for work' program. Thirty people with machetes chopped out the woody prickles and piled it in heaps to compost later.
Meanwhile in the tsunami zone people were living in poor quality tents made for dryer climates. Their miserable lives were made worse by the heavy rains and the shifting coastline. Many survivors had to relocate several times because of flooding or king tides. I surveyed the zone many times to monitor the soil and determine what was able to grow in the damaged lands. I advised the tsunami zone farmers to grow only the vegetables and herbs that had sprung up growing wild around the zone. These included chili, eggplant, several pumpkins and squash, cucumber, cassava, peanuts and kangkong. Papaya and banana also made an appearance. Some areas had turned to swamp with tangled trees and debris making any kind of land use impossible. There was water everywhere. Aquaculture now had big potential.
As the training centre took shape, I ran our first set of half-day workshops for the local people. The first day got rained out in the makeshift classroom we had erected from UN tarps. Our house took over as the schoolroom and the rain on the tin roof drowned out Rosa, my interpreter, as she translated these strange new concepts. The local people were smart but totally ignorant of ecology or anything sustainable. Their village was a base for illegal logging. The conflict had slowed down the forest destruction but not for long. We discovered everybody disposed of their rubbish in the river and the river was the community toilet and washing station. People washed their bicycles, motorcycles, cars, trucks and buffalos in the clean fast-flowing river coming from the rainforest. What a shame to pollute such a beautiful asset. It was clear we were starting from the very basics of common sense ecology.
Agriculture in our valley was poor due the fact the villagers had used so many chemical fertilizers and pesticides over the years. The soil was dead. Hybrid seeds had replaced traditional varieties. They had little idea how to use the toxic sprays they bought from the local agriculture shop. The locals never used safety gear like filter masks, eye protection or gloves. The pesticides would slop all over them from the cheap backpack sprayers they used. Kids killed the wild birds with slingshots and many animals and birds had died from the effects of chemical poisons used in agriculture. Crop rotation was unheard of. The farmers purchased plastic mulch to suppress weed growth and disposed of it by burning it or throwing it into the river. Every 3 months they replaced the plastic ready for the next crop. Farm waste was burnt or tossed in the river instead of being composted and recycled. The farmers spent most of their money on expensive inputs and had little money left over after a season. They thought they were doing well when money came in from their crops, but the outgoing money took their profits and they were nothing more than slaves. All their hard work made other people rich and the land poor.
In September 2005 GreenHand Field School ran its first VDC, or Village Development Course (permaculture design certificate course). To run this we built a training centre out of tarpaulins. The unfinished toilet block had only one toilet working and we set up the catering team in our home kitchen. The makeshift school took shape. We were finally ready for business. The course kicked off with everybody sitting on a big white plastic sheet. The students began the ground development of the field school by digging swales and planting them with locally available food plants like cassava, bananas, pineapple, and sweet potato. We could not find any local non-hybrid vegetable seed. Each training added more food production to our farm school.
Building the infrastructure required cunning and resourcefulness, as we didn't want to use rainforest timber from the local mafia. Coconut, durian and tsunami wood collected from the beach was used in the various building projects around the centre. Cement was cheap and we experimented with rice husks, cement, sand, and clay to create a local replacement for concrete walls. It was strong, dirt-cheap and looked great! We called this 'skamcrete' (skam is the local word for rice husks). Soon we even had a skamcrete pizza oven and my bedroom also was made from skamcrete. Regular earth tremors happened daily so we could see the skamcrete's strength as the walls shook. The team and I built a small generator hut from skamcrete as an experiment to see how it would stand up in the weather.
Finally we built a small cabin and used skamcrete as a suspended floor. It worked well and was lightweight.
For the last four months I had the pleasure of working with two very special Kiwi volunteers, husband and wife team Sam and Celia. They kept me sane most of the time. Sam was great at knocking up furniture or buildings, and Celia handled the foreigner's diet. Too much fried food was killing us so Celia came to the rescue and trained the cooks not to poison us.
From each of the courses we ran, I selected the students with the best potential and employed them as staff. After one year I had a staff of 10 trainee trainers. The next level of training could now begin.
The staff is now ready to take on 'GreenHand Cadets' and are doing so. These cadets are apprenticed to a senior cadet (trainee trainer) for 3 months. The cadets learn through hands-on daily activities all the skills of permaculture related to community development and farming. They must produce a food garden; grow a commercial crop, and complete several small projects that have an economic return. Some of these projects include building a bakery oven from local materials, baking products for sale at the local markets, building a nursery from local non-forest resources, and making a food dehydrator. These small projects are experimental with the aim of seeing what works at a local level and training the cadet in making a plan and following it through to a successful conclusion.
The GreenHand Field School in Aceh is up and running now. Our facilities and support systems include:
. Two hectares of fenced farmland with a permanent water supply.
. A training hall made from non-forest timber with a capacity of training 60 students.
It is cool on a hot
day and has blinds and a power supply to turn it into a daytime theatre.
. Ablutions facility with 4 toilets and 'mandis' with a water filter garden attached to process
waste water, flowing into a fish pond
. A tool bank for 40 people including building and farming hand tools
. A large bamboo chicken tractor
. A nursery for 40, 000 seedlings
. A tent city for accommodating up to 40 students
. An earth-cob, domed bread oven for baking bread and cakes using drift wood as fuel
. A food dehydrator
. Several food production gardens to supply the school activities
. Staff housing for 10 staff
. Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) for daily, weekly and monthly management of
the field school and its facilities.
. A fully detailed curriculum for Village Development Courses and a manual for GreenHand cadets.
The facilities are still developing with the help of the Acehnese students who are trained there. The staff has the basic training to run the facility and their expertise will increase from learning on the job.
I will now create another GreenHand Field School in Bali to serve Bali and eventually the eastern islands. This new GreenHand will train trainers from all over Indonesia as well as international trainers who want to learn 'hands-on' permaculture development skills for the tropics. The GreenHand Field Schools will be linked and share skills and resources. I will still assist Aceh from time to time. But for now Bali has my attention, as the Bali bombs have devastated the Balinese economy. Bali now needs to learn how to develop new sustainable livings that don't depend on consumer tourism. Now is the best time to act before real poverty sets in.
GreenHand Field School Aceh is still in need of skilled volunteers and trainers from outside Aceh. If you would like to volunteer or work at GreenHand please contact IDEP Foundation at info@idepfoundation.org. Please think about it carefully before you apply to IDEP, as this is a difficult place to work and only strong and capable people can make a difference. |
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Thanks to everyone
who made these
projects possible!
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Breaking ground at the new GreenHand Field School in Aceh.
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Relaxing between activities
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The GFS is located in a beautiful part of Aceh.
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then apply what they have learned.
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Trainees learn theory for half each day.
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Trainees learn to make a banana pit.
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Trainees work together to build a clay oven and shelter.
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Before the tsunami, this was a fishing village.
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Acehnese curently living in refugee camps will learn to grow their own food. Villagers clear the site in a cash-for-work program
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