These are busy times for the economic development director in our house, what with an 10-person team to manage, a language barrier to navigate, new agriculture consultants to find in Java (or Zambia), conferences, donor presentations, field visits, and hectic traffic to navigate from the wrong side of the road. (She is our designated driver). On Wednesday at 8 p.m., Hayley settled down at the dinner table to focus on the next adventure: her upcoming appearance on a local, public affairs TV show in two-and-a-half hours. “What am I going to say?” she sighed, panic creeping in. “How ‘bout some bullet points,” I said. She produced a piece of scrap paper, folded it in half and set to jotting. The paper quickly unfolded, the bullet points spreading into the double digits. Her head was full of nuances in the economy, beset by 30 years of conflict, laid flat by the devastating tsunami, pumped up by $8 billion in new aid money. I said: “Just keep it simple, like you were explaining it to your Mom or your brother.”

“You don’t understand: I don’t do simple!” she replied. “Grad school appearances I can do. But I can’t speak without jargon anymore. I used to be able to. I remember the first day I came to Mercy Corps, I read this report – full of jargon – and I was like “What is this!” That was a long time ago. So just enjoy life in your little jargon-less world over there.” She fought a smirk and retreated to the bedroom to polish up.

At 10 p.m., the Mercy Corps van, already packed with Mark, the Corps’ Aceh director, and three young Indonesians staffers, Ardian, Dian, and Nazar, drove us a few minutes to a narrow, two-story shop building with an illuminated ACEH TV sign high on the façade. We walked through the garage-like entryway, past a half-dozen motorbikes and five guys sitting on couch watching TV, and headed back to a studio room. Mark followed Hayley under a ON AIR sign sitting over the studio door. “She got all gussied up didn’t she?” he said, turning to me. She wore a long-sleeved, wrap-front blue top and grey cotton skirt. A shade restrained but acceptable in any Acehnese living room, and it was gracefully appointed: a chain of seven Afghani amber ovals hung around her neck and three turquoise slivers in train dangled from each ear.

The show set for “Obrolan Malam” — Night Talk — was primed to go. Bright spots and three small cameras trained on four wooden upholstered chairs and a low coffee table sitting on a riser with a checkerboard floor. A big signboard formed the sets’ back wall, the bottom word “Malam” obscured by the chairs. The side walls were thin, red polyester curtains. Other signboards — “Musik Zone,” “Korupsi dan Koruptor” — were pushed against the walls around the studio. Three young cameramen milled around aloofly. Through a huge window in the wall at one end of the studio, we could see another baby-faced posse manning the control room piled high with screens. Soon Aulia, Obrolan Malam’s 18-year-old whisp of a host, hustled into the room with a laptop, a list of advance questions for the Corps crew and a light layer of powder on his face. If there was anyone over 25 in the building, I didn’t see him. (no women to be found, either). Ardian said the station was just a few years old. (I’m beginning think that the media/networking start-up is also the hip venture here in post-tsunami Aceh, even if it’s older stuff like magazines, radio and TV stations, media consultancies, internet cafes and providers, instead of Indonesian Facebook)

Aulia hammered out his script on the computer while Hayley, Mark and Nazar were wired up with lapel mics. They drifted onto the set, 10:30 rolled around, and with a snap of the fingers from one camera man, they were off.

If the pace was a little pokey for the first few minutes (Aulia: “Give us the background on Mercy Corps, Mr. Mark Ferdig”), it was enough to admire young Aulia, his grew suit shining under the lights, switching back and forth from Indonesian to English and engaging a couple of folks from across the Pacific. The listeners, presumably, understood only bits and pieces.

Things quickly ratcheted up after the first commercial break. Just as Aulia leaned across the circle to ask Hayley if she could explain how the Corps was helping the Acehnese economy, a loud ringing sound reverberated in the studio. “We have a caller,” Aulia said, straightening up. A man from the outskirts of the city wanted the Obrolan Malam panel to rate the performance of the Indonesian reconstruction and rehabilitation agency — BRR in local-speak. Not a softball; the agency has been a lightning rod for any complaints about reconstruction. That afternoon 150 local students staged a sit-in on the BRR grounds, asking them to speed up permanent housing construction. Mark furrowed his brow and tread on eggshells. “They’ve had their challenges,” he said of BRR. “We all have. But what they’ve able to accomplish overall has been remarkable.”

The phone continued to ring in the studio, usually right smack in the middle of the conversation. The questions didn’t get any easier. What was Mercy Corps doing to help small businesspeople? Why were they only training local village councils and not community leaders outside the government? Wasn’t it high time for the buleks — the foreigners— to go home, to stop driving up car and housing prices? Aulia did not translate this question for the foreigners ( a little too hot?), handing it quickly off to Nazar, the Corps’ only Indonesia speaker. Nazar looked uncomfortable but answered nonetheless. (I couldn’t catch the gist). Ardian, the pr guy sitting with me in the audience, later passed a translation of the question discreetly on to Mark through host Aulia. Mark found an opening to answer. “Pak,” he said, formally addressing the buleks-out caller. “You’re right, the costs have gone up. It’s something we NGOs need to continue to talk about it.” Later, he called attention to Nazar, an Acehnese, who had a prominent role running Mercy Corps government affairs program. The message: we are handing things over. Whatever thin polyester curtains formed the set walls on upstart ACEH TV, say this about the crew: they had brought some lively substance to the little blinking box in people’s living rooms, a worthy feat anywhere.

Eventually, between callers, Hayley got an opening. She noted that the finishing of Aceh raw products and the major markets that sold them had shifted out of Aceh during 30 years of conflict, to places like the neighboring provincial capital of Medan. “We hope those market centers, like Medan, will be part of the solution in rebuilding the economy in Aceh,” she said. Ardian flashed a thumbs-up from the back of the room. Host Aulia pressed for more: So who, exactly, are you helping? Hayley replied. “One of the areas we’re working in is the rice industry. We’re trying to boost rice farmers. We would like local kiosks and restaurants and hotels all to be serving rice that’s grown and milled in Aceh. That doesn’t happen today. But one day, we hope it will.”

It wasn’t a world beater, but it was a mission, clear and simple. A take-home nugget.

When it was all over, the mics pulled off the lapels, the cameramen moving their gear quietly and swiftly toward the late-night news show set next door to Obrolan Malam, we went home with something else. A little of that TV light glow lingering around us.

Take care until next time,
Oakley

Wildlife is a constant presence here, but last week’s display stood out. On Thursday, the sky opened up with abandon. The rain became so loud and heavy, you couldn’t do anything but watch it. Then it raised up another notch. It felt like the roofs wouldn’t hold, like their stoic, silent, metallic stand could end any second. But somehow it didn’t. When it died down, I went outside and dozens of tiny, thumbnail-sized frogs dashed around the yard. I’d never seen them before. They weren’t tadpoles but fully formed miniatures. It was as if they’d been buried dormant in the muck waiting for just the right downpour to float them free. Now, they were adjusting to flagstones and human toes.

The rain cleared on Friday and at lunch I went to find the tigers. Everyone had been talking about the tigers: two wild Sumatrans that had been terrorizing villagers in the western and southern regions of the province. The forestry department darted and trapped the animals, and then brought them to cages at department headquarters in Banda in early November, forming an impromptu zoo exhibit. When I visited, 30 or 40 people of all ages hovered around the back-to-back cages, about the size of jail cells. The animals were both impressive specimens, even cashed out in their midday naps. From behind a makeshift rope fence, you could lean in closer to the bigger of the two of them, a male. He had a thick, meaty head, paws the size of dinner plates, and a lean, painted body. Both of them looked fearsome, and cuddly.

One of the forestry officials watching all us gawkers said he hadn’t decided what to do with the big one, which had killed three people down on the West Coast. There have been more incidents of animal human conflicts since the guerilla war ended in Aceh and people felt it safe to go back to forest-edge lands.

By Sunday, it warmed up but the huge sunken lot across the lane here was still knee deep in runoff. Dry and dusty this summer, the lot has transformed into a lush wetland. (It’s the kind of thing city officials might pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop in Portland, but here it springs up out of neglect). Just after lunch, we noticed an elegantly tall, white stork, stalking around in the water looking for his own makan siang. He’d hold still for a minute or two, one bulging eye turned towards the water, and then move a step or two. A pack of kids rode by but he didn’t budge. When I biked by him a little later, he jumped and waved his giant wings with a quiet swoosh but stayed to walk the marsh.

What makes the seeing fresh is the new species and also the surprise of their entrance. The lines between wild and tame, right in the heart of the city, blur in unexpected ways. Things show up on your front doorstep.

It even felt like we were crossing into the lives of the caged tigers, which we returned to see on Sunday. Now there were well over 100 watchers, and soda vendors set up in the forestry department parking lot. At one point, the big Sumatran stood up and shifted nervously on his feet. He stuck his head through a small doorway into an adjoining cage, then backpedaled into his main one. Something was wrong. Slowly, reluctantly, he squatted to pee through the bars. We were close enough, at six or seven feet, to see his sheepish eyes. I didn’t know if I should watch or turn away discreetly.
Take care until next time,
Oakley

I let Pak Oka go last week. He is the stick-thin, 70-year old Navy veteran who hung around the house enough when we first arrived that we thought to give him a job as a gardener. We didn’t need a gardener. But he had worked security for the internationals who had previously stayed in the house. And when we asked our benevolent landlord about Oka, the landlord thought it was a good idea to hire him for a few days a week. The landlord suggested how much we should pay Oka. When I went to negotiate, Oka asked for triple that amount. Such are the expectations in post-tsunami Aceh.

The trouble is neither Oka’s lofty view of his worth, nor his sunny disposition nor his punctuality — 8 am arrival every Monday, Wednesday and Friday — could mask the fact that there wasn’t much for him to do. He found things to pass the time and look busy. Built leaf fires in our tiny backyard. Swept out the garage three times a week. Meticulously watered the plants. Crushed our old aluminum cans. Told me stories about shipping in to Dubai and Singapore. But every time I shared his yard adventures with Hayley she said what I knew was true: We needed to send Oka on his way.

She brings a little different perspective, facing down the skewed sense of goods and work every day. The Acehnese got houses and business start-up cash, which they needed. They offered all kind of services to NGOs, services that were also desperately needed — plowing and construction materials and transport. Some fishing boats were also built for people who weren’t fishermen, and now they rot in the rivers. “Farmers” signed up for seed and tool assistance even though they weren’t farmers. Everything was bought and resold at such bloated prices that nobody knows what normal is anymore. Houses on the local market are selling for only 1/6th of what it cost NGOs to build them. An environmental worker told me recently, “Whenever we go into a community now they ask what kind of money we bring to the table.” When her group recently approached a village about building a new environmental ed center there, the group was asked by the village head to also supply funds for a new road to the center. The road would eat up all of the money the group had earmarked for the project, so the project has gone nowhere.

We, unfortunately, played out the wider tensions of the place with Oka. We finally decided that the inflated buck stopped here in our yard. Hayley’s argument runs deeper: It’s about dignity. You’re not respecting someone when you pay him to do nothing. But I kept stalling when it came time to end Oka’s term. Here was this harmless, small, poor man. His gaunt face, drawn tight over his cheeks and jaw. The way he struggled ever so slightly for breath when he talked. His salary was pocket money back in the States.

Two months ago, I came up with a plan for a soft landing. I told him he could stay on through October and November and then “habis” — finished. OK, he said. No problem. Two months, plenty of time to find another odd job, I thought. I avoided the subject of the end for two months.

Last Friday came. It felt like Good Friday. When I saw Oka sweeping the driveway near the front door, I stepped out onto the stoop and sat in a wooden chair there. I carried my dictionary with me. “We said in September it was two months and then finished,” I said in halting Indonesian. He crouched down on his haunches next to the stoop and nodded. I asked him how he’d make a “living” now, digging “living” out of the dictionary. He didn’t know. Nothing had come of our visit to the village head’s office in late September, he said. His pension from the Navy had run out nine years ago, after which he’d taken to fishing to keep food on the table. He had a wife and a grown son in town, neither of whom worked. I asked would he “starve”  (another dictionary word). He smiled and turned his palms up and said he’d figure out something.

I was really expecting him to protest. (I think I would have caved.) But he didn’t. When it came time for him to leave a short while later, I gave him his month’s salary plus a little extra. He took my right hand in both of his. “Thank you very much,” he said in English, giving a graceful nod and a big smile with this glint in his eye. His dignity gave me a lift. Then, in Indonesian, he said he’d see my around the neighborhood, and he walked his bike down the driveway.

Take care until next time,

Oakley