Since May, the country of Indonesia has been hit by several natural disasters including a devastating earthquake, an explosive volcano, and another damaging tsunami. About 50 Oblates serving in Indonesia now focus their ministry on crisis intervention to help the countless victims. Fr. John O’Doherty, O.M.I., shares a personal account of life in Indonesia:

TSUNAMI! More than a year ago this would have been a foreign word to many people in Indonesia, but not now. Just after 3 p.m. on Monday, July 17, a large earthquake rocked Cilacap, a coastal town where the Oblates minister. A few hours later, the cry of tsunami! rang out and panic erupted.

The roads were blocked with people trying to get to safety. Since the parish house is two stories high, many people were coming there to seek shelter. There is also a nearby high school run by the Oblates, with a big assembly room on the second story. This too became a place of refuge, together with the eight-level maritime school, another Oblate project.

Nine people were killed in the town, and in the wider Cilacap area, 103 deaths. But like the previous earthquake near Yogyakarta, these figures keep changing as more information becomes known. In the newspaper on Thursday, July 20, the reported deaths had risen to 549. This is added to the 63,000 dead and 40,000 or more injured during the earthquake just a few months ago.

We have devoted ourselves to recovery efforts. Many people are too traumatized to go indoors. They prefer to sleep in a tent, but then they do not want to leave the tent for work because they need to watch over their possessions. It’s a dreadful cycle.

To help them restart their lives, we are now in a phase of cleaning debris and building simple houses that will last for one or two years. Right now,
we are helping a village with 40 families. We buy them the zinc, nails, and bamboo and they make the frame from the wood that’s left in the ruins of their houses. We hope that with this simple house, the people, most of whom are farmers, will begin to work again in their fields once they feel secure in their homes.

We also try to find nutritious foods for the children. We distribute milk, cookies, and medicine. We also plan to offer scholarships for the students through some of the Catholic schools.

A group of students from Nias, one of the areas affected by the 2004 tsunami, came to help the people. These young people are students from the Marine Academy in Cilacap, the maritime school the Oblates established. They had been given scholarships to help them in their rehabilitation after the experience of the tsunami. While not fully professional counselors, they share with the people and tell their own stories about how they worked through their agony and suffering in the days following the tsunami in Nias. These young people have been helped by Oblates, and now are ready to help others.

The poor people! They were just picking themselves up from the earthquake at the end of May and now this! I remainful hopeful, though. They have a resilience that I believe will help them survive.

If you would like to help the Oblates and those they are helping in Indonesia and around the world, please visit us on-line at www.oblatesusa.org.