In Reply to: WoW pam ! posted by Allan on Tuesday, 25. November 2008 at 09:35 Bali Time:
earthquake happened, but had planned to take 13 people including some of my students to Yogja on June 26th about one month later.
Decided that was not a good idea, so cancelled the trip and decided to lose my deposit on the van from Pangandaran.
However I was in Cianjur West Java Dec 2004 when the earthquake and tsunami of Aceh happened- was a terrible time for everyone.
Had taught English in 3 different villages with my mobilee school and did not know until about 9pm when an English friend living on Lombok smsed me about the earthquake.
Everywhere I went people had relatives in Aceh- it was so..so..sad.
I had 60 days so ended up in Sumatra, even slept in Edi my friend's homestay right by the sea in Painan about one week after the tsunami-was I mad or what?
Then hired a car with 3 Indonesian friends and a driver and spent 19 days travelling around West Sumatra.
Ended up in Medan by myself and the day I took a young blind girl to Elisabeth Hospital in Medan to have her CAT scanned I also visited Katie Pavett and gave her my sizable donation for the tsunami.
I knew of Katie before as she had advised me about the health of a child I was helping in West Java. I knew she would do her best with the money because she already helped the children with her charity.
She had a charity for cleft palate originally called Children of Aceh, but when Aceh was closed to the world she moved with her Acehenese husband back to Scotland, changed the charity to Children of Sumatra and every year would return for 3 months to get a number of children operated on.
Once the tsumani happened, she flew out to Indonesia ( her husband Ali was already in Indonesia- overseeing a child being operated on for cleft palate on Christmas Day). Good fortune smiled on her and she was interviewed by the BBC and received 50,000 Euros in donations from throughout the world which she and Ali administered for the next 2 yrs, teaming up with loads of major organisations and getting many things done.
Read her story below she is such an inspiration and her organisation and the Dutch volunteer doctors have just recently given about 44 children/adults a new lease on life.
Pamela.