Four Weeks After the Earthquake: People's Solidarity Continues, Contributions of More Than USD100,000 per week

HOW THE INITIATIVES START?

Similar with the last week, groups of trucks and other vehicles fully loaded with volunteers and simple construction materials still dominated intercity and intervillage roads of Jogyakarta and surrounding. Their destinations also still the same: earthquake affected areas both in Bantul and Klaten Districts. They are coming not only from non-affected places of Jogyakarta and Central Java but also far away from West and East Java Provinces. Sunday, 25 June 2006, a group of 4 trucks that stopped in a traffic light junction of Jogyakarta's Northern Ring Road, for example, used registration plate number of Bogor area, West Java. Another group of 3 mini-trucks that stopped in a junction of Jogya-Klaten-Solo interprovincial road have used registration plate number of Malang and Jember areas, East Java, hundreds kilometer from the east.

How all of these solidarity actions start and extent? From interviewing many of those spontaneous volunteers, we got information that almost of them involved in the actions by their own initiatives. Generally, it was started by one or some persons among them expressed the idea, then, the others agreed and immediately they did preparations and organize themselves to implement. The persons who have initial idea, usually, already have contacts, friends or relatives, in the affected areas in Bantul or Klaten. Or, the contacts have made by volunteers who have working there since the first days of the disaster. Almost of them agreed to contribute their own labour and some also contribute materials or even personal money for meals or transportation costs. Some local government (at village and district levels) also contribute trucks or cars. There are some local mass organizations or branches of political parties also contribute money or materials or, in same of the cases, directly organized them for that purposes. They said they never mind about the interests behind as long as they can be facilitated to go and help the victims in the affected areas.

That kind of processes, for example, in the last Sunday, 25 June 2006, that brought about 60 volunteers from several villages of Kalinongko Sub-district, into the Village of Dengkeng, Wedi Sub-district, in the same District of Klaten, about 20 kilometer to the south. They help the local people of Dengkeng to clean the ruins of their houses, among others, to use the ruin stuffs for paving the village roads. They are organized and facilitated by volunteers --the students and lecturers-- of STAIN (Sekolah Tinggi Agama Islam Negeri, State College of Islamic Studies) of Surakarta --one of the fieldstation network facilitated and coordinated by Volunteers Team of INSIST-- who have work in Dengkeng since the first days of the disaster. Those STAIN's volunteers knows many people in Kalinongko area where they have conducted a fieldwork camp years before. Using same kind of relations, the STAIN's volunteers then organized a villagers from Wonogiri District, about 60 kilometer to the east, to collect their abundant bamboos and ready-made gedhek (waving bamboos for walls) to be donated to Dengkeng since the last have not enough good quality bamboos. Dozens of people from Wonogiri with some trucks of bamboos was arrived in Dengkeng on Tuesday morning, 27 June 2006.

Similar ways of connections -- a real and sincere people to people reliefs, totally through personal and informal ways, spontaneous, without any publications-- also happened in form of other voluntary aid. Sri Wahyaningsih, Coordinator of SALAM --another volunteers field station facilitated and coordinated by INSIST network-- using the same ways to mobilize people's solidarity and donation. On Monday, 26 June 2006, she have succesfully communicates with a generous person in Jogyakarta who will pay all of the living and educational expenses of two junior high school boys of Kragilan Village, Gantiwarno Sub-dustrict of Klaten, until the boys finished their senior high. Just by cellular phone contacts, she also have succesfully motivated a generous person in Jakarta to send a huge container full with foods, medicines, new clothes, tents, kitchen utensils, farming and carpentry tool kits, and schoolkid equipments, to be distributed in some villages in Bantul and Klaten.

HOW MUCH THE ORDINARY PEOPLE CONTRIBUTE? This is a not simple question to be answered. The nature of this kind of people's spontaneous actions, totally based on trust and almost without written documents, was made it difficult to figure out its exact numbers. However, based on our direct experiences and observation in the field in the last two weeks, we can approximately made a general calculation as follows: (1) Simply say that there are 30 initiatives (organized group of actions) that happened every week both in Bantul and Klaten areas. Actually, more than that but let us use this figure as a base of calculation. Set the number lower than the real one is, of course, make sense then the vice versa. (2) Say that each initiative have sent 3 trucks of materials and 1 truck of volunteers. To make it easier, we can simply divided the trucks of materials into three different loadings: 1 truck fully loaded with woods (average capacity is 4 meter cubics); 1 truck fully loaded with raw bamboos (average capacity is 600 trunks); and 1 truck fully loaded with ready-made gedhek (average capacity is 200 pieces). The current price of those materials in Jogyakarta and surrounding today are IDR 800,000 (about USD 87) per cubic of woods (light and soft kind, grade-2, commonly found and used in this area); IDR 7,000 (about USD 0.9) per trunk of raw bamboos; and IDR 50,000 (about USD 5.2) per piece of ready-made gedhek (the best quality one, made from the outer hard-skin, not from the soften inner-skin, of bamboos). So, the value of the people's contribution in term of this kind of materials is: 30 initiatives x 4 cubics of woods x IDR 800,000 = IDR 96,000,000 (USD 10.4 thousand); 30 initiatives x 600 trunks of bamboos x IDR 7,000 = IDR 226,000,000 (USD 24.5 thousand); and 30 initiatives x 200 pieces of gedhek x IDR 50,000 = IDR 300,000,000 (USD 32.6 thousand). (2) Another 1 truck fully loaded with 40 volunteers. Of course, they are not paid but we should calculate the value of their voluntary labours. So, we can use the current average price of daily payment of a construction worker and carpenter in Jogyakarta today, that is IDR 25,000 (about USD 3.0) per day. For their meals, we can simply put IDR 15,000 (about USD 2.0) per person per day (Jogyakarta is the cheapest place all over Indonesia). So, the value of the people's contribution in term of their labours and meal expenses is: 30 initiatives x 40 persons x IDR 25,000 = IDR 30,000,000 (USD 3.2 thousand); and 30 initiatives x 40 persons x IDR 15,000 = IDR 18,000,000 (USD 1.9 thousand). (3) All of those 4 trucks were rented for the whole day operation. The current rental price in Jogyakarta today is IDR 300,000 (USD 33) per day. So the value of peple's contribution in term of this transportation costs is: 30 initiatives x 4 trucks x IDR 300,000 = Rp 36,000,000 (USD 3.2 thousand). (4) Hence, the total value of people's contribution is: IDR 522,000,000 (amount of all materials) + IDR 84,000,000 (amount of labours, meals, and transportation expenses) = IDR 606.000.000 (USD 65.8 thousand) per week. Once again, this is not including yet other contributions in form of non construction material and labours. Let say that those kind of contributions are in the same of amount too. So, the total value of local people to people's spontaneous aid in Bantul and Klaten areas is about USD 1.2 billion (about USD 140.6 thousand) per week. Since already happened in the last two weeks, its total value to date is IDR 3.6 billion (USD 390.2 thousand or almost half a million). There is another way to calculate it easier based on the unit cost of simple temporary houses that are helped to construct by those local volunteers. There are some different model but let us here to use a prototype which is now socialized by our volunteers both in Bantul and Klaten areas. The prototype --a quake-proof construction made from woods and bamboos-- was designed by Mr. Eko Prawoto, an architect of Yayasan Pondok Rakyat (The People's Hut Foundation). With the size of 4 x 6 meter, the unit cost is IDR 9 million (about USD 978). From our field observation in the last two weeks, we can estimate about 600 unit of this kind of simple temporary houses were already constructed by the local people themselves all over disaster areas in Bantul and Klaten. It means that the local people themselves, through their spontaneuos actions of solidarity, have contributed about IDR 5.4 billion (about USD 0.5 million) to the reconstruction processes of earthquake affected areas in Jogyakarta and Central Java! That is for rebuilding simple temporary houses, not including yet another kind of spontaneous aid and donations. So, why some government officers still thinking to beg new loans from international financial institutions and foreign donors?