August 11th - Seulawah and profiles

Last weekend I went to climb Seulawah with someone from the Canadian Red Cross, someone from Médecin du Monde and a local guide. Seulawah is an extinct volcano, approximately 1800 meters high, situated roughly an hour and a half’s drive from Banda Aceh. We proceeded at a steady swift pace and reached the top after a short five hours only. The scenery was beautiful; one and all jungle. We have not seen much wild but heard plenty of it, birds and monkeys especially. The top as well is covered with vegetation so unfortunately we did not have a great view of Aceh nor of the sunset and sunrise. And at night, for the first time in Indonesia, I actually felt cold. In fact, I was pretty much chilled to the bones! Aaron Budd’s website features a lot of pictures from our little adventure (click here to see them). Save a few, I managed to permanently delete all my pictures from the weekend while backing things up between my iPod and different computers. In any case, one thing is for sure: this was no lazy weekend!

For the rest, I have had a hectic week. I have principally kept myself busy with collecting data to sketch a profile of the CDR projects and the members of the Community Development Boards (CDBs). I developed and disseminated an information request sheet last week to gather this information from the various CDR teams and created a database in SPSS, a statistical programme. There are 12 CDR teams in all; three in each field office and, on average, each team is responsible for three community projects. In total the IRC has 38 target communities and has thus facilitated the formation of 38 CDBs. On Monday, I went through the files of the CDR teams in Banda Aceh en found out fairly quickly that asking the teams to fill the forms themselves would be a much more effective approach. On Tuesday, I drove to Meulaboh along with our technical specialist. I am impressed with the CDR teams in Meulaboh; I was going to see how far I would get with gathering all the information but, minus a few bits and pieces here and there, I have everything already. If this can be realised in the other three field offices as well – where I will be spending time next week – it will be possible to make some interesting analyses that can be included in an interim report that is due soon.

Besides collecting this data I have been on a number of field visits in Meulaboh to assist the CDR teams where needed as well as to identify potential success stories to write about for newsletters and/or reports. I have carried out some interesting interviews. I will include these stories in my Blog after the report has been submitted to Stichting Vluchteling (SV), Netherlands Refugee Foundation and the Samenwerkende Hulporganisaties (SHO), the Dutch Cooperating Relief Agencies.

A short post this time, I know, but this is it for this week folks. I still have many things to do and hope to relax a little bit as well. Please let me know if there is anything specific you would like me to write about. The IRC or SV in general, for instance, or the CDR programme in particular, the CDBs, the community projects, Aceh, our staff; anything! Just let me know. Below are some of the pictures that have saved from the past weekend.