Fire from the earth

The Jesuit scholastics in Yogyakarta woke one morning last November to find ash covering the ground. Mount Merapi had erupted violently. They asked how they could help those who fled from the area.

Bayu Risanto recalls, ‘We decided to cook and send them meals twice a day – for lunch and evening meal. To prepare that amount of rice boxes was made possible only because we were helped by our community cook and more then 40 young people, student colleagues in our apostolate.’

The Jesuit Refugee Service supported people displaced by the eruptions. They soon saw  the human dimensions of the volcano. The village of Singlar was typical. Three people were buried by lava, and over 120 families lost everything.

Supryanto, a villager, said, ‘If I was asked now, I’d say I’d dare not live here anymore. My house was once there’, he added, pointing at the large pile of sand where no signs of buildings are seen. His fellow villager, Paidi, said, ‘All of my milk cows have been buried by the lava. We’ve lost our livelihood. In the past we could earn some money from the cow milk ... now all we’ve got is a memory of the past.

The Singlar residents were just some of the 10,000 people displaced by the volcano. Their numbers were added to by the heavy rain that followed, and the flooding by cold lava. Another 5,000 people were forced to flee their houses, when cold lava that had accumulated on the volcano’s slopes struck and buried their villages.

JRS at work

In Kragalan JRS helped the evacuees by distributing foods including rice, milk for the children and elderly, porridge for infants, cooking oil, cooking seasoning and drinking. They also provided plastic mats, mattresses for the elderly and infants, sarongs, hygiene kits, elementary and secondary school uniforms. The village head expressed his gratitude to JRS for the helping hand it gave to the evacuees.

Adrianus Suryadi, director of JRS in Indonesia, visited the village. He said, ‘I came back to my office amazed about those evacuees. They are not the kind of evacuees who would keep pounding with demands and lists of needs. They even seem to feel shy and uneasy to ask for this and that. But what fascinated me most were their smiles, which were filled with gratefulness to anyone who has helped, rescued and attended to them.’

For the Jesuits scholastics, too, it was a learning experience. Bayu commented, ‘Thanks to the network we had, we could deliver the goods directly to the people who were in need but who were somehow forgotten by the government due to its unnecessary bureaucratic processes. We learned that when we help people, we are not alone. Others will join us and we work together as a team.’