May 28 - Earthquake on Java

I just found out that there was a massive earthquake on the island of Java, near Yogyakarta, an area I knew fairly well. Oh I really feel impacted by this. I'm not sure how to say it other than a part of me still feels very invested in this region and in the Javanese people, even though it's been five years since I've had any real interaction there. I did my undergraduate degree all about Indonesia and Southeast Asia, I've read there classic literature in their own language, lived there, ate with Javanese families, shared in their ceremonies. These people still remain with me and I often feel disturbed that I've not found a way to continue in my original path of some sort of humanitarian / environmental service there. I've thought about that many, many times over the past five years.

In a wave of emotion I wanted to call up some humanitarian aid organization and say "what can I do?" and rush over there to help. After all, how many people in the world already are able to speak Indonesian and have a rough knowledge of how to interact with people and get things done over there. Not too many, with the exception of Malays, Singaporeans and some Australians probably. But I'm no doctor or anything of that sort. I don't think I would actually be much of an asset in an emergency. But I do like building and aside from the death toll, the major tragedy on Java is that zillions of people lost their homes. This may not seem hugely traumatic, except that I remember how difficult it was for people to afford to build homes there. My host family had been building their home for fifteen years, just adding to it piece by piece when they could afford new walls or floors. And this wasn't fancy additions, I literally mean just walls and floors and simple furniture. And if large extended families all lost their homes, they will be extremely hurt financially, as help usually comes from extended families.

So now I'm wondering if I should volunteer my hands-on building skills. I did Habitat for Humanity for several summers as a teenager, and I enjoyed and was pretty good at basic building tasks. And I'm used to lots of hammer / nail / heavy lifting kind of work now from doing glassworking. I looked on the Habitat for Humanity website and found that they already had several building projects scheduled for 2006 / 2007 in the Yogyakarta area, exactly where the earthquake hit. So now I'm wondering if I should volunteer. I really want to. I hesitate because I'm starting a business right now though and Marco has no job yet and we are not at our most cash-rich point in life either. But I feel like I really want to do something.