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Heroes & Icons
Dina Astita
在Google搜了一下，只有一篇英文文章... 我想是她吧
Dina Astita
印尼班达亚齐地区的一个英文教师，在去年年底的南亚大海啸中她失去了她的三个孩子和一个年幼的妹妹，她和她的丈夫刚好去参加镇上的一个婚礼而幸免于难。灾难过后，她积极投身为重建灾区的学校争取援助，不断地呼吁联合国和非政府组织等救援团体对学校重建给予更多关注并提供更多地教师和物资。
City of dead in Aceh shows signs of life
February 24 2005 at 11:44AM
By Jerry Norton and Pipit Prahara
Calang, Indonesia - The city of the dead.
That's what some called Calang on Aceh's west coast after December's tsunami smashed nearly every building to rubble and left more than 6 000 of its 7 300 people dead or missing.
But nearly two months after the December 26 disaster that devastated the community 130km south of Aceh's provincial capital, Banda Aceh, there are many signs of life on the flat fields of red dirt where the town once stood.
'As a teacher I'm just thinking about education'
At their heart is a complex of large white tents from which the voices of children can be heard doing their lessons in the intense late morning heat and humidity.
Running from the primary grades through high school, the complex has 801 students, according to coordinator and English teacher, Dina Astita.
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That large number, despite the massive casualties in Calang, reflects the fact that the hills above are now now crowded with the makeshift huts and tents not just of its few survivors but of refugees from around the area, many attracted by the school.
[/color=green]"As a teacher I'm just thinking about education," says Astita, 33, as she leans forward to speak with earnest intensity. "The children must have education."
Wearing a red Muslim headscarf and light brown blouse and pants, she says she lost her own three children, a younger sister, "also my house and everything we have before" in the tsunami. She and her husband survived because they were attending a wedding out of town.
Since then she has thrown herself into efforts to get help for the school, originally set up by an Indonesian Marine unit that is the most prominent government element in the area's recovery effort.
"Reconstruction is nothing without education," said Astita.
Officials of the various UN and NGO groups operating in Calang say they know Astita, for she pleads with them and anyone who will listen for aid in getting more teachers and supplies.
The quarters and offices of the agencies join with those of the hundreds of Marines and the school complex to form a mosaic of green, white and blue tents sprawled on the peninsula that was the heart of Calang.
UN World Food Programme (WFP) officer Francis Kenyi says there are more than 50 foreign workers based in Calang for the various groups, which in turn employ hundreds of local people.
Like several of the organisations - which aside from WFP include UNICEF, Spain's Medicos del Mundo, the Norwegian Support Team, and at least a half dozen others - the WFP uses Calang as a base for operations in the region. In the WFP's case, that means helping feed about 18 000 people from stores warehoused in Calang.
With roads and bridges washed away by the tsunami, many of the goods and people in the aid operation have to be moved by either boat or air. The dusty helicopter pad, for which an old cemetery serves as a passenger waiting area, is alive with traffic.
The refugees whose homes cling to the hills above benefit from the presence of the groups that provide jobs, food and medical care. Dr Manuel Munoz, 34, says the Medicos del Mundo clinic where he works treats a steady stream of patients.
In T-shirt, sarong and bare feet, he says the ever-present heat in Calang is tougher to take than even what he experienced previously in Africa. The "conditions are the worst conditions I have ever worked, but I'm happy" helping those in need.
Like other refugees in the hills above her former town, Laila, 33 and a mother of two, tells Reuters the medical care and education available below and the food and supplies coming from the groups there make camp conditions relatively good.
But she and others from Calang are in no hurry to actually live again on the low ground where so many friends and relatives died.
"Only if we all move back together," she says. "We feel the trauma from the tsunami. If everyone moves back together it won't be so bad."
[ Last edited by 擦肩而过 on 2005-4-11 at 19:04 ] |
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发表于 2005-4-11 14:36
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