This is my second tsunami while in Bali. On the morning of December 26, 2004 I awoke to a phone call from my worried mother. She had never called me in Bali before and I was instantly worried something horrible had happened at home.
“Are you alright?!” she said.
“Yeah, I’m fine. How are you? What’s wrong?”
“There was a giant earthquake and tsunami that hit Indonesia and I couldn’t get through for the longest time. This was the first time it rang through. I was worried about you. Are you okay?”
That was how I learned about the tsunami that crashed not only into Sumatra here in Indonesia, but also Thailand and Sri Lanka. In my sleepy, just-rolled-out-of-bed haze, I had no thought about how serious it was – i just thought I had a worried Jewish mother. Everything was fine in Bali and Sumatra is a very long way away.
While I had TV’s, I never used them because there were only a few stations – all in Indonesian. That and I have a general dislike of television news. I went online and learned about the massive damage and loss of life.
Bali was fine, I was fine. Indonesia was not fine. Aceh in Sumatra was devastated. Indonesia began relief efforts backed by supplies and help from countries around the world.
The Balinese don’t have a lot of love for most of their neighboring islands. Bali is a small, Hindu island surrounded by muslim populations. The Balinese don’t particularly love being part of Indonesia.
In federal government, Bali is usually outvoted and its interests generally ignored. Bali generates a good amount of tax revenue thanks to its thriving tourism industry, but the Indonesian government allocates it elsewhere – leaving Bali without many things, even regular road repaving and repair.
More importantly, Bali doesn’t love being part of a muslim country with politics and policies that just don’t mesh with their values and openness to the world. After all, it was fundamentalist muslim extremists from neighboring Java who set off both the 2001 and 2006 bombs in Bali – purposely trying to ruin Bali’s tourism and western influences.
None of that stopped the Balinese from jumping to Aceh’s aid. All over Ubud and throughout Bali, organizations and businesses began raising money and collecting food and clothing for the people of Aceh. Shop owners and restaurants had donation boxes. People encouraged donations of clothing and food over money – the relief was more direct and immediate.
At the supermarket, I ran into a woman who owned a boutique in town. She had collected money and was buying diapers, formula, and baby food en masse. She told me that people are sending supplies for adults, but the babies are in desperate need too. Her brother-in-law owned a small airplane and was going to fly supplies directly to Aceh. I contributed. How could I not?
A couple of weeks later, I was in Singapore which was the center of operations for relief efforts throughout the region. Singapore is acutely aware that it’s a small first world country surrounded by larger, poorer and historically hostile neighbors. It spared nothing in its generosity to its stricken neighbors – particularly former enemy Indonesia.
As I walked the streets, children in their school uniforms carried donation cans and asked everyone on every sidewalk, metro station and mall for their spare change. They did this for at least a month and probably raised a ton in pocket change.
Meanwhile, the nurses I recruited were all going through their closets and their families’ closets picking out clothes to donate. Even the Filipino, Indian and Burmese nurses who receive lower and sometimes pitiful wages, found clothes to donate. News reports focused on relief efforts and Singapore was proud of the amount of clothing and blood it gave to the Red Cross.
I was impressed by the people around me – in Bali and Singapore. It was an outstanding display of humanitarianism, particularly from the Balinese who had relatively so little to give.
Here I am for another tsunami – one that thankfully did not affect Indonesia. While this tsunami didn’t affect their own, I find myself surprised that the Balinese don’t seem to be organizing relief efforts. In Ubud today, I didn’t see donation boxes at the supermarket – let alone women buying up formula and diapers to send to the babies of Japan. I saw no donation signs in front of shops and restaurants. It’s not the same this time.
I use Singapore’s Channel News Asia for all my news. Their news is amazingly fair, balanced and comprehensive. I trust it. Naturally, I looked to see what Singapore’s response to the Japanese disaster would be.
As of right now, there is one story about the Japanese Association of Singapore raising funds and another regarding the Singapore Ministry of Foreign Affairs warning people not to go to Japan. There is no sign of massive fundraising and clothing drives. No blood drives either. There’s plenty of news about what’s going on in Japan – minute by minute, in fact. Just not much about a Singaporean response.
A few months ago, the wife of Lee Kwan Yew – Singapore’s founding Prime Minister who carries the current patriarchal title of Minister Mentor – died. For more than a week, Channel News Asia had constant coverage of her death, people’s remembrances of her and every aspect of her funeral. She had a major role in the founding and success of Singapore and she deserved all the recognition she got. Still, it struck me that she got a lot more mention than relief efforts for stricken Japan.
I’m sure there are people who are giving. I have no doubt that there are people with heavy hearts and tremendous empathy. However, all day I’ve been wondering what the difference is between this tsunami and the last one.
Could it be that it’s not in their backyard? Japan is further away and therefore has less personal and direct impact? Maybe it’s that Japan is the third largest economy on Earth and Indonesians – and even many Singaporeans – don’t see the need for aid, or how they would really impact the situation?
It also dawned on me that maybe there’s leftover bad blood. Although it’s been 65 years, the Japanese occupied and brutalized Indonesia and Singapore. Lee Kwan Yew has talked about his childhood memories of just how brutal the Japanese were to Singaporeans.
He has also openly discussed how difficult it was for him to open and pursue good relations with Japan. He understood it to be necessary, but has always held a resentment of the Japanese as I’m sure many older Singaporeans and perhaps their children do.
Perhaps a quiet bias keeps the small, but financially powerful island state from giving all it has to give?
Even here in Bali – it was the Japanese soldiers whom the Balinese literally kicked off the island. For a brief, shining moment in 1945, the Balinese regained independence for the first time since 1908 and held it for more than a year. The three years of Japanese occupation had not been pleasant for them and they organized a successful resistance movement.
I have often noticed that while the Japanese and Australians are the two largest sources of Balinese tourism, there aren’t a tremendous amount of Japanese-speaking Balinese, nor that many Japanese restaurants. The Balinese will happily take their money – and there are many businesses with Japanese signage – but they don’t seem to cater to them the way they do to European, North American and Australian travelers.
All of this could be coincidental. I might be grasping at straws. Still, I’d like something to hold.
There have been many horrible natural disasters in our lifetimes. There are countries like Haiti where earthquakes leveled much larger areas and killed more people than in Japan. But never has there been nuclear disaster. Never have the consequences and continued aftershocks been so scary and events so globally damaging.
Here in Bali, it’s just another day in paradise. And I wonder why.
Sent from my iPad
