The Foreign Service Journal, January 2008

Ultimately, the school will have 300 students in grades 10-12. The Next Phase On July 16, 2007, the Indonesian flag was raised at the Lab School, and the inaugural class of the new, three- year senior high school was welcomed. That opening day was the first step of the project’s next phase. Now the pri- mary responsibility has shifted to the school community: the yayasan, the school staff, the parents and the teach- ers. Much remains to be worked through. Complicated and frustrating as it can be, constructing buildings is easier than creating and nurturing suc- cessful schools. The tsunami also accelerated re- newal of peace negotiations between Aceh and Jakarta, producing an agree- ment on Aug. 15, 2005, two days before the country’s 60th anniversary of independence. The first-ever provincial election took place in Aceh in December 2006, overwhelmingly electing a former Free Aceh leader, Irwandi Yusuf, as governor. Irwandi is actively confronting the province’s immense challenges, not the least of which is integrating for- mer insurgents into an imbalanced economy with vast resources desig- nated for tsunami-afflicted areas and more limited resources for allocation elsewhere. Planning for the long- term sustainability of the infrastruc- ture that has been rebuilt or is still on the drawing board is an additional challenge. Responsibility for tsunami recon- struction will be transferred from the national government-established Re- habilitation and Reconstruction Agen- cy, or BRR, to the province in May 2009. As of June 2007, while some families were still in temporary hous- ing, many barracks had been razed; 84,387 permanent houses (of the 128,000 needed), 405 health facilities (about 125 percent of the require- ment), 804 schools and 1,586 kilome- ters of roads had been built. And the work continues. Lessons Learned • International organizations and big charitable agencies that are experts at relief are not always good at rehabil- itation and reconstruction. Donors often push for “getting things built now” — before there has been time for thoughtful planning or bringing the communities along. • There has been too much staking out of territory as “belonging” to one NGO or another (then not necessarily following through with promised efforts), and not enough thoughtful collaboration among them. Schools, for instance, have been rebuilt but not furnished. • Only so much money can be absorbed into the wreckage of disaster and an already poor economy at any given time. So funds remain to be spent, even though most of what was pledged has been obligated. Prodi- gious efforts have been undertaken and achieved — but not always pro- ducing the right thing in the right place at the right time. • With so much money around, there is corruption — notwithstanding BRR’s insistence on and active prac- tice of transparency. Several NGOs have stopped projects to weed out malpractice and bring miscreants to trial — which is, in and of itself, remarkable. • The planning required is over- whelming and, of necessity, has gone by fits and starts. (So many of the basic institutions — and the people to staff them—were destroyed or not there in the first place.) • Labor and construction material shortages, compounded by the need to bring everything in by sea or over a narrow, pot-holed highway from Medan, caused prices to skyrocket, nearly doubling early reconstruction cost estimates. Getting to know individuals is the most rewarding aspect of spending time in Aceh — and, compared with rebuilding and changes in the land- scape, the hardest to write about. Everyone has lost someone, or many someones. Yet the Acehnese are wel- coming, accepting, proud, reserved and persevering. These friendships are a special blessing. As for the lessons I’ve learned from the project itself: patience and a sense of humor are all-important. Things work — or don’t — in their own time. Construction goes better with close monitoring, usually. Great as it is, you can’t count on e-mail, particularly when you need it most. And I still have so much to learn. 56 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J A N U A R Y 2 0 0 8 During the first week of school (no uniforms yet), students enjoy phys ed. Margaret Sullivan