The noise from a passing train made Kastanah halt in the middle of her story. She instinctively pulled her son, Muhamad Rizki Wahyudi, 1, closer to her with one hand, and with the other shielded his face from the dust."The dust and noise make it hard to sleep," she sighed when the train had passed.
Kastanah represents the human face of the mudflow disaster in Sidoarjo, East Java, where a sea of mud has flowed from Lapindo Brantas Inc.'s gas exploration site since May 29.
When the mud inundated her house in Ketapang village, Kastanah, her husband Qoirul Amin and their three children -- Angelina Fernanda, 5, Trias Wahyu Anggraeni, 3, and Muhamad -- were forced to scramble for whatever shelter they could find.
While some of the villagers were lucky enough to have relatives who could put them up, Kastanah and her family ended up in a 10-square-meter goat pen not far from their home.
She said they had little choice because they could not afford the cost of renting a house farther from the disaster and moving their belongings.
"It costs a lot of money to move. Where would we get the money from?" she cried.
While the mudflow clearly has been a disaster for thousands of residents, for some people, such as those with trucks to rent, it has become a windfall opportunity. Residents used to only pay Rp 150,000 to 200,000 to rent a truck to move their belongings. Now the charge is Rp 500,000, plus what they must pay the workers to carry their possessions.
With her husband losing his job at a nearby cigarette factory, Kastanah and her family could not afford to move away.
The best they could do was load their clothes and few other belongings into a borrowed pedicab as the hot mud threatened their village and find shelter in the goat pen.
"It would be too far for the pedicab to take us to Porong market .... We were lucky just to find this goat pen."
The bamboo pen, with a plastic sheet for a roof, is located next to the railway tracks and near the side of the main road connecting Sidoarjo and Porong.
They have piled their bags, a stove, a wooden cabinet and some cooking utensils into a corner, while a wooden bed with a thin mattress sits in the center of the pen. Two old chairs sit next to the road. There are no laundry or bathroom facilities.
The three children cried constantly during the recent visit by The Jakarta Post.
With the hot mud still spewing from the ground, more and more people are being displaced. In Porong market, there were 2,605 families, or 9,936 people, taking shelter. This number jumped to about 12,000 people this week with the arrival of new mudflow victims.
Thousands of residents have sought treatment at community health centers and hospitals since the mud began flowing.
There do not seem to be any solutions to the disaster forthcoming, as the mud inches closer to inundating the railroad tracks and the main road in the area.
Kastanah and her family, unfortunately, have a front-row seat to the disaster. The nearby road is usually packed with vehicles trying to leave the area for Banyuwangi and Malang. And the railroad tracks are the only ones serving the Surabaya-Malang-Banyuwangi route.
"The dust, smoke and noise of cars and trains is torture," Kastanah sighed.
No comments:
Post a Comment