A day in the life

Banda Aceh (Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Sumatra) 4:30 AM: The first call to prayer awakens the team, sounding from the minarets of mosques on three sides of the PBI house. The call to prayer is heard in Jakarta as well, spanning across the first of Indonesia's three time zones. With a population of more than 240 million, Indonesia has more Muslims than any other country in the world, with smaller populations of Christians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Animists. The province of Aceh, with 4.5 million people, is considered the "gateway to Mecca" since Islam first entered the archipelago through this northwesternmost part of the island of Sumatra.

Jakarta (Java), 6:30 AM: Tom, a team member, rises early and prepares breakfast: nasi goreng (fried rice topped with an egg), fresh cut pineapple and rich Achenese coffee. After eating, he enters the office in the same building where the team lives, to scan national newspapers and web sites in Indonesian and English for the latest political developments. He pays special attention to news from the Manokwari District in Papua. PBI volunteers on the Papua team, Mike and Valerie, have been accompanying LP3BH, a legal aid NGO, in that region for three days. LP3BH works all over the Bird's Head area of Western Papua with special focus on the districts of Manokwari, Teluk Bintuni and Teluk Wondama.

Manokwari, West Irian Jaya province, Papua, 8:30 AM: Mike and Valerie arrive at LP3BH NGO, an organization PBI accepted as a client after one of their human rights lawyers was threatened with a gun. They will spend the next 9 hours in front of the office writing letters, reading books, or chatting with the staff, while showing to anyone who passes by that there is an international concern for what happens here. At pre-set times, they call the Jayapura team on cell or satellite phones to let the team know that they and the LP3BH staff are ok, even though there have been two visits by Indonesian intelligence staff the previous day.

Wamena (Papua Central Highlands), 9:00 AM: Hubi and Sybille, PBI Trainers, and Theo, an Indonesian co-facilitator, launch a four-day conflict resolution training with Wamena-based local NGO YSBA (Yayasan Silimo Bina Adat, Organisation for the Promotion of Traditional Life).

Local peace builders in the organisation requested training on conflict resolution and peace building for individuals working for peace in the highlands area and wish to develop a network of local peace builders. They will explore local methods of mediating disputes. They have designed the training in response to questionnaires filled out by the participants, incorporating real life scenarios into the already highly participatory workshop format. The participants will use the tools provided at the training to design their own conflict resolution models to use when they return to their communities.

Jayapura (Papua), 12:00 Noon: Megan and Thierry, PBI team members, buy gado-gado (steamed vegetables with spicy peanut sauce) over rice, with sweet avocado juice from the warung in the corner of the pasar (local market). With food in hand, they travel across town to relieve their colleagues and continue the protective accompaniment (PA) of PBHI (Indonesian Legal Aid and Human Rights Association) lawyers at the Court of First Instance Jayapura.

Clearwater (Manitoba, Canada), 1:30 PM (local time): Celia, the fundraiser, puts the finishing touches on a report of PBI Indonesia's activities for one of the donor organizations that fund the Project. She has compiled information from different parts of the project, including team and project sub-committees reports, over this past quarter. Regular internal reporting helps inform and coordinate different aspects of our work.

Jakarta (Java), 2:30 PM: Team members Tessa and Kevin try to hail a taxi on the bustling thoroughfare near the PBI house. The call to prayer sounds again from the mosques across the city. They are on their way to the third in a series of contact meetings with foreign embassies and Indonesian government authorities they have scheduled today. The solid relationship PBI maintains with the diplomatic community and the host government gives security to the work of the field teams.

Ottawa, ON (Canada), 3:30 PM (local time): Chris, from the PBI Canada office, meets with a representative at Canadian Foreign Affairs. The representative wants information about new developments regarding the Manokwari trip and offers to contact Indonesian authorities if there are problems. The team has not requested further action at this time, but Chris will follow up with Valerie once she is back at the office in Jayapura.

London (UK), 4:00 PM (local time): Project Committee members join the monthly phone conference call with the Indonesia teams and other Indonesia Project Committee members in 6 countries. Kathryn takes notes on the Jayapura team's report of the protective accompaniment this morning in Manokwari. She will include this information in her meeting tomorrow with the Foreign Minister in London. As with all the high-level networking carried out by PBI volunteers and staff in fifteen countries, Kathryn will enlist support for PBI from government representatives. They will join their colleagues in receiving regular updates from the teams and responding to issues of concern for threatened activists when needed.

Banda Aceh (Nanggroe Aceh Darussalam, Sumatra), 7:00 PM: The team gathers over dinner, the only time they are sure to see each other during their busy day. Tonight, Katherine and Caroline stopped in the market on the way home to buy bungkus (an Indonesian take-away meal with rice). The team members use this time to find a quiet moment of relaxation and share stories about their day. Nick and Karrina have just returned from a "peace community" meeting with the participants from a joint PBI and Aceh Institute youth peace camp.

Hamburg (Germany), 7:30 PM (local time): Astrid and Christian from the German PBI country group present PBI and the Indonesia Project to university students in Hamburg. After slides and a discussion, numerous people sign up for the emergency response network (ERN) and others offer to help the country group in their activities to support the Project. Some are thinking about eventually training and travelling to Indonesia to join the teams as volunteers.

Jakarta (Java), 9:00 PM: Activists from WALHI (Friends of the Earth Indonesia) based in Jakarta, visit the Jakarta team to watch the evening news and share impressions of current events. Lars is in the office recording the latest developments from Kalimantan in an article for the Pa Khabar, the periodic newsletter from the teams. Meanwhile, in Jayapura, another power outage forces the team to take a break from writing reports on today's activities. The teammates move to the deck upstairs and gaze at the stars across the midnight sky. The day ends and people sleepily drift off to their beds. The situation could get worse tomorrow and in the coming days or maybe, everyone hopes, it could get better.