Bonjour International Family of Bumi Sehat,                                                                   

Sunday, 31 Jan. 2010

We arrived in Haiti yesterday morning...

After two very busy days in the city of Santo Domingo, our team of 7 headed out overland, into the beautiful countryside of the Dominican Republic. We filled a very large box truck to the top of supplies that we bought with your donations plus all that we received free from the Dominican Red Cross. We focused on long term supplies, such as shovels, cooking utensils, tarps for our use and many tarps for the people of Haiti. We received milk, bottled water and cases and cases of sardines from the Red Cross.

Once the truck was full, our crew of 7 hopped into a mini van and traveled for 6 hours to reach our destination of Port Cabbo Rojo. This was a large dock which the DR military used to send boats into Haiti. We loaded the bottom of the boat with the help of the military. We were joined by 5 nuns from a local NGO dedicated to orphanages and a Spanish psychiatrist.

prepared by Ibu Robin Lim

The day and night of the Full Moon in March 2009 brought 8 new babies into the world at Bumi Sehat Bali!  We are busy indeed.

In early January, two Bumi Sehat families who had lost children, just the previous year, due to birth defects, had perfectly healthy babies, born on the same day.  How they celebrated together with smiles and hugs!

I must tell you all the story of Ibu Yudi and Pak Mulyono.  They married across religions, Christian and Muslim, so their families have rejected them.  We met them struggling with one child and pregnant with twins.

prepared by Ibu Robin Lim

The Bupati (Governor) of West Aceh visits us at Klinik Bumi Sehat

The people of Aceh wake to a huge pink sky, and they look toward the sea. The sea, that forever looking backward in history, has been the people’s source of sustenance. The sea they harvested, giving them work and the poetry of food, has been their art, their life.

They look at the calm sea today and they remember the day of betrayal, of salty tears, December 26th, 2004. At just about 8 a.m., an earthquake measuring 9.3 on the richter scale struck. It was a terrible earthquake, but the people of Aceh had long lived with the shaking of their Sumatran foundations.

Then the sea betrayed them, a Tsunami. Not one wave but many, growing bigger and blacker and filling with all the churned broken belongings of modern life. Roiling with police cars, sheets of metal and glass, hunks of cement, furniture, animals still trapped in their cages, people, people who were quickly becoming corpses, by the hundreds of thousands.

Prepared by Ibu Robin Lim

As 2007 grew to a close, we at Bumi Sehat had much to be grateful for. This year, Yayasan (non-profit foundation) Bumi Sehat (Healthy Mother Earth) was chosen #1 not-for-profit organization in Bali, of over 700. The selection process was rigorous and all aspects of our projects, from patient care, to computer courses for youth, to recycling were analyzed, our administration was checked and rechecked to see if our licenses are complete and current, our financial books were reviewed and we were found to be corruption free. I must admit to being very, very proud of our staff both in Aceh and in Bali. Also, I feel full of gratitude for the donors, who make every aspect of our work possible.