Banda Aceh: More Developed Than It Sounds
So we arrived, and the Medan domestic airport burned down the night before we arrived, which was quite exciting in theory - it was a pain to haul our luggage over to the Garuda office to find out what was happening. Strangely, the situation wasn't too bad - they seemed to have it all planned out, and nobody looked like they were fazed. The girls were joking that they were so used to calamity that it's part of life now, and they just get on with it.
This is the office from which I'm working out of: the World Vision Banda Aceh office. There are a couple of departments, some housed in different buildings further down along the road. Plenty of NGOs here - like Cambodia, UNDP, UNFPA, UN FAO, UNICEF, UNIFEM etc etc - slap a "UN" in front of anything and it's probably here as well. Not to mention the rest of the big development agencies - although most of them have executed their exit strategies (like WV did in Aug 2007), and have left mostly local staff to run their programmes from now on.
Sometimes buildings are just... buildings. This part of Aceh did not get hit by the Tsunami.
The food is okay here. The good is really, really good, the bad is just crap fried in oil. Getting lost while trying to navigate the Aceh street maze. One of the health centres in which I am conducting research and interviews. Libellés : academic, humanitarian, school, travel
[Banda Aceh: More Developed Than It Sounds]
Sngs Alumni @ 4.12.07 { 0 comments }
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