Off the Beaten Path Part 2: Delivering Donations to Remote Villages and Minorities in North Lombok
Sunday, 16th September, we packed up our cars again to distribute donations to villages in North Lombok. This time our goodwill ambassador from the United States, Marco, and volunteer nurse, Nomi, joined the trip together with our Director, Cofounders, Counselor and a child.
We brought 250 donation packages consist of rice, sugar, cooking oil, milk, spices, and noodle. We also prepared some basic medicine packages for adults and children, personal hygiene kits, dried food, milk, water, t-shirts, and vitamins.
It took us more than 2 hours to arrive at the first village on our list, The Dusun Panser Daya village. According to the chief village, Mr Sahdan Ilyas, there are 130 families in this small village. He also informed us that there were still several families sleeping under the sky because there wasn’t enough tents or tarps for everybody. Luckily, we brought 5 tarps so we could solve this problem immediately.
The second village was more challenging to get into. We were driving through dry land and suddenly arrived in a jungle until we finally reached Pawang Tenun village. There are 121 families and over 300 inhabitants.
We decided to stop in one of the houses there and 5 minutes later, people came from all directions and gathered to meet us. According to their Chief Village, Mr. Misudin, water is scarce in Pawang Tenun. People have to travel one day towards the mountain to get water. Water truck comes twice a week but it’s not enough to supply to the whole village. We dropped off plenty of drinking water and food packages here too.
At this village, Nomi the nurse also treated a few children who had wound and infection. We also found some cases of stomachache and diarrhea, possibly because of lack of water and bad hygiene. The closest local health clinic (Puskesmas) is 15 km away.
On the other side, Marco did a great job entertaining the kids with simple games and fun English lesson on the spot. He was also busy throwing kids up in the air!
As the day drew in, we got to get on to the next villages in our list. To make up time, we did “door-to-door” distribution to Pawang Timpas Barat village and Pawang Timpas Timur village. In these villages, we encountered minorities Hindu families. There were also not many donations coming in for them. So they were very happy and thankful to receive us.
We especially thank TDA Community, Kapital Boost, Horison Group, PPME (Persatuan Pemuda Muslim Europa) – Den Haag, Stichting Indahnya Sedekah, North Charity Calls(NCC), @ditiskatwijk, Youvit and Mimi & Monika from Germany for their goods and financial contribution in this donation delivery.
