Four months in Jakarta

by Stuart Bowman

I joined the PBI Indonesia project in June 2002 and it has been great. I spent four months working in the Jakarta office mostly building up and sustaining our political networks in the Indonesian capital. This means us getting our best clothes on and meeting embassy officials, representatives of the Indonesian government, security forces and local NGOs. It can be fascinating work, picking the brains of people who have a real inside knowledge of what goes on in Indonesia. It is also really varied.

One minute you are drinking wine at an embassy reception and the next welcoming a group of Papuan human-rights activists into the PBI house. It can also be challenging convincing sceptics that "unarmed bodyguards" can really have an impact in a place like Aceh. One of my best moments in my four months in Aceh was a recent field trip we did to a small village with one of our clients, RPuK (Women's Volunteer Team For Humanity), to the closing ceremony of one of their trauma counselling programmes.

PBI accompanied RPuK to this village about 18 months ago, four days after many of the houses had been burnt down following a clash between government soldiers and GAM (The Free Aceh Movement, an armed group who have been fighting for Acehnese independence). At that point, RPuK did not feel safe enough to go to the village alone and PBI subsequently went back with them when they began the trauma counselling programme for local children. However, over the next 11 months RPuK gained in confidence and visited the village independently.

Going back for the closing ceremony gave us a great opportunity to see how conditions in the village had improved and how the initial presence of PBI had really opened up space allowing RPuK to work there.