Pacific Rim

These are busy times for the economic development director in our house, what with an 10-person team to manage, a language barrier to navigate, new agriculture consultants to find in Java (or Zambia), conferences, donor presentations, field visits, and hectic traffic to navigate from the wrong side of the road. (She is our designated driver). On Wednesday at 8 p.m., Hayley settled down at the dinner table to focus on the next adventure: her upcoming appearance on a local, public affairs TV show in two-and-a-half hours. “What am I going to say?” she sighed, panic creeping in. “How ‘bout some bullet points,” I said. She produced a piece of scrap paper, folded it in half and set to jotting. The paper quickly unfolded, the bullet points spreading into the double digits. Her head was full of nuances in the economy, beset by 30 years of conflict, laid flat by the devastating tsunami, pumped up by $8 billion in new aid money. I said: “Just keep it simple, like you were explaining it to your Mom or your brother.”

“You don’t understand: I don’t do simple!” she replied. “Grad school appearances I can do. But I can’t speak without jargon anymore. I used to be able to. I remember the first day I came to Mercy Corps, I read this report – full of jargon – and I was like “What is this!” That was a long time ago. So just enjoy life in your little jargon-less world over there.” She fought a smirk and retreated to the bedroom to polish up.

At 10 p.m., the Mercy Corps van, already packed with Mark, the Corps’ Aceh director, and three young Indonesians staffers, Ardian, Dian, and Nazar, drove us a few minutes to a narrow, two-story shop building with an illuminated ACEH TV sign high on the façade. We walked through the garage-like entryway, past a half-dozen motorbikes and five guys sitting on couch watching TV, and headed back to a studio room. Mark followed Hayley under a ON AIR sign sitting over the studio door. “She got all gussied up didn’t she?” he said, turning to me. She wore a long-sleeved, wrap-front blue top and grey cotton skirt. A shade restrained but acceptable in any Acehnese living room, and it was gracefully appointed: a chain of seven Afghani amber ovals hung around her neck and three turquoise slivers in train dangled from each ear.

The show set for “Obrolan Malam” — Night Talk — was primed to go. Bright spots and three small cameras trained on four wooden upholstered chairs and a low coffee table sitting on a riser with a checkerboard floor. A big signboard formed the sets’ back wall, the bottom word “Malam” obscured by the chairs. The side walls were thin, red polyester curtains. Other signboards — “Musik Zone,” “Korupsi dan Koruptor” — were pushed against the walls around the studio. Three young cameramen milled around aloofly. Through a huge window in the wall at one end of the studio, we could see another baby-faced posse manning the control room piled high with screens. Soon Aulia, Obrolan Malam’s 18-year-old whisp of a host, hustled into the room with a laptop, a list of advance questions for the Corps crew and a light layer of powder on his face. If there was anyone over 25 in the building, I didn’t see him. (no women to be found, either). Ardian said the station was just a few years old. (I’m beginning think that the media/networking start-up is also the hip venture here in post-tsunami Aceh, even if it’s older stuff like magazines, radio and TV stations, media consultancies, internet cafes and providers, instead of Indonesian Facebook)

Aulia hammered out his script on the computer while Hayley, Mark and Nazar were wired up with lapel mics. They drifted onto the set, 10:30 rolled around, and with a snap of the fingers from one camera man, they were off.

If the pace was a little pokey for the first few minutes (Aulia: “Give us the background on Mercy Corps, Mr. Mark Ferdig”), it was enough to admire young Aulia, his grew suit shining under the lights, switching back and forth from Indonesian to English and engaging a couple of folks from across the Pacific. The listeners, presumably, understood only bits and pieces.

Things quickly ratcheted up after the first commercial break. Just as Aulia leaned across the circle to ask Hayley if she could explain how the Corps was helping the Acehnese economy, a loud ringing sound reverberated in the studio. “We have a caller,” Aulia said, straightening up. A man from the outskirts of the city wanted the Obrolan Malam panel to rate the performance of the Indonesian reconstruction and rehabilitation agency — BRR in local-speak. Not a softball; the agency has been a lightning rod for any complaints about reconstruction. That afternoon 150 local students staged a sit-in on the BRR grounds, asking them to speed up permanent housing construction. Mark furrowed his brow and tread on eggshells. “They’ve had their challenges,” he said of BRR. “We all have. But what they’ve able to accomplish overall has been remarkable.”

The phone continued to ring in the studio, usually right smack in the middle of the conversation. The questions didn’t get any easier. What was Mercy Corps doing to help small businesspeople? Why were they only training local village councils and not community leaders outside the government? Wasn’t it high time for the buleks — the foreigners— to go home, to stop driving up car and housing prices? Aulia did not translate this question for the foreigners ( a little too hot?), handing it quickly off to Nazar, the Corps’ only Indonesia speaker. Nazar looked uncomfortable but answered nonetheless. (I couldn’t catch the gist). Ardian, the pr guy sitting with me in the audience, later passed a translation of the question discreetly on to Mark through host Aulia. Mark found an opening to answer. “Pak,” he said, formally addressing the buleks-out caller. “You’re right, the costs have gone up. It’s something we NGOs need to continue to talk about it.” Later, he called attention to Nazar, an Acehnese, who had a prominent role running Mercy Corps government affairs program. The message: we are handing things over. Whatever thin polyester curtains formed the set walls on upstart ACEH TV, say this about the crew: they had brought some lively substance to the little blinking box in people’s living rooms, a worthy feat anywhere.

Eventually, between callers, Hayley got an opening. She noted that the finishing of Aceh raw products and the major markets that sold them had shifted out of Aceh during 30 years of conflict, to places like the neighboring provincial capital of Medan. “We hope those market centers, like Medan, will be part of the solution in rebuilding the economy in Aceh,” she said. Ardian flashed a thumbs-up from the back of the room. Host Aulia pressed for more: So who, exactly, are you helping? Hayley replied. “One of the areas we’re working in is the rice industry. We’re trying to boost rice farmers. We would like local kiosks and restaurants and hotels all to be serving rice that’s grown and milled in Aceh. That doesn’t happen today. But one day, we hope it will.”

It wasn’t a world beater, but it was a mission, clear and simple. A take-home nugget.

When it was all over, the mics pulled off the lapels, the cameramen moving their gear quietly and swiftly toward the late-night news show set next door to Obrolan Malam, we went home with something else. A little of that TV light glow lingering around us.

Take care until next time,
Oakley