Month: August 2018

After the 2004 tsunami, aid workers from all over the world flew into Aceh. In the aid world, “Aceh” is still associated with the tsunami, beneficiaries of the world’s largest humanitarian response in human history. This narrative not only reduces Acehnese to victims, it also overlooks the role of many Achenese in humanitarian efforts that began even before the tsunami. Aceh’s culture of humanitarianism thus evolved very differently from the rest of the international aid industry – one with important lessons on localization and humanity.

This humanitarianism was on full display when over a thousand Rohingya refugees arrived on Aceh’s shores in 2015, after 7 months of being ping-ponged between different Southeast Asian countries, each refusing them permission to disembark.

(Source)

Although the Indonesian coast guard were under orders to not let the refugee boats land, the Acehnese fishermen deliberately helped the refugees evade them to get to land. When asked why, the fishermen explain that this is their customary law, adat nelayan Aceh, or the custom of the Acehnese fisherman. Namely, when at sea, if they encounter anything that is in need of help, they are under obligation to offer assistance. This is mandatory for injured animals, what more fellow human beings.

Hence, contrary to the narratives in Malaysia and Indonesia, the fishermen are adamant that they did not simply offer help to the Rohingya because they were fellow Muslim brothers. As one of my interviewees put it:

“If we [Acehnese] only help these Rohingya because we come from the same religion, what makes us different from the Buddhists that are trying to throw out these Muslims from their own land?”

Aceh’s humanitarian response to the refugees did not stop at the initial rescue. They were given medical treatment, housed, fed, given language lessons, livelihood training, and even access to the local schooling system.

One of the most important things about the refugee camps in Aceh is the way they treat the refugees with dignity. While most refugee camps are renowned for confining refugee to the camps (like prison cells), I was pleasantly surprised when the Rohingya children brought me out of the camp to this adjacent swimming pool which they could freely use.

This has not been costless for the Acehnese community, who have their own history of conflict and disaster. In part, it is because the Acehnese know what it is like to be a victim of disaster or conflict, that they understand the importance of treating refugees not as objects to be managed efficiently or securely, but as fellow human beings. Moreover, given the large internally displaced population during Aceh’s conflict years, there is no shortage of Acehnese who have had years of experience organizing camps, aid distribution, and engaging with victims of conflict.

But it is not just their experience as victims that informs the Acehnese of how to do humanitarianism. The Acehnese insist that it is their custom to honour their guests, adat pemulia jamee (literally, custom of honouring the guest).

Contrary to the hyper-professionalized international humanitarian industry, everyday acts of Acehnese hospitality like these regularly disrupted my hyper-modern, efficiency-oriented, cold-hearted-optimizing sensibilities. It makes me think that the professionalization of humanitarianism (such as the SPHERE standards) often appears so obviously attractive because it promises tangible, visible, physical benefits, while masking what it takes away – the practical, intangible, human parts of everyday living. That doesn’t make professionalization inherently evil. However, hyper-professionalized projects, designed in the absence of relationships with the very people one wishes to help, become deeply suspect.

As one veteran humanitarian (pictured) put it:

“The NGO world is a world where trial and error is always involved. You never have the peak of knowledge in this work. What’s best practice today may not be best practice in the next ten years. Best practices are always relative. Failure is always relative, and we are always learning.

For example, when the (Acehnese) fishermen rescued the Rohingya – that wasn’t the international standard. In fact, they were taking the risk to rescue them because it was illegal. They did it because of their local custom. That suggests that their local custom was better than the international standards. So why stick with the international standards when there is something better? If this best practice is better than the one before, why not change it?

The problem with professionalism is that it kills the inspiration to learn. How do you know something is done correctly if you’ve never failed? You should do first, and learn. Of course, don’t close your eyes when you do it. Keep your eyes open, be watchful, and you can gain new knowledge.”

Amoz JY Hor is a PhD student in Political Science at the George Washington University. His research explores how emotions affect the way the subaltern is understood in practices of humanitarianism.

Last year, thanks to a Sigur Center research stipend, I spent my summer on the river island of Majuli in the Indian state of Assam. In late May, my friends in the Mishing village of Sitadhar invited me to join them in celebrating Dobur, the festival that marks the end of the harvest and the beginning of monsoon. We gathered in a bamboo hut in the middle of the field, and offered thanks to the deities of Donyi Polo, the indigenous religion that several of the villagers observe. Not far from where we sat, ran the Luhit, a tributary of the Brahmaputra, that connects these villages to the town of Lakhimpur to the north of Majuli island. Between the prayer and the annual feast,  I walked along the banks of the Luhit, observing the rising waters and the swift current. That day cyclone Mora hit the coast of Bangladesh, and while Majuli was not hit by the storm itself, heavy rain pelted down all night and for most of the next day. Soon after, the north-east monsoon hit the shores of the island. I was scheduled to do some archival work in Delhi and as I headed from Majuli to the port of Nimati in Jorhat town, the currents got stronger and the river tore away the dock where we were supposed to land. Our boat was forced to make an emergency landing. When I called my friends in Majuli that afternoon, they seemed alright. The rivers were full, but they were simply wrapping up the harvest. But the next day, Luhit overflowed its banks and its waters ran ferociously into their fields, wreaking havoc. The Ganggin where we had prayed collapsed, shacks used to keep cows and pigs were damaged and several farmers lost their crop.

This May, when I visited Majuli—again, in time for the festival—I was asked if I could spend some time helping the villagers set up their new Ganggin. Built close to where the old bamboo structure had stood, the new Ganggin, made of concrete conveyed a sense of sturdiness that seemed to assure them. The grounds we had very casually walked across only in the previous visit now had shallow craters. Large chunks of earth had been carried away, and even if the river had deposited a fresh layer of silt on these grounds, the uneven land was not as conducive to farming as it had once been. One of the farmers told me that he had not finished harvesting his crop when the floods hit. He had lost over 6000 rupees worth of rice, and had also been unable to salvage the corn he grew for personal use.

This year, working with his wife, daughter-in-law and son, this farmer planned to harvest faster than he had the previous year. But as the day for Dobur came closer, he also had to finish building and decorating the Ganggin. The concrete structure had no paint and it looked pretty stark amid the lush green fields. Hoping to brighten its facade, he asked me to make him some flags with coloured paper. The cheery paper, he hoped, would help people who shared this Ganggin forget that they had lost so much only a year ago, and instead remind them to celebrate the new place of worship and the good harvest.

I—and the good friend whose help I conscripted—spent a good three days making paper flags. Unable to find good crafts material in Majuli,  we planned a trip to the Gar Ali market in the town of Jorhat, where we picked up brightly colored paper, scissors, and tape. Back in Majuli, we wandered around the Goramur market looking for the right kind of chord to hold the flags together. As we sat sipping tea and cutting flags, we invited several questions from curious onlookers. After three days of cutting and tying and more cutting and typing we had flags of three different sizes and styles ready. On the morning of the festival, we worked with the farmer and his friends to decorate the place of worship. After the prayer, he gave us a locket with the Donyi Polo sign on it as a token of his gratitude and friendship.

The day after the festival most of my friends went back to the fields. The festival had come and gone, but the harvest was not quiet over. They worked with an eye on the sky, watching out for signs of the monsoon. I headed to Delhi for archival work, but called to check in when I heard that the monsoons had hit Assam. “This year, we had no trouble from the rain,” one of my interlocutors said. “In fact, we are going to be in trouble because I fear we did not have enough rain.”

I write this blog to call attention to the myriad ways in which people make life amid the erratic climatic patterns in the Brahmaputra Valley. Last year, the rains were heavy in Majuli, and the floods devastating. But where land wasn’t excavated by the flooding waters, the harvest was good. This year, the rains were not as heavy, and the floods not as fierce. But the farmers might have to be concerned about the crop. This uncertainty may not seem entirely uncommon; after all, farming communities have always had to deal with differing patterns of rainfall.

But the excavated craters in their fields tell a different story. When Majuli becomes subject to devastating floods, it loses anything between 3.1 square kilometers to 8.5 square kilometers of land (Lahiri and Sinha 2014). Sometimes—like in the year 2005—entire villages have been washed away. Thus, uncertainty in Majuli is not simply a product of capricious monsoonal rain; it is tempered by the erosion of lived places. My dissertation examines how the Mishing draw on their religious ethical ideals, local knowledge, and other resources available to them to build a life amid erosion. As I get ready to wind up my summer, and start a whole year of fieldwork in Majuli two questions come up for me: What will it take for the bureaucratic institutions involved in the prevention of erosion in the Brahmaputra valley to begin seeing erosion, the changing rainfall and the floods as connected phenomena? In other words what will it take for them to recognize these events as part of the global phenomenon called climate change (Ghosh 2016)?  When they intervene will they learn from local efforts or will the techno-scientific machinery of the state efface local knowledges and practices that allow local communities to make life in this damage planet (Gan et al. 2017)?

References:

Gan, Elaine, Anna Tsing, Heather Anne Swanson,  and Nils Bubandt. 2017. Arts of Living on a Damaged Planet. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press.

Ghosh, Amitav. 2016. The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable.Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Lahiri, Siddharthand Rajiv Sinha. 2014. “Morphotectonic Evolution of the Majuli Island in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, India Inferred from Geomorphic and Geophysical Analysis.” Geomorphology227(2014):101-111.

Shweta Krishnan is a PhD Candidate in the department of Anthropology at George Washington University. Her research interests include the anthropology of religion, science and the environment. Her current project explores religious revival amid riverine erosion in the island of Majuli, Assam.

What’s in a cup of coffee?

In the modern (read: neoliberal) world, coffee is a part of everyday life, the morning drink one picks up on the way to work. Coffee, or kopi in Indonesian, takes on a very different significance in Aceh. If in the modern world, coffee is an individualized drink that gives one the energy boost for the solitary work in the office, kopi is an inherently social drink in Aceh.

One of the things that I quickly learned coming to Aceh is that everything happens at the warkop (or warung kopi, literally coffee shop). It is Aceh’s community and social space par excellence, but many also use it as their “second office” (which is where most people get their wifi), classrooms, meeting rooms, consultation space etc.

Politicians, too, each will have their own “base camp” coffee shop, where their constituents can approach them freely. We even saw civil servants collecting the signature of a more senior civil servant in the coffee shop. Because the coffee shop is where everyone goes to, it is where all sorts of networks are formed.

For many Acehnese, the coffee shop is always contrasted to formal spaces. While the latter are felt to be rigid an uneasy (baku), the coffee shop is a place where rank and status disappear.

It is thus unsurprising that the coffee shop is an important site of contemporary politics in Aceh. Historically, coffee shops were important sites for the exchange of political ideas in Europe as well – it was the staging area before the actual revolutions. Perhaps in the modern world, the rental cost of land is so high that it is difficult, if not impossible, to see the coffee shop as anything other than a business. In Aceh however, the coffee shop remains an affordable site of political community and political action.

This was not always the case however. Aceh’s civil war peaked in 2001-2004 when it was put under martial law. Curfews were imposed, and there were frequent spot checks on the roads. These practices, called “sweeping,’ isolated Acehnese from each other – which was part of the Indonesian’s military strategy of breaking up the separatist movement (Gerakan Aceh Merdeka). Ironically, it was between the years 1996-2004 that Aceh’s student activists’ networks would begin to form. A group that sided neither with the armed separatists nor the Indonesian military, this group rallied around the opposition to human rights violations from either side. They collected reports on human rights abuses and reported them to their networks around the world, hoping to use international pressure to restrain the Indonesian military; they also actively gave “political education” to the separatist combatants on non-violent struggle. Many of them also provided humanitarian relief to internally displaced people from the conflict.

Where did these networks form? From the conversations we had with former activists in coffee shops, it seems that many of these networks began in Banda Aceh’s universities – where Acehnese from all over the province would go to (menrantau) get their degree. In the 1980s and 1990s, Aceh’s civil war had been largely fought under the radar, what the Acehnese refer to as DOM (Daerah Operasi Militer). The activists recall that nobody knew that there was fighting, or the extent of the conflict. They had been told that the Indonesian military were fighting drug smugglers or terrorists.

By around 1996 however, university students in Banda Aceh got to have a better sense when they compared their experiences. By 2001, it was harder and harder to meet openly under marital law. Yet, university students found ways to meet, including in the meunasah (a small scale neighborhood mosque for the village).

These meetings didn’t merely involve planning mobilization, but entailed discussions of Karl Marx’s Das Kapital and Paolo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed, as one activist who majored in engineering recalled. It seems that what brought the student activist networks together was not merely shared grievances – either personal losses or a sense that the Acehnese nation was being violated. What made the movement unique was how they channeled their energy towards devouring “banned books” to make sense of what was happening, and what ought to be done. Unsurprisingly, many of these university students would take it on themselves to descend from the intellectual safe space in Banda Aceh back to the villages.

Today, these political networks can operate much more openly.

Moreover, the preferred site of struggle is no longer with guns, but through democratic politics. Rather, the preferred site of political discussion is the coffee shop – where the likes of Marx, Friere, Gramsci or other revolutionaries are openly talked about – where political visions are born and networks made.

Or, for that matter, over durians, the “King of Fruits:”

Below, a durian seller helps us open the durians:

So what politics / philosophy is in a cup of coffee?

A lot, if we learn to pay attention.

Amoz JY Hor (center) is PhD student in Political Science at the George Washington University. His research explores how emotions affect the way the subaltern is understood in practices of humanitarianism.