Dr. Carolyn De Marco didn’t really mean to go to Aceh.
Harvest, a Canadian midwife who had already served at the Bumi Sehat Clinic in Bali, visited Carolyn in rural British Columbia and urged her to join the medical team. The doctor rather flippantly agreed. Then a journalist misquoted her and wrote that she was on her way to the tsunami zone. Rather reluctantly, Carolyn made her way to Bali with the intention of taking over the Bumi Sehat Clinic for a few weeks. The next thing she knew she was in a devastated village in Aceh, treating patients in a bamboo clinic.
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I was hesitant to go,” she admits now. “I wasn’t sure I could deal with the grief. But it was absolutely the right thing to do.”
Carolyn returned radiant from almost a month in Aceh. In her 30 years of practice she found the work at the clinic uniquely rewarding. As a pioneer of natural medicines she treated her Acehnese patients with a combination of conventional medications and herbal tinctures, essential oils, Chinese herbs, homeopathy, salt water soaks, castor oil packs and other therapies. The Acehnese were very open to this approach.
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Many of the patients we saw still carried deep grief, manifesting as headache, coughs, skin problems and insomnia,” she recalls. “The stories were overwhelming. We saw people who could only sleep 30 minutes at a time, people with blood pressure over the top of the scale, people whose children had been torn from their arms by the sea. We treated them with homeopathic grief remedies and Hope and Joy oils from Young Living Essential Oils. We also used a Trauma Card which has a geometric pattern that helps reprogram grief, developed and donated by the Gentle Wind Project. The patients improved visibly and said they felt stronger after these treatments.”
Working with Harvest and Eric, her translator, Carolyn saw between 40 and 60 patients every day at the clinic or in surrounding villages. The warmth, courage and resilience of the people was impressive, as was their openness to the strangers who had come to help them.
Working conditions were challenging with heavy rains, earth tremors and lack of infrastructure. Even after hot days of intense work, sleep didn’t come easily for volunteers living in close quarters with thin walls. Then on the evening of March 28, a second massive earthquake of over 8 struck the coast. For eight long minutes the earth rolled, giving the team a taste of the terror that had touched the survivors in Samatiga. Mercifully, no tsunami followed this quake.
Conditions in the villages around the clinic continue to be grim. About 10,000 people live within walking distance of the clinic - and walking is the only option for most, because the tsunami swept away their cars and motorcycles. With so many trees destroyed by the waves, the surroundings are hotter even than usual. In the last week of May, a heavy rainfall unearthed 80 bodies near the villages. Some survivors are crowded into barracks surrounded by filthy water in which swarms of disease-carrying mosquitoes breed. Malaria is rife. Other survivors live in tents, now moldy after months of monsoon rain. Many still live in terror of another tsunami. Frequent earthquakes jangle nerves that are still shaky after five months.
Food and water continue to be problematical. Most survivors are still subsisting on a diet of white rice and noodles from donor agencies, but even these meager handouts won’t go on forever. Fresh fruit and vegetables brought in from the mountains by pushbike are exorbitantly expensive. Because most of the fishing boats were destroyed, fish and seafood are rare even in this area near the coast. Meat and eggs are even rarer. No one has any money.
The little clinic itself, made of untreated bamboo 4 months ago, is coming to the end of its life. Borer beetle is powdering the floors and the roof leaks. There’s a rumour that a generous international corporation plans to fund a permanent community centre and clinic in its stead. Many hopes are pinned on this.
Given her initial reluctance to step into the environment of post-tsunami Aceh, Carolyn is already planning her next trip to the clinic at Samatiga. “The experience was just the opposite of what I expected it to be. The people were so inspiring. It was much more about life than death, hope than despair. Working at the clinic in Samatiga is one of the most worthwhile things I have ever done.”
Robin Lim, head of the Bumi Sehat team, sums it up. “The Bumi Sehat volunteers who keep going back by choice to Aceh are more than a little touched in the head. They are touched in the heart by love.”
Dr. Carolyn DeMarco specializes in women’s health and alternative medicine. She has lectured throughout Canada and the United States and appeared frequently on television. Dr. Demarco is author of ‘Take Charge of Your Body: Women’s Health Advisor’ and ‘Doctor DeMarco Answers Your Questions’, a mini-encyclopedia of natural remedies for over 100 conditions. Visit her website at www.demarcomd.com
