However, as the bus drove further and further, the scenery around us started to change. There were tumbled houses everywhere, but most of them were made of wood so there weren't many casualties. Some brick houses had crumpled or had been torn open.

Our Indonesia branch office had already made contact with rescue teams and medical teams from Taiwan and had the most up-to-date information on the situation. The branch office had also received information from local town halls and learned that the four towns of Gading Cempaka, Sukajati, Selamu and Peno were the hardest-hit areas in the province.

Brother Chen Chin-fu went with a group from the Indonesian air force bureau of health to investigate the conditions. They discovered that many international aid groups had distributed relief supplies in many areas, so they chose to investigate three villages in Selamu, a remote area that had hardly any visitors.

Brother Chen went to the Chinese-run Sinar Mas Group and asked for five natives who worked in the local palm tree plantations. Altogether there were twelve volunteers, who split up into four groups and spent three days visiting local areas. After their inspections, they decided to hand out ten kilograms of rice, white sugar, milk powder, cooking oil, instant noodles and skin lotion to each of 85 families in Selamu village, 246 families in Rimbo Kedui village and 160 families in Napal village.

While we were distributing supplies in Selamu, we saw some refugees wearing caps embroidered with Chinese characters reading "Hsinsheng Elementary," and one old man wore a jacket embroidered "Taoming High School." Obviously, relief material from Taiwan had already arrived.

Although their homes had tumbled into pieces or were seriously cracked, the refugees, used to living in poverty, didn't seem particularly upset about their situation. They were rather amused when the Tzu Chi volunteers would unexpectedly say "Thank you" to them in Indonesian while handing them relief supplies.


All their work in vain

We paid a visit to 65-year-old Nupin, who lived close to the distribution center. His home was crude and had two cracks in the walls, but it still looked very strong.

There was nothing else but a bed in the room. In the kitchen, some woks were piled on the floor, the bottoms of which had been burned black. On the other side was a stove used for cooking rice. Out the back door was a well. All these were the normal facilities for average rural families in Indonesia.

Another young man, 30-year-old Gupuh in Rimbo Kedui, had just gotten a new home. But before his new home was fully furnished, it was half demolished by the earthquake.

"I spent ten years working away from home on a farm in Johor, Malaysia," Gupuh said sadly. "I scrimped and saved every cent I made and was able to buy this house. But it was gone in just a few seconds." Although he now lived in a tent, he said he was still young and could work again to rebuild his home.

When we reached Napal village, it was already dark and there was no electricity. Fortunately, some villagers came out with kerosene lamps and we were able to proceed with the distribution.

Fifteen-year-old Heri told us that an elementary school not far from there had been destroyed. We went to take a look and found that three classrooms had fallen apart. The children told us that they had been having classes outdoors since the earthquake.

"Has it been raining recently?" we inquired. "How do you attend classes when it rains?"

They replied, "We haven't had any rain since the earthquake."

I guessed that heaven had been kind to them, but then I thought of how the children had to suffer since there wasn't any shelter in this sultry weather.

Walking a little further on the campus, we saw a little wooden building that had been half completed. This would be a temporary classroom for the whole school of more than a hundred students in six classes, who would have to take turns using it. The hut was built with simple boards, so it wasn't very strong, but at least it could shield the students from the sunlight and rain. It was better than nothing.


The force of the earthquake

The next day, Brother Chen led us to another disaster area: the villages of Gading Cempaka and Kuala Lempuing. When we got out of the car, we saw a temporary medical station.

According to the staff there, the local health office had been completely wrecked and couldn't be used anymore. They thus had to set up tents to serve the villagers. The floors in the health office had been pushed upward, and the walls were torn in half. All this told us how powerful the quake was.

We then headed to another elementary school in Betungan village. Principal Tazin Dalil pointed to classrooms with collapsed roofs and walls. "Now the students have to use the hallways for their classes. It's so lucky that the summer break is coming soon." However, he was still quite concerned about the enormous amount of money needed for reconstruction, because it wouldn't be easy to raise.

The temperature drops sharply at night along the coast, and Brother Chen was afraid that refugees might have a hard time coping with the chill while camping outdoors. So he distributed all eighty comforters delivered by the Indonesian air force to eighty refugee families living near the sea in Bengkulu.

During our two-day visit here in Sumatra, we saw that many of the houses that had collapsed were made of wood, and houses made of bricks stood only one or two stories tall. Therefore, the disaster was not as serious as we had first imagined. However, rebuilding them is not an easy matter for refugees whose lives have always been poor.

When we were distributing supplies in Rimbo Kedui, it suddenly started raining. No one was prepared for it, and everyone ran under roof eaves to get out of the rain. I saw a boy in a blue shirt and red pants chasing after a cow in the rain. The cow was probably the only major property his family had left. If the cow were lost, it would have been a great loss to the family.

A question suddenly came across my mind: while chasing after the cow, did the boy feel worried, helpless or amused?