I was waiting to board a Garuda flight to Surabaya when Beth sent me a text telling me that a Garuda jet had just burst into flame upon landing in Yogyakarta. I am ashamed to say that I gave this little thought. Three years in this country has induced a kind of fatalism that borders on insouciance in the face of the seemingly incessant disasters.
Some of these disasters, such as last week's landslides in Flores and earthquake in Sumatra, are natural (though arguably the landslide was exacerbated by illegal logging), while others are either man-made or simply the sorts of accidents that could happen anywhere.
However, this particular disaster could not just be pushed to the back of my mind, lest my knuckles become even whiter as they grip the armrests of the ancient Boeing 737 as it slews and judders its way down the runway. Sadly, this disaster involved people I knew, either directly or indirectly. The person I was going to see in Surabaya told me that one of his management team was missing (he was later confirmed dead).
Two weeks ago I was at AusAid's offices for a meeting (they are the main donor of the program I am working on). The highly respected director of the AusAid mission in Jakarta, Allison Sudradjat, was also one of those killed in the Yogyakarta crash.
Most tragically, and closest to home, my friend and colleague's wife perished on the plane. She was the Australian Embassy spokesperson. My friend waited all day for news, increasingly baffled and traumatized by the conflicting stories reaching him from various sources. Official confirmation of Liz's demise did not arrive until Friday. She leaves a 10 month old baby girl behind.
Both these women were very high profile in Indonesia. As The Australian newspaper reports:
Indonesia's President, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, has expressed his "sympathy and sorrow". In a letter to Prime Minister John Howard, Dr Yudhoyono said some of the victims had become "our friends at the presidential office".
"Elizabeth O'Neill OAM is known as a warm, kind person who smiles at everybody and we all like her. She was at my office the day before the accident," he wrote.
"Allison Sudradjat is well- known as a dedicated and creative AusAID officer and we will forever appreciate her compassion and her good work for Australian-Indonesian relations.
In some sense one has to marvel that so many people survived the crash, and give thanks for that, but when these events visit those close to us, or even those separated from us by one or two degrees, it naturally triggers a more narrowly focused empathy than may well up in us after more remote disasters.
I would like to think that the past week has just been one of those thankfully rare periods of trauma that test all of us from time to time, serving to remind us of our own fragility. All that we have is contingent, it can be snatched away from us in an instant, and however many people may offer condolences or sympathy, even the President himself, as the evening draws to a close those left behind will be alone in the darkness.
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