IFRC, 25 August, 2003

By Hadi Kuswoyo in Aceh

Cut Farida had heard stories of schools elsewhere in the Indonesian province of Aceh being attacked. But she hoped the primary school where she taught, in the village of Lempisang, would be safe because of its location in the middle of town.

One morning, as she walked to the school where she had taught for seven years, she saw the headmaster running towards her. Overnight the school had been burned to the ground, he told her. Only a toilet and a fence remained.

Her school had become the latest victim in fighting between government forces and Aceh separatists.

Farida, 42, was shocked. "I can't imagine how my pupils will face this tragedy. The exam is coming up in a few weeks," she remembers thinking as tears welled up in her eyes.

She and her students, aged six to 12, started to collect and clean anything they found that could be reused. Then they held classes sitting on a floor at the town hall.

"We couldn't save the school but we can insist on teaching, even if the facilities are temporary," says Farida's colleague Nurhayati, 39.

These days the enthusiastic children are studying in a building with plastic walls and a corrugated iron roof. The six-classroom "emergency school", complete with benches, tables and a blackboard, can accommodate 250 children.

The Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) helped erect the temporary school in Lempisang to replace buildings destroyed in arson attacks in the week after May 19, when martial law was imposed after negotiations between the government and the separatist Free Aceh Movement (GAM) broke down. SATKORLAK (the Local Coordinating Body on Disaster in Aceh) estimates that 500 schools burned that week throughout the province, leaving 100,000 children without schools. Some students stopped studying, while others now work in emergency conditions.

The Indonesian Red Cross has nearly finished rebuilding five temporary schools and hopes to rebuild ten in all, with donations from the local community, while the Indonesian Ministry of Education has pledged to rebuild the other schools.

Ison, a primary student at the emergency school, is glad classes have continued: "At noon it's very hot but I'm happy to be able to continue my studies," he says, and his classmates agree. Students at a nearby secondary school had to study under the trees to escape the heat, after their school was torched. Some classes were dampened by rain. They have a new building now, thanks to donations of sand, cement and coconut trees from the local community.

Farida hopes her school can be permanently rebuilt in the future. "We're really thankful that the PMI has built an emergency school for us. It's better than studying on the floor or under trees." But she also prays for an end to the violence that continues to threaten more than schools and education in Aceh.