Lightning Strike & Great News for Gomo Cousins

Normally tropical storms give some warning and we unplug our equipment but Thursday night we were hit by the first strike. I took a medicinal zap from the metal body of the project's new Powerbook and everything went black as the air was sucked from our ears. It was very very close and could have been much worse. Both our Macs lost their modems and we are working on the back-up pc.

Expect some delays answering mail until we check on parts availability in Jakarta and Singapore. Skype is functional but AIM/iChat is off line.

WARNING - CONTENT MAY SHOCK

10 year old Soterian Laia has horrific burn scarring

ELM - NWM volunteer Lisa Friesen has had a remarkable meeting with Shriners in Hawaii and they are keen to treat Enawati (13) and Soterian(10) in Hawaii. These Gomo cousins were seriously burned in a kerosene lamp explosion while living in a tent and they will both require extensive skin grafts and a long period of rehabilitation in the US. UVI and GBI are focused on raising funds for airfares and living expenses for the girls and a legal guardian, Soterian's father, Handy Laia.

Enawati's burns are extensive

Lisa has worked hard over the past few months and last week she had a wonderful meeting with Shriners Hawaii. They are excited to be able to help the girls and have other Indonesian children under care. Hawaii has many advantages over mainland US for the girls. It is more tropical and being an island culture, we are confident they will feel more at home.

See http://www.notseennotheard.com for more fundraising options or donate via our ELM Donations Pay Pal account with a note that your funds are specifically for the girls treatment.

The Scale of ELM's Mission

This map helps to understand the scale of the area we will continue to support once we secure full funding for our new mother ship.

The Blue text indicates areas we have supported with "Batavia" & "Electric Lamb" to date.
The Yellow text indicates areas where we have only worked with smaller boats including "Electric Lamb"

Red cities have airports. (Sibolga is a military airstrip)
Green cities are our preferred loading ports.
Yellow shaded areas are the areas we have either already supported or areas we know need support and are not getting any.

The only yellow area we can reach by commercial flight/ferry + vehicle is Gomo in SE Nias.

NW Aceh is serviced by a temporary road but it has deteriorated to the point where it is only passable after extended periods without rain.

There is motorcycle access to West Simeulue but no 4 wheel vehicle access due to bridge damage.

There are no roads on the Banyaks or Batus and only a few km of passable roads in the entire Mentawai chain.

The map of Europe is at the same scale...... We had not compared the extent of our operations area in this way until this morning. The comparison came as something of a shock.

The enormity of the area where ship based support is urgently needed is daunting but no other NGO is equipped to tackle the problem.

Our efforts are focused on raising funds for a new mothership because without it, there will be no hope or help for the isolated communities in the yellow shaded areas. We have continued to work with our small yacht, but frankly it is not efficient and too small to make much impact on the problem alone.

ELM have proven how effective we can be in ship-borne mode and that is our strength - our aid niche. That remains our focus.