"I make my way though the city of plastic tarps and makeshift tents. Cooking fires belch gray smoke, through which filter rays of the late afternoon sun. It is almost dinnertime at one of Dili’s many refugee camps. This one is close to the international airport—as close as possible to where aid supplies first arrive. Thousands of people stay here, I am told, people who left their homes in the wake of the recent violence. They are but a small portion of the refugees in East Timor struggling to survive. Many now call a dirty tarp stretched between trees their home.

I see a mother wash her naked children in plastic tubs. A teenager lazily strums his guitar and croons a Timorese folk song to his audience of friends. Barefoot children greet me with a cries of Malai! Malai!—smiles and waves when they see me. Many adults stare blankly ahead, retreated to another world. Or they sleep to pass the time.” Norman Ng, “Tears in Timor: Pages from a Photographer’s Notebook,” The Virginia Quarterly Review, 2006.

2006 EARTHQUAKE

We are pleased to announce that through the donations we have received, we were immediately able to donate 100 slings to the May 2006 Earthquake victims. Our father, Masayoshi, and his colleagues bought the slings from vendors in the earthquake devastated region and was able to give a little token of hope to 100 families who had just lost their homes in yet another terrible disaster.

"At 05:53 hours on 27 May 2006, an earthquake measuring 5.9 on the Richter scale (BMG) struck Indonesia’s central island of Java. The epicentre was located approximately 37 kilometres south of the culturally and historically important city of Yogyakarta. The earthquake impacted five districts within Yogyakarta province and six within neighbouring Central Java province, together home to 6.9 million people, severely damaging infrastructure and particularly housing. The two worst-affected districts were Bantul in Yogyakarta, and Klaten in Central Java. 5,744 people were killed immediately with nearly 45,000 injured. Over 350,000 houses were damaged beyond repair and 278,000 suffered lesser damage, directly affecting 2.7 million people and rendering 1.5 million of them homeless, three times the number in Aceh after the Tsunami (26 December 2004). The total damage and losses are estimated at $3.1 billion, comparable to the devastating earthquakes in Gujarat and Kashmir." - United Nations IASC Report

"The earthquake damaged even more private houses than the tsunami disaster but the world is not paying much attention to it. We need more assistance and to raise more funds. Let people know that your dad and his colleagues are eager to distribute baby slings in the IDP camps in Yogyakarta and Central Java. So many people are living without shelter." - E-mail from Masayoshi Matsushita