Freeman (right), Christoph from the Swiss aid agency SDC (center)
and a coworker clean out 25 years of sludge from a reservoice

Aceh Clam Chowdah

(continued)

By Freeman Anthony

I did my own shopping upon our return from Simeulue in order to whip up a batch of New England Clam chowder that I had described to my colleagues a few days earlier. Clams didn't seem to be an option, as the supermarkets only had lanes dedicated to beauty products, cookies and baby formula, so we headed out to what was left of the fishing docks to see what could be substituted for cod. We returned with a fine selection of fish and prawns that were about half the size of a one-pound Maine lobster. The provisions went to the freezer while we prepared for the biggest night yet at Lambaro.

Michael had been down in reservoir 2, and I'd seen the pictures, but nothing had me ready for the 800mm of sludge that I slid into after descending a rusty ladder from the sole access hatch to the tank. Creamy grey sludge in the slowest moving reservoir had taken hold and would never allow clean water to be present in this plant without complete removal. But how to remove something that is not quite a solid, yet not quite a liquid either? We called the Germans. That night we had every bit of gear that we could get from three agencies including generators and lights from the Swiss, trash pumps from the Germans, and fans and shovels from IRD. The mass effort started at 9 p.m. with a guest appearance from Pak Ritonga, the biggest "Keju" to be found at the PDAM. He appeared in a pressed blue shirt just as the plant's distribution pumps were shut down and supervised the beehive action at the access hatch with an expressionless face.

We had started the work, which seemed impossible, given the difficulty of just moving through the muck, much less getting it out a hatch that is a meter square at best. Christoph, and I jumped in the tank to start the lads onto the job and noticed these odd soft rocks that would crumble under our feet as we waded through the silt. Upon further inspection, it became evident that the sludge had become a perfect home to thousands of freshwater clams. Two of the men had become posted next to the trash pumps as the murky water flushed sludge and crushed clams out to higher ground. We wound with eight large sacks of clams from that clean out, and I managed to whip up Aceh Clam Chowder the next night.

The progress at the plant that night was slow, but after two hours, our waist deep channel through the tank had become wider, and the sludge line began to appear on the walls. The Swiss fired up the raw water pumps twice to flush new water through the reservoir from the river intake. Somewhere around midnight, as we were stirring the water and attempting to loosen sludge the tank corners, I thought back to the working songs from younger times. "Dayyyy-O" I yelled to test the waters and got a sublime echo of hollers from the others down there with me. I kept on with the tune and then attempted a rough translation to the local tongue that started with "Paaa-gi." They loved it and finished up with a few lines from "New York, New York". Then Maison started another familiar tune that seems to have made the worldwide rounds in its use in marking one's birthday. My thirtieth birthday had been duly marked by a bunch of Muslims, one Christian and a Swiss guy in the bottom of a 1,000 cubic meter concrete underground reservoir in Banda Aceh, Indonesia.