HAITI ALIVE - Fondazione | Alexander Langer | Stiftung

Ibu Robin LimInternational Alexander Langer Prize 2006Ibu Robin Lim, 49, lives in Bali with her husband, her seven daughters and sons,and one niece. She has a diverse genealogy, which mixes American, Indonesian,Chinese, Philippine, German and Irish elements. The complexity of her originsmay be noticed not only in her personality, but also in the diverse nature of herwork. She is an environmentalist, a pacifist, a poet. Above all, she is a midwife.Robin has been working for many years relying on both scientific and women’straditional knowledge. She has a wide professional curriculum and is the author ofbooks about birthing and motherhood.The aims of her work are many and difficult. Ibu Robin strives to prevent the expropriationof women’s traditional knowledge by official medicine, a process whichstarted in Europe at the end of the 19th Century and is still ongoing, in Indonesiaas well. Her efforts are directed at granting caring, competent support to birthingmothers and a non-violent birth to their children. Robin endeavours to bring suchpractices wherever possible, even where “only he/she who flies” can arrive – whichaccounts for her nickname “Redrobin” and the image of “barefoot midwife” thatis often associated with her. In 1994 Robin started in Bali the Yayasan Ibu BumiSehat (Healthy Mother Hearth) non-profit Foundation, so that she could rely on asteady health care and birth services clinic, while continuing her village to villageworking practice.Following the December 2004 Tsunami disaster, Robin decides to make a big changein her life. She moves to Banda Aceh (Sumatra), an area where 70% of the populationdied in the disaster, the social network is destroyed and survivors are heavily traumatised.There, Robin starts her extraordinary work as an emergency midwife. Sheis assisted by survival teams, “angels of vitamins” as they are defined in the websiteof the IDEP Foundation, based in Bali, which supports Ibu Robin’s work. In Italy,Robin is supported by the Association “Il Melograno” – Centri di Informazione Maternitàe Nascita – with its many province-based centres.In Bali problems are countless, but Robin can rely on her long experience. Knowinghow desperate the health situation is in Bali, she welcomes in the clinic also thedisabled relatives who sometimes come along with pregnant women. Robin’s healthcentre, therefore, became a “community clinic”, a safe harbour where state-leveltensions between Muslims and Christians cease to exist. Given her professional useof natural remedies, Chinese medicine and homeopathy, Robin created a botanic garden,in order to obtain herbs and spread knowledge about them. While doing this, sheunited traditional knowledge from Bali, the Philippines, Malaysia and Hawaii, thatis to say of the whole tropical area of South East Asia. Other initiatives which Robintook include the organisation of a small factory for the processing of herbal remedies,48