How Life Goes On After the Earthquake: Lego Schools in Lombok | Education

LOMBOK, Indonesia – Ezra, 13, remembers running out of her house when a powerful 6.9-magnitude earthquake struck one evening about six years ago. Most people were inside eating or watching TV.

“We saw houses collapsing one after the other, and it was a huge shock to us,” she recalls.

The shallow inland earthquake that struck the northwest of the island on August 5, 2018, was the strongest ever recorded in Lombok, killing 560 people and damaging or destroying almost all structures in the rural area, a two-hour drive through forested mountain passes from the main city of Mataram in the south.

Ezra's home was also destroyed. “I was thankful that there were no casualties in my family, but I felt very sad because I knew how hard my parents struggled to save money to build our home,” she says.

Ezra (right) sits next to her classmate, Azriel, 13, outside a classroom at Tang Middle School, Lompoc. [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]

In villages along the coastal road, simple homes have been rebuilt, and life around small shops and stalls selling fried chicken and rice appears to be returning to normal. But the disaster has had a lasting impact on children’s education.

After the quake, schools were closed for three months. When they reopened, most children found themselves learning in makeshift classrooms set up in tents on school grounds or in mosques. The country’s National Disaster Management Authority has classified more than 400 schools as severely damaged by the quake and completely unusable. Some schools have since been rebuilt, but the COVID-19 pandemic has hampered recovery efforts, and progress has been slow since.

Learning under torn plywood sheets

At the beginning of this year, Azra and her classmates in Grade 7 were still studying in a makeshift classroom at her school, SMPN 3 Tanjung Junior High, located next to farmland on the outskirts of a coastal city.

The school used barn-like buildings, covered with torn sheets of plywood, because the government had not renovated enough buildings to accommodate all 400 students.

“We didn’t feel comfortable in these classrooms because it was so hot,” she says. During the rainy season (November to March), children would be flooded and sit on their desks with their feet in puddles.

Ruins of classrooms damaged by the earthquake at Tanjung Middle School, where children were learning before the new classroom was installed. [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]

Things have improved for Azra and her classmates since then. In February, they became the first Tanjung school students to be educated in four new, permanent, earthquake-resistant classrooms made from recycled plastic blocks.

In the dusty schoolyard, new classrooms stand like beacons of hope next to the ruins of the former library and partially collapsed science lab, which have not yet been demolished and are a constant reminder to students and teachers of the devastation wrought by the earthquake.

The wooden block schools are part of a pioneering initiative run by Classroom of Hope, an Australian NGO that is helping to accelerate the school rebuilding programme in North Lombok. The organisation uses a modular building system that can be put together like Lego bricks, allowing entire buildings to be assembled in a week.

The program also adopts what its leaders describe as a “circular economy” approach to reducing plastic waste pollution in Indonesia, with each semester removing approximately 1.8 tons of plastic waste from the environment.

Children at Pemanang Barat Elementary School inside a classroom damaged by the earthquake. [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]

Classroom of Hope CEO Tanya Armstrong says the main motivation behind the mass schools initiative is to improve access to education. “Our research has found that children learn half as much in temporary settings as they would in a permanent school,” she says. The charity’s field assessments have identified at least 100 more schools in North Lombok that are needed as part of the earthquake recovery.

When Al Jazeera English visited some of the new schools last month, the renewed enthusiasm for learning among students and teachers was evident inside the tidy, spacious classrooms. Students and teachers alike say they feel safer in these buildings than in those built with traditional materials – especially since the earthquake.

Emotional challenge

At Segar Bangalin Primary School No. 4, also in Tanjung village, two classrooms are being completed in preparation for replacing the dilapidated shelters under the awnings of the damaged school building that had been used as classrooms until now. These structures had only flimsy wooden and metal screens separating pupils from the noise of traffic and fumes from the busy main road.

The addition of new classrooms to existing buildings brings a much-needed sense of normalcy to the school after the emotional challenges faced by communities, says school principal Baek Nur Hasna, 46. “There were continuous tremors every day for a month after the earthquake and people who were living in the hills [for fear of tsunamis] “They were afraid to go back to their villages. The children were very anxious about going back to school,” she says.

Wearing a bright yellow headscarf, the cheerful teacher greets children who rush to stand with her in the schoolyard, but tears up when she remembers one of her students, one of five members of her family who died when their home collapsed. “The shock is still there for everyone here,” she says.

A new earthquake-resistant classroom made from recycled plastic was opened at Tanjung Middle School earlier this year. [Courtesy of Classroom of Hope]

Crucially, these schools are designed to withstand intense seismic activity. In tests by civil engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, the honeycomb-shaped units have shown greater flexibility than conventional materials, and are about 100 times lighter than reinforced concrete, which should reduce the risk of injury in the event of an earthquake.

“With this new material, children will feel safer and more willing to study,” says Noorhusana.

Classroom of Hope has partnered with Finnish company Block Solutions, which has developed a modular building system for rapid construction, making it the first of its kind for disaster construction. A dedicated Block Solutions Indonesia factory is set to open in South Lombok in June 2023 to reduce the costs and carbon footprint of shipping modules from Finland.

At the Indonesian plant, the blocks are made from recycled polypropylene, which is typically found in opaque bottles, such as those used in cleaning products and food storage containers. The material is collected from Lombok and other provinces and processed into pellets at the nearest recycling plant in East Java to be turned into blocks. The company now also produces blocks for other construction projects across Indonesia.

The first five-classroom school was built in June 2021 for Taman Sari Elementary School, on the slopes of a densely wooded area. The school, which is part of the Midas Pintawar village on the west coast, serves a population of less than 1,000 people, who make a living mainly by picking and selling bamboo used in construction, or as construction workers.

Since then, 22 more schools with a total of 70 classrooms have been built, working toward a goal of building 117 schools over five to seven years, depending on fundraising, Armstrong says.

Decisions on where to build mass schools are made in collaboration with the government in North Lombok. Classroom of Hope also partners with the NGO Happy Hearts Indonesia, which works with local communities to assess local needs.

Inside a classroom at Tanjung Middle School, Lombok. [Courtesy of Classroom of Hope]
“Still haunted”

As the rebuilding of schools in North Lombok continues, there is a high demand for cluster schools, but not all earthquake-damaged schools can be selected for the program even though they appear to be in poor condition.

This is the case for SD 6 Pemanang Barat Primary School, which is a 20-minute drive from Tanjung village to the hills overlooking rice fields.

School principal Haji Gormley, 54, shows the classrooms where children are taught under cracked ceiling panels, exposed metal frames, electrical wiring and dangling plasterboard. Despite this, the school has been assessed as structurally safe.

He says he is turning to the authorities because he believes the buildings are dangerous. “The buildings have collapsed a little bit, the roof is collapsing, the walls are cracking, we don’t enjoy being in school, and we still have concerns about the situation,” he says.

Pemanang Barat Elementary School was badly damaged in the 2018 earthquake, leaving classrooms in poor condition. [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]

Although the Pemanang Barat school will not be rebuilt, the government has agreed to renovate it, although no timetable has been set. That means it will not receive a consolidation school because “we have to prioritise where the kids need it most – where they are learning outside or where there are 70 kids in a classroom,” Armstrong says. Each classroom in the consolidation school costs A$22,000 ($16,000), and the charity relies on funding and charitable donations.

However, the school received a donation of two stone toilets that are currently under construction. “The children were using the river, and girls who were menstruating were not going to school, so the toilets will have an impact,” she says.

Right now, Classroom of Hope is focused on completing its school rebuilding program in Lombok, but Armstrong believes there are many other remote areas where the same program could be replicated.

Across Indonesia’s island provinces, 413,000 schools (78 percent) in the country were found to be at risk of earthquakes in 2022, based on government inspections and self-assessments conducted by schools, says Fadli Usman, Save the Children’s humanitarian and resilience manager in Indonesia.

Pemanang Barat Company Director Haji Guramli stands next to donated toilets under construction [Louise Hunt/Al Jazeera]
Environmentally sustainable approach

Osman says the central government has made efforts in recent years to reduce schools’ vulnerability to earthquakes, including an annual programme to renovate damaged schools with a modular, earthquake-resistant building system using reinforced concrete. However, he adds, “more capacity and monitoring needs to be transferred to the district and village levels.”

Damage standards for renovation programs funded by the national government are “very strict,” says Roy Miliardi, an assistant professor of civil engineering at Christian Maranatha University in Java.

“Because of financial constraints, priority is usually given to those with severe damage, such as collapsed roofs, so that damaged but not ‘severely’ buildings are left or transferred to the local government for repair. Here, it depends on the political will of local government officials,” he adds.

A school in Selingen, Lombok, was built to replace classrooms damaged by the earthquake. [Courtesy of Classroom of Hope]

Civil engineer Milliardi and Save the Children's Osman agree that the mass school programme has the potential to be replicated if adopted in the national response, as an environmentally sustainable approach to earthquake response.

While Tanjung School still needs more facilities, including a new laboratory and library, the cluster schools are helping restore a much-needed sense of normalcy, says school committee chairman Wayan Sawadan, 63.

“The earthquake severely affected our students’ education and socio-economic backgrounds because they need comfortable conditions to learn. It also took them a long time to recover from the shock and rebuild their belief that the situation is now safe,” says the retired government employee.

For Ezra’s classmate Azriel, 13, the makeshift classrooms are “much more comfortable.” Ezra says they’ve made her feel more conscientious. “We’re really excited to have all our lessons at the makeshift school because it’s unique, just like Lego,” she says, smiling. If their teacher doesn’t come to school, they try to find someone else. “We want to be in the classroom.”

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