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	Dian and her children managed to get out before more than 1,000
ex-Christians, males and females alike, were forced to submit to a "mass
circumcision" on the village green. Because the six Muslim imams who
performed the circumcisions used the same blades many times, many of the
wounds became infected.

	"I became a servant; I took in washing; I washed people's clothes,"
Dian says softly. "For this I was paid ... a limited amount. Although I do
appreciate even a small income, if only for school fees and pencil money for
Rambo. ... Although I keep telling him the reality. I say: 'Rambo, you are
only with your mama now. Please love your mama, even though she's only a
laundry girl."

	The translator adds: "She says she will do her best for the future of
Rambo."

	Dian is not just a washerwoman. She is also a health and nutrition
"cadre" trained and employed by Church World Service (CWS), an ecumenical
humanitarian organization that tries to meet the most urgent needs of the IDP
families. CWS, a partner of the Presbyterian Church (USA) and a frequent
collaborator with Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, provides services ranging
from emergency housing to agricultural consulting to trauma counseling. Dian
is one of a group that sees to the health and nutritional needs of the IDPs
and especially their children.

	CWS Manado is run by Stien Djalil, a small, energetic, 60-something
North Sulawesi native known from one end of the Indonesian archipelago to the
other as Ibu Stien ("Ibu" being an honorific corresponding to our "Mrs.").
She combines a relentlessly positive attitude with the charm of a diplomat
and the steely persistence of the original Terminator. Until now, however,
she hadn't been able to get Dian to talk about what had happened to her.

	In Indonesia, quitting one's home village is a momentous step, but
Dian says she doesn't expect to return to Lata-Lata - and doesn't want to,
because of what was done to her husband there. After a brief pause she admits
that she is very homesick for the coconut and clove plantation she left
behind.

	An American would not use such a grand word as "plantation" for the
little patch of dirt she worked, by hand, on Lata-Lata. But it was her patch
of dirt, and her trees, and in her eyes it was grand. Now it's 250 miles away
and gone forever. She reports the loss without emotion, her voice deadpan,
her eyes like those of a corpse or a sphinx.

	She says she tries not to harbor feelings of bitterness towards
"whoever will take the fruits of those plants" she left behind.

	Dian says several men in Manado have approached her in courtship,
"but I can't forget my husband's story; I can't leave him behind and put
another person in my heart."

	She reaches for a black-and-white picture of her husband, posing in
his ministerial garb, Bible in hand. It is in an ornate plastic frame and
hangs so high on the living-room wall that she can barely reach it. She takes
it down, wipes it with a scrap of cloth and holds it in front of her like a
shield. Still with no feeling in her eyes.

	"I have told my son that I will do my best to get him through school,
but just the other day he asked me, 'Will you be able to support me?'" she
says. "He worries about when he will go to junior high school (and fees are
higher). I tell him, 'You know your mama is illiterate, and only does
laundry, but she also believes in God, and always she keeps praying that we
will get a way out.' ... My faith is very strong."

	She stands in a house that was abandoned until she and another IDP
discovered it, moved in and fixed it up. Now that it's fit for habitation,
the owner is putting it up for rent. Dian and her friend and their children
will have to move, because they have virtually no income and couldn't pay the
rent.

	"I would be grateful," she says, "if my story could be told."

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