Tijssen’s journey to the West Coast of Atjeh and Simaloer was the medical tour undertaken by the ophthalmologist Dr. J. Tijssen from 23 August 1933, when he arrived again at Koeta Radja and travelled on to Bakongan, through the coastal strip of Atjeh’s West Coast and thence to the island of Simaloer. It is recounted in the third of the letters printed in Een strijd in Atjeh (1934).
Choice of the West Coast
Tijssen related that when he took counsel at Koeta Radja with the governor, “bleek deze erop gesteld, dat ik ditmaal naar de Westkust zou gaan.” — it appeared that he set store on my going this time to the West Coast. Gouverneur Van Aken, he explained, had a weakness for this territory where he had worked for long years; “misschien gaven ook politieke motieven den doorslag.” What interested Tijssen himself were the possible differences between the eye diseases of the West Coast and those of the East — the so-called North Coast — where he had worked earlier. In this respect little or no difference appeared to exist, though the number of treatments here was smaller, for other reasons.
The country
The territory he now travelled was “een weinig bevolkte kuststrook van 500 K.M. lengte, maar nauwelijks 5 K.M. breed.” — a thinly peopled coastal strip 500 kilometres long, but scarcely 5 kilometres broad. A road passable by motor ran through its axis; on both sides of it lay the mass graves recalling “de vele Atjehoorlogen en den opstand van ‘26,” — the many Atjeh wars and the rising of ‘26, and a great monument marked the place where Teukoe Oemar fell — see Monument to Teukoe Oemar’s death. “Alles spreekt van strijd, verzet, haat. Alles behalve het volk.”
In this district, he observed, no officer went into a kampong without a soldier behind him with a loaded carbine. And yet, while he lived for weeks together unarmed among this population, no one harmed a hair of his head; and when asked why it was here, just here, that things had always been so turbulent, he had to answer: “Ik weet het niet en ik heb het niet begrepen.” — I do not know it and I have not understood it.
The voedselverhoudingen — the food conditions — were excellent there. Money the people did not have; at Bakongan the administration paid the travelling costs of his patients when the distance was too great to be covered on foot. But the land was rich in produce, and from that alone he could explain the strikingly rare occurrence of avitaminosis.
Results
In the short time he was there Tijssen helped two hundred and forty-seven people with eye diseases and operated on twenty-four persons with cataract. Among the West Coast patients were the seven juvenile cataracts between Meulaboh and Singkel which he described at length. One of the pamphlet’s photographs shows a Muhammadan priest reading aloud from the Koran to his fellow patients after their operations.
Simaloer
From the West Coast Tijssen went to the island of Simaloer, where twenty thousand people lived. There was, he reported, no physician; “niets wat lijkt op medische hulp.” Once a month a government doctor came to look in for a couple of hours. “U kunt zich geen voorstelling maken van de toestanden, die op medisch gebied hier en daar in ons Indië heerschen!” — You can form no conception of the conditions which prevail, in the medical field, here and there in our Indies!
Departure at the Poeasa
The population of the West Coast, Tijssen said, were “vrome fanatieke Mohammedanen”: when the hour of prayer approached, every boy spread out his head-cloth on the road wherever he might be and performed his prayers. The word of Paulus, “Ik schaam mij het evangelie van Jezus Christus niet,” — I am not ashamed of the gospel of Jesus Christ, was to the Muhammadan absolutely incomprehensible; “zijn geloof is zijn eer.” — his faith is his honour.
Among such a population one could not work in the fasting month, and the administration would not gladly have seen it. Towards the beginning of the Poeasa — the fast of Ramadan — Tijssen therefore left the West Coast for the island of Samosir in the Tobameer, where he undertook the trachoma campaign that closes his account.
See Also
- J. Tijssen
- A. Ph. van Aken
- Atjeh’s Westkust
- Bakongan
- Simaloer
- Seven juvenile cataracts of Atjeh’s Westkust
- Trachoma campaign on Samosir (1933)
- Monument to Teukoe Oemar’s death
- Een strijd in Atjeh (1934)
- Poeasa
- 23 August
- 1933
Source
Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad), door Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen, met een voorrede van den heer H. Wanting, redacteur Nieuwe Rotterdamsche Courant (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg, uitgave van de Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934), pp. 10–12, 14.
Acknowledgement of sources. The material in this article derives from Een strijd in Atjeh (Een oogarts op het oorlogspad) by Mr. C. Graadt van Roggen (Rotterdam: N.V. Drukkerij Korteweg for the Vereeniging „SIMAVI”, 1934). Dutch passages are quoted in the original with an English rendering.