IN PADANG, WEST SUMATRA

ON TUESDAY I saw an old woman rummaging  through her collapsed house, looking for things to salvage.

I saw a young girl, joining her friends by the road, holding a donation box and begging for money, the pancaked family house behind her.

And I saw a mother crying and crying, her child missing under a rubble.

And I saw a man, trying to put up a tent which will become his home as his house is now a mangled heap of planks, bricks and glasses.

Seeing all these people reminded me of my family and friends back home, and how lucky we are.

Driving around the quake zone brought to me the harsh reality of the disaster. While the provincial capital Padang was hit badly, the scenes in Padangpariaman and Pariaman were much worse.

In Padang, maybe one building in 30 had collapsed or were badly damaged.

Outside the capital, it was two out of three village houses in many areas.

Seeing the tragedy first hand while trying to stay neutral is tough.

How do you feel if, after you lose everything, some foreign reporter poked his face in your life and asked: Uncle, how do you feel about this? Have aid agencies arrived? What are you going to do next? Have you eaten?

And how can we pretend not to care when we see young children stopping traffic every kilometre to ask for money, their collapsed houses behind them?

But every time I wanted to take out some cash to give these poor souls, I held back, muttering to myself over and over: There's too many of them to help. There's too many of them to help.

And then I thought of the Sichuan earthquake, the Aceh tsunami and the African famines. And what those reporters who covered those huge tragedies must have gone through.

At the back of our minds, we reporters and photographers often hope that after reading the sad stories about these disaster victims, and seeing the heartbreaking pictures, the relevant government and aid agencies will step up their work, and donors will come in fast.

If that were to happen, then the journalist will feel that he has done his part to help his family in humanity.

Read Reme Ahmad's first blog on the disaster in Padang, Mini-UN comes together.

Read more:
Aid reaches remote areas
From villages to mass graves