Obstacles

Admittedly things didn’t start well: at first six children who were on our list to be repatriated lost their home and we had to find a new place for them to live. Then, in an example of absolutely no coordination and lone-wolfmanship, another organization took the same children from their new home and moved them to a refugee camp against their will where they had massive problems getting food. Then, the baby of  16-year old child whom we were supposed to bring to Ivory Coast got malaria and had to be hospitalized, and finally, at the last minute an agency put new bureaucratic obstacles in our path, clearly without the best interest of the children at heart. (I’m still mad).

Happy moments at the border

However, all of that frustration melted away when we picked up the children at the morning of the repatriation and took them to the border. The good-byes were warm and heartfelt and the excitement of the children was tangible. I know that I will always treasure the moment at the border when we handed the children over to our colleagues from ICRC Ivory Coast and the joy I felt when I got a text-message later that day, saying that the children had arrived and had been warmly welcomed by their families. After all, these children were not anonymous cases for me, but I was involved in registering some of them, following up their cases, talking with them about their hopes and fears and finally organizing their repatriation.

Communication makes a difference

One of countless Red Cross Messages.

All of this made me think about what it is we do when we are “restoring family links”:

Physically bringing people back together by providing transport and travel documents is the exception. In the majority cases we help with so called “Red Cross Messages” and by providing people with free phone calls so that they can tell their family members where they are, how they are, or simply that they are still alive. Sometimes it takes many months, before they get an answer to a message, for example when the recipient has moved to a different part of the country and it takes time and effort for my colleagues to find them.

What makes this service so special is, that we are not presuming that we know what is best for the affected people, but that we give them the means to decide themselves what is best for them; that is something very empowering and a different mindset than behind many programmes that provide material assistance.

Putting refugees in control of their destiny

Of course I know that this type of protection work is just a niche and that relief / shelter / food programmes which sometimes have to serve tens of thousands of people within a few days or weeks cannot approach things from each individual’s point of view. But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s incredibly rewarding to be working for an organization that puts the individual in control of his/her destiny.

I have read a lot of Red Cross Messages (they are open, similar to postcards, and we are required to read them before transporting them). Many of them simply say: “I’m glad to hear from you. It’s safe in our village. Please come back”, and I was thinking about how much of a difference these few words can make to a refugee living in a strange country where he can’t speak the language and is dependent on the aid of others. These few words mean that he now has a choice, an alternative. He himself can decide to stay where he is, or to go back home and rebuild his life.

Being part of this process – be it the actual repatriations or just the conveying of messages – is one of the most rewarding things I’ve done in my life.

Related posts:

1. Why this isn’t “just a job”: An amazing story from Ivory Coast
2. Doing harm
3. Rural Liberia: Where mobile phones are still a rarity

Doing their homework

One team of journalists who have really made an effort is the team behind “Inside Disaster Haiti”, which will air as of Tuesday in Canada. They had already been in touch with the Canadian Red Cross for a whole year prior to the earthquake, wanting to film a response operation. When the earthquake happened they were able to deploy with some of the first emergency response units and they came back a few times afterwards to film the progress.

Inside Disaster Trailer from PTV Productions on Vimeo.

Serious game gives a glimpse behind the scenes

An offshoot of the film is the “serious game” Inside the Haiti earthquake where anybody can play the role of a survivor, a journalist or an aidworker. It’s done fairly simply: you get shown a scene and then have to pick one of multiple choices, which will influence how the rest of the story progresses. But since it is based on professional-grade documentary material, I think that it actually leaves quite an impression and can help people to get at least a glimpse of the decisions that need to be made at in an operation like this.

I have worked as a journalist for almost ten years and found that part quite realistic. As for the aidworker-scenario: in the beginning I was really upset because their protagonist is someone who spontaneously decides to go to Haiti with some random, donated goods and without any training or useful skills, i.e. exactly the kind of person that most big organizations don’t want to see on the ground. But they actually manage to take this lack of experience and include it as part of the scenario. Which is brilliant because, after all, the people playing the game will have no experience.

And while it isn’t trying to give you an in-depth perspective by any means, I still think that it might open some people’s eyes to the complexities of the work. So, all in all, a big “thumps up” from me:

Check it out and play “Inside disaster the Haiti earthquake”.

No related posts.

Below you find a presentation I have given on two occasions on that topic. At the bottom of my previous post you can also download the social media staff guidelines.

I decided to use Camtasia this time to create a presentation that includes the audio, which is why it’s embedded as a YouTube video. Of course you can also download it from Slideshare as powerpoint without my explanations.

I hope you find it useful and please tell me what you think.

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Since then I have changed my minds slightly. For one thing, there is never anything objectionable about remembering colleagues who have died. But more importantly I think that this day is not only about professional aid workers. For me it is about everybody who takes risks to help other people. And that can be a Red Cross Red Crescent volunteer,  a UN staff member, a teacher, an imam or a truck driver. And in that sense I’m very happy to celebrate World Humanitarian Day.

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Criticizing the right things

On the destroyed streets of downtown Port-au-Prince. Photo: Talia Frenkel/American Red Cross. (p-HTI0383)

The article does not shy away from criticism. But it is criticism that I find fair and appropriate. Vince took the time to find out why certain things don’t work and Wired gave him the space to explain it. I wish we would see more articles like this. Disaster relief is extremely complex and these complexities cannot easily be reduced to three paragraphs, a two minute YouTube video or 140 characters.

Knowing how hard the international and local staff and volunteers have been working since January, I often can’t help but feel protective about them.

Everybody is a disaster manager

However, in most cases it is not the criticism that I mind. What I have a problem with is most of the time the people who do the criticizing don’t take the time to try to understand the issues before launching into a tirade of condemnation.

In the same way, that everybody is a football coach during the world cup, it seems like suddenly everybody is a disaster manager.

For everyone who is prepared to invest 30 minutes of his time to get a good, basic understanding of the problems and solutions that all aid agencies face in Haiti, I recommend that you buy the magazine or read the story online.

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If you want to know how the website was set-up, please click here for the configuration. In addition, I had some customization done on the theme and had an additional language, Haiti Creole, added to the front end. That version is not live yet, but it’s getting there.

The brand new Haiti Red Cross website

Screencast and on-site training

In order to make the most of my time in Haiti I prepared a few short instructional videos. And while my French is terrible, I found a good, free screen capture service: Jing.

Jing is a free software that let’s you capture up to five minutes of video and sound and share it online. It works really smoothly. And while the 5 minute limit might sound very short, I found that it is enough for most steps, as long as you do one video for each action. What I find strange is that the “Pro” version doesn’t let you capture longer videos.

I hope that those videos will also help the webmaster to train staff and volunteers outside Port-au-Prince.

Email with Google Apps

The Haitian Red Cross webmaster Charlot and I.

I hadn’t been aware that I would also be expected to set up the Haitian Red Cross’ email service, but I suppose I should have expected it. And while activating email through Plesk on the server was no big deal, in the end we decided to go with Google Apps.

Email security, backups and all these things are simply such a massive headache that I counselled against putting that burden on the webmaster. In my opinion a webmaster should worry about the site and not about whether email is backed up. I had never used Google Apps before, but it’s great! Once, you have managed to configure a server to work with Google Apps (and unfortunately the instructions are terrible) it works like a dream and of course you also have immediate access to Google docs, calendar etc.. I wish we could get rid of our exchange server at the IFRC and migrate!

Real life – outside base camp

On a more somber note: I have to admit I felt a bit inadequate in the middle of all these people who are providing water, shelter or basic health care. I mean, how does the need for a website rank in comparison to these needs?

On the last day I had the chance to leave base camp for a couple of hours so that I could get an idea of what life is like outside base camp and indeed for many of the staff and volunteers I was working with every day. It’s easy to forget when you are inside a compound and well cared for, but many of the people I was working with might not have a home to return to after work.

To cut a long story short: the needs are basically – everything. I mean, you name it, they don’t have it. We were walking through one of the camps where the Red Cross is working and even though you could see that a lot had already been done to improve the situation, what had been achieved seems like very little compared to what still needs to be done. Don’t get me wrong: I have seen everyone in base camp work every day from 6 am to well after dark. It’s not because people don’t work hard, that things take a long time. It’s because it’s such an enormous job.

The “land issue”

For me, the biggest revelation was to see the “land issue” first hand. I have to admit that I always found it hard to understand why we don’t just erect a couple of thousand tents and instead decided to distribute tarps and tool kits. I always found it difficult to accept that no land is available to set up those tents. But once you are there, you realize that it’s really true: there is no literally no space to put tents up! Every little bit of space is already taken up! I saw people living on the bit of green between the lane’s on Port-au-Prince’s main street.

And you can’t simply replace the rickety shelters that people have built themselves with “proper” tents either. Because those tents are bigger than the existing emergency shelters, less people would be able to stay in any one location. Which means that you first need a place where the rest of the people could go. And for that you need land.

There is a much better and far more coherent summary of the issue on the “tales from the hood” blog titled “Sorry, I’m just an aid worker“.  I highly recommend that you read this post if you are interested in the Haiti response.

Anyhow: Haiti Red Cross has email and a website now. It’s not much, but it’ll help Haiti Red Cross talk to the world about their work and what the reality is on the ground. And maybe that will help a little bit.

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