How we discovered Claudia Martinez

As some of you know, I worked in the Dominican Republic. I arrived days after the Haiti earthquake early January this year, and flew back to Rome last week.

I already told you a story from my time in the Dominican. Something else happened during my stay, something to be know of “The story of Claudia”.

When we set up our office in the Dominican, we called in staff normally working in other parts of the world. One of them was Anisa. I worked with her back in my Dubai days, where we considered her “the mama” of the office. While she was probably the shortest of us all, she had the biggest heart of the bunch. Anisa is the person who considered the office as dear to her heart as her own home. She is the one coming in early to put a flower on people’s desk, goes around with soup when we – once again – have a long day… And come up with the craziest ideas, born in her big heart.

I called in Anisa to help us in Santo Domingo…. where she immediately resumed her ‘mother-ing’ role, and looked after us like we were her own. For the coffee, the fresh fruit and the occasional “time for you to get out of the office, you have been here long enough!”.

In the early days of the emergency, she wrote me an email, titled “Gesture of generosity to appreciate a local Santo Domingo hairdresser”. (and I thought: What now?):

Peter,

I read the attached article in Gulf News on 23.01. It really touched me that here is a soul who is reaching out to others in her best capacity, physically, financially as well as emotionally… as she is doing it with her heart.
I am sure she herself penny pinches but has a heart of gold and filled with generosity to reach out and bring a smile on another human being.

So I cut out the article and was going to ask any one of our staff who would be in Santo Domingo to trace her. I wanted someone to give her a small donation from myself. This would then enable her to continue spreading the happiness and cheer to a lot more other ‘Haitian patients’.

But then I was asked to come her myself. I was in a state of shock …. Was this a calling for me to come over personally and seek this woman out or what?

Well, I cut out the article and from the time I have arrived I have requested Amelia and Elizabeth to help me trace this lady – Claudia Martinez. Which has not been easy.

Eventually, Elizabeth managed and has spoken to her and we have her phone number. Claudia is willing to come to the Hotel and meet with us. So my humble request is can we keep a small box for a collection? Have a write up stuck up above the coffee station with the box and staff can pitch in as they feel best.
With the donation and our best wishes she can then continue with her ‘good deeds’?

An opportunity for the our staff to reach out and bring some happiness and support to the less fortunate…..

Thank you,

Anisa.

I read the article Anisa attached. It was a piece from Gulfnews, one of the local newspapers in the UAE. It told the story of Claudia Martinez, a Dominican lady who volunteered to help some of the Haitian earthquake victims in the main Santo Domingo hospital. She helped by… doing their hair. As the story said: “Her task may seem trivial, but she believes restoring a bit of beauty and humanity to people who have lost everything and survived deplorable conditions is important.”

A story that speaks to one’s imagination. We collected over US$300, and finally met Claudia in March. She came over to the office together with the hospital volunteers’ coordinator. I introduced her to the staff in the office, and we engaged into a lively conversation. Claudia, a single mother of two, was not aware of the newspaper story. “One day, a guy at the hospital took some pictures and asked me some questions, and that was it”, she said. Nor did she realize it was picked up by Agence Presse, and got republished in many newspapers all over the world, from the US to the Middle East, Pakistan and New Zealand. And she had no idea how she had inspired others.

We emphasized the money we collected was for her, and to use it for something she wanted to do. Asked what she wished for, she answered: “I wished I could learn how to read and write. I wished I could give my kids a proper education”. That was quite a challenge as she could barely make ends meet, and her eldest is speech impaired. But still, she volunteered most of her time at the hospital. “It is heart-breaking to see how little those people in the hospitals really have”, she said. “I feel rich compared to them”…

Anisa (L) and Claudia (R)

We sat outside for a long while, with staff from the office joining into the conversation, and Gaby patiently translating between English and Spanish. We got to understand the hospital is the largest in the Dominican. Often patients were brought in, and left there. Many did not have a change of clothes. Kids without anything but a pair of pants. Their families simply did not have the means to take care of them. Neither did the hospital. Claudia asked if we wanted to come over, to see for ourselves. Which we promised to do.

Since then, “our project” continued: we donated several parcels with used toys for the kids and basic clothing for the patients. But then another thing happened unexpectedly: Just incredible how things go sometimes…:

A few weeks after I met Claudia, I was in North Italy, on a short break with my family. Frau Preindl, the owner of the hotel, knew I worked in the Haiti emergency. Just as we were leaving, Frau Preindl said “wait!”. She grabbed an envelope and put it in my hands: “Here, you will know what to do with it. Go and make a difference. You know, we seldom realize how lucky we are. We have all we need, so the least thing we can do, is to share some of it.”

It was not until I got back to the Dominican, three days later, I realized there was a real significant sum in that envelope. And I did not have to think long what to do with the money…

Stay tuned for Part II of the story.

I thought.. What would be the ideal ex-aidworkers’ bar? The bar is to be called “Erbil”, for sure. To remember the UN bar up there as the only safe place to drink (and eat for that matter) after the Iraq war (the second one that is).

The bar is really the only place you can go, to meet those in the same “zone” as you. THE spot to chill out and exchange another story “I remember when I was in..” after yet another day trying to save the world and realizing you didn’t make a shit of difference. Was mostly after catching your two drivers syphoning out the petrol from your car. That was this morning. This afternoon, you fired the guard as he fell asleep on his stool next to the gate and did not wake up even if you hooted right next to him.

There are old yellow-ish pictures on the wall showing people in happier times. All of them taking in the same bar, of course. Mixed with postcards sent from holiday places. All reachable within the R&R cycle.
There is a trace of stains from the time John thought it would be fun to shake that cheap champagne bottle on his birthday, years ago. A bottle he risked his life for, smuggling it through airport customs.

The tables and chairs are a mishmash of different makes. Mostly cheap plastic. Collected after the bombing of a local community center back in 2005.

The servings of drinks differ as the weeks go by, dependent on what container Patrice – the MSF logistician – was able to smuggle into this darned muslim country. Some months, whiskey is the only drink, as the beer container got stuck at the port, lack of sufficient baksheesh.
It is amazing in how many different ways you can drink whiskey. And in how many ways you can use it. Including lightening up a short shot, and then, flame and all, put it on your forehead where it sucks itself out of oxygen. The half burned round sucking mark stays on one’s forehead for a week. And is the trademark of “Erbil”, our bar.
Mal once tried the same trick by sticking two of those burning shots onto his balls. He can only grin at that memory now… As I said, there are many things you can do with whiskey.

Andrew is always sitting at the same stool at the corner, no matter when you come in. You wonder if he really has a job at Care International, or if he became a beneficiary himself. His brother, Jolly -nobody knows his real name- is famous for the fancy dive he took in the swimming pool in the back. Forgetting the fact they never filled it up again after the 1995 earthquake which cracked up the foundation of the pool. And the spilling water flooded the underground safety shelter. Something which really upset that ex-Foreign Legion security officer we once had. Remember him? I remember his face, but can’t remember his name. Rodriguez, wasn’t it? He did not last two days after we took those shots from him dancing naked on this very same bar, and emailed it to the director of UNDSS in New York.
Little did we know they wouldn’t think that was not funny. Bureaucrats!

They serve a mean chicken, here. Full of spices to kill everything living in your stomach. Special recipe of Paul, who once owned the bar. Until he drove over a landmine up-country, shopping for two lambs to put on the barbie on Xmas.
It takes about one hour to get the grilled chicken serving, as all is fresh. The chickens roam in the backyard. After the order the cook disappears for 10 minutes with an axe in her hand.
If you want to understand what food poisoning means, you eat the salad too.

The music is always the same choice out of five CDs. The rest was nicked. Aidworkers can be thugs when it comes to personal entertainment. The CD of Tom Jones’ “Sexbomb” is kept for special occasions. Diana Ross’ “I’m coming out” always keeps hicking up at the same spot, until the bartender gives the CDplayer a kick.

But you don’t hear the music, you concentrate on that drink, and the distant noise of your VHF handheld, as a desperate radio operator tries to go through the daily radio check list. And on the distant muffled sounds of yet another grenade attack (all pre-recorded of course).

There is a large, half torn poster of Bukavu, at Lake Kivu. Must be from the Fifties, as the cypresses are not chopped into firewood yet, and the Hotel Karibu is still there. Those were the times when the living was good, and aidworkers were well respected civil servants, representing the social welfare and education arm of the colonizing country.

The electricity is cut twice a day, after which Abdul, the current owner, manually kickstarts the old grumpy 5 KVA generator, which makes the lights shimmer slightly in a rhythmic pattern.

The guests are always the same. Julie, ex-Jalalabad (shagged on R&R in Islamabad) sitting with Patricia (shagged in Juba), and Olivia, the ex-UNHCR reproductive health specialist from Goma (shagged in Mombasa). Olivia actually picked you up with the catch phrase “I have a container full of condoms, expiring next month” (HT Michael). Or was that Shelly? Anyways, does not matter, all of them give you the evil eye anyways. As if it was your fault you wanted to remain celibataire and were only looking for a quick fix?

At the next table we have Joaquim from ECHO, still looking for that single killer project to fund. A project that would propel him into the higher echelons of the Brussels Ivory Tower. For the moment, he is doing his best looking important, going through the 50 pages assessment report, full of baseline data and stakeholder interviews.
Cathy, the Texan chick (shagged in Monrovia) from USAID sits next to him, reading Bush’s new book “How I won the Iraq war”. As usual, Antoine, the head of mission Lutheran World Relief, joins in (tried to shag you in the Kigali transit lounge, of all places). Bible at hand, as per habit. You remember the fight you had with him, as he kept on spilling profanity on the security repeater in the middle of the night. Usually after he crawled back from the bar to his compound. You’ve never seen anyone wasted like this.

And then there is the table of the three OCHA dudes. Normally the loudest of all tables, as each keeps on raising their voice on top of the other. They never shut up, do they, those OCHA dudes? Professional deformity, the talking. They are either the youngest or the oldest of the whole bunch. Either fresh graduates naive enough to think aidworkers want to be coordinated, or the pre-retirees fired from every single other agency for incompetency.
Just last month, they all had a fit when their office was closed. Security phase IV, meaning “essential staff only”. It was the public acknowledgement OCHA was not essential, all found. Except the Humanitarian Coordinator, of course, who got NY to intervene and allow the “Holy Threesome” as you call them, back into the country.

But all of that is “what once was”, of course. Memories mixed with the cheap whiskey. Memories as all of us have decent jobs now. Jobs none of us likes. With only one common thought: “I wish I was back there”. In Tblisi, Luanda, Bor, Djamena, Peshawar, Dili, Mogadishu, Nazareth (in Ethiopia, not Israel) or Gulu.

And then at 21:45 someone rings the bell (an old ship’s bell that George found on the shipwrecks’ beach near Karachi) and shouts “Last call, curfew at twentytwohundred!”. After which we order those last 10 shots-to-go. Hand back our make-believe handhelds and safari jackets at the reception, pick up our attache case, straighten our tie, and step into our BMW.

Driving back to our suburban villa we make a mental note not to forget to pick up the lawn fertilizer tomorrow morning. And the tickets for the mid-term holiday in Tenerife.

Picture courtesy Lost in Berlin

Italian trash on the streets

When I landed in Rome, finally home after five months, there were three things I noticed on the way back from the airport:

1. A beautiful sunset, the kind you only see in Italy;
2. I had no mobile phone signal most of the way;
3. Trash piled up everywhere next to the waste bins.

Sunsets, we always cover extensively here on The Road. The paleolithic Italian mobile phone coverage, is a subject I will bitch about later. But the garbage problem, I have to revisit now. After all, it was the UN World Environment Day yesterday.

First, let me get this clear: I love living in Italy. But I never got my head around the fact why garbage is such a problem here. I mean, I don’t live in a slum area, but in a village close to the capital, known as a weekend resort for the rich and famous – how much I fall out of that category. Still, trash piles up as if we lived in a slum…

And it is not as if people don’t mind: People stopped I was walking around to take pictures of the three trash bins around my house. They looked at me, and at the rubble, only to sigh “A disgrace, isn’t it?”. One elder woman says: “Yes, young man, take pictures, document it, and do something about this scandal!”.
So I will.

Problem is, where to start? Luckily, one of the trash skips had a man’s picture on it:

With my limited Italian, I understand this Mister Armeni must be the proud owner of the trash company called “Forza Italia”.

I guess the mother company is called “Il Popolo della Liberta – Berlusconi”. Probably “Berlusconi” must be the overall umbrella of all Italian trash companies, then. At least that was the old lady’s claim: “Berlusconi: Rifiuti! Rigiuti!”

As this Mister Armeni kindly displayed his picture on his company’s trash cans, I gather he was asking for feedback. So I wrote him a letter:

To: Mister Armeni
Owner Regional Trash company
“Forze Ragione Regione”
Member of National Trash company “Forza Italia”

Dear Mister Armeni,

Thank you for soliciting feedback on the services of your trash company. I would like to tell you how much I appreciate you must be owning a lot of wastage, and as part of the national trash conglomerate “Forza Italia”, I am sure it must be a real challenge to daily hide garbage from the public eye.

Still, I would like to tell you that despite your best efforts, garbage seems to pile up more and more since you took over the company. I hope you will soon deal with the situation, or speed up selling out your company to the well-known South Italian alliance specializing in the disposal of (radio active) trash (in the Mediterranean). I heard that company is already part of the National Trash company “Forza Italia” anyways…

Looking forward to see progress in your national programme “Trash Italy Fast”!

Kindly,
Peter

There is not much to say about most aeroplane journeys. Anything remarkable must be disastrous, so you define a good flight by negatives: you didn’t get hijacked, you didn’t crash, you didn’t throw up, you weren’t late, you weren’t nauseated by the food. So you are grateful.
The gratitude brings such relief your mind goes blank, which is appropriate, for the aeroplane passenger is a time-traveller. He crawls into a carpeted tube that is reeking of disinfectant; he strapped in to go home, or away. Time is truncated, or in any case warped. (..) And from the moment he departs, his mind is focused on arrival.

Paul Theroux

in “The old Patagonian Express”

I thought of that quote yesterday. After spending five hours in transit at Madrid’s airport before boarding. A group of 150 seven-graders from Portugal boarded just in front of me, all excited about their one week trip to Rome. I loved their excitement and aggitation. Kids should have fun, so I put on my headset, and fell asleep the moment I got in my seat. Only to wake up half an hour later, in the midst of a school play ground. The boys and girls were running up and down, even though the “fasten seat belts” sign was on, calling the flight attendants for yet another coke or Mars bar.

I thought we were already in the air, half way to Rome, but we had not moved an inch. And we did not move an inch for three hours, unable to take off due to traffic congestion, it seemed later. Not that the captain was eager to announce anything. We just sat there. Except for the kids. They were not sleepy as I was. True, I had just flown through the night, and had been awake for 36 hours, but then again, I thought they’d been settling down after a few hours. But they did not.

It was strange to see how the other passengers reacted. The noise was that of a kids’ birthday party, and so was the agitation and the running around. Kids love kids parties. Adults not. So, most other people switched off. At best, some would get up to stretch their legs, still with a blank stare focused on the horizon. One guy started to play cards with them. Only two passengers got excited. “Che casino, questi ragazzi! Calma, per favore, calma!” shouted an Italian passenger. And it was “piu calma” for five minutes straight.

I was glad to arrive in Rome, where we got stuck for another hour waiting for the transit buses to arrive. And for the luggage to arrive. When I finally opened the door of my apartment, I sighed with relief. I can’t wait until time and space travel finally becomes reality. We just step into a tube, and “zwoop”, we arrive where we need to be. From the hotel lobby in Santo Domingo to my apartment in Rome. “Zwoop”.

Hopefully by the time we can warp into time and space, it will be immune to volcanic dust. But probably the kids would not enjoy warping that much. They enjoy the travel. I envied them.

As you know, I try not to write too much about the work I do, in an attempt to segregate my official duties from my blog. I will make an exception for once.

When the earthquake stroke Haiti on January 12th, it not only devastated the poorest country in the Western hemisphere, but it also devastated our operations in Haiti. Our offices were destroyed. Our staff lost family and friends. Most of the country’s infrastructure was affected, making it very difficult for any humanitarian aid to reach those in need.

We set up our office in the Dominican Republic to provide the needed support both for our own organisation and for the other aid agencies. We set up a logistics “pipeline” receiving aid goods, coming in via air and sea, and transported them via air and road into Haiti. We set up an airbridge ferrying in the initial response goods, and humanitarian staff into Port-au-Prince and beyond.

For the past months, I headed our operations, based in Santo Domingo. End of May, we are wrapping up the the initial emergency response phase. As the months went by, all organisations rebuilt their infrastructure, and the port, roads, warehousing capacity inside the country came back on its feet. Since a month, we have been converting our office from its initial response, to a more longer term configuration.

When I landed here on January 19, a few days after the Haiti earthquake, I found a dozen staff who arrived here before me, cramped in a small room. As the days went by, more and more people flew in, both to support our office, as well as all those on route to Haiti. At the peak, we had people working in the central office, at two ports, two airports, and two suboffices in the country. We built up the operation from scratch, growing to almost 100 staff, mobilized from countries all over the world. We had staff working in our offices who were called in from over 30 different countries. Logistics experts, food specialists, finance and administration staff, procurement people, airops officers, security officers and engineers…

We based our operations in two conference rooms of a hotel, here in Santo Domingo. No windows. The “dungeons” we called them, as they had no windows. Sunlight was a rarity in those early days. A month later, the hotel converted their “ping-pong room” near the swimming pool into a working space, with seven more offices normally used by beauty salons and travel agencies.

The first few weeks were hectic. We worked from 7 am until late at night, 7 days per week, moving cargo and people into Haiti, processing finance and procurement transactions like there was no tomorrow. Staff rotated in and out, replacing the “initial responders” with “fresh blood”, again called in from all over the world. We had people working with us, who are normally based in our operations in North Korea, Malawi, Dubai, Rome, all over Central and South America and Asia. Senior experienced professionals worked side by side with staff for whom this was their emergency operation, and local recruits. We dealt with government officials, nutritional experts, security incidents, commercial companies, airport authorities, immigration staff and transporters. It was never a dull day for the -last count- over 170 different staff who worked in our Dominican operation.

Now, four months later, we are “switching off the lights”. As of June 1, we have demobilized most of the international support staff, handing over the operations to the local staff we recruited, with just a few expat staff remaining. The initial response phase is over.

Organising a new office has its challenges. Making sure all operations go smooth, fast and auditable. Ensuring all the pieces of the supply chain match together. Building up a team, even with that many people coming in and out. Dealing with sudden ‘emergencies’: our staff in Haiti running out of food supplies, pockets of displaced people appearing along the border in need of assistance, one of our staff being shot at, to manually stamping 500,000 food distribution coupons.

But building something, a team, an operation, is fun. That is what I like. Downscaling -although an intrinsic part of any good aid operation- is more difficult. Not only ensuring all the last bits and pieces of the operation are properly closed, suppliers are paid, all contracts are well documented, etc… but the personal aspect, is often a challenge… “Switching off the lights”.

It has been an interesting experience within myself. I had to downscale something I built. In the past four weeks, gradually people have gone back to the duty station they were called from. There have been many goodbyes. And I am not good at goodbye’s.

We had many beautiful people working with us. Professional in their job, and really nice individuals. Some of them have worked in this operation since the beginning. And now, it is time to leave. Time to close what we have worked on. “our project”, “our office”, “our team”.

Over the past months, I have gotten to love the people I work with. Working in any emergency creates that bond, the feeling of “us”. And saying goodbye, especially to those who were here since the beginning, is not easy. Sure enough, we are all professional aidworkers. This is our job. But we are also human. We are not only saying goodbye to colleagues, but we are also saying goodbye to people who have become close friends. People who we have shared a unique experience with. People who we have shared these incredible four months with.

As we walk in this road of life, we cross many people and we create many bonds. The bond between emergency responders is unique. We hold together. Together against the challenges of time, the challenge of the enormous needs, the challenges of.. “the outside world”. We live and work together, not thinking of “tomorrow”, but dealing with the issues of “today”.

And now, we will all go our own way. Back to France, Italy, Panama, Ivory Coast… Many of us, in thoughts. A piece of us will remain here, in Santo Domingo. Cradled in memories of those crazy nights stamping those damned coupons. Of the time where we had to get a ton of food for our own staff on the plane in three hours. Of the time where we had to get that much needed aid cargo at the border in 24 hours.

Once upon a time, we will all meet again. In another emergency. When I meet Georges next time in flood operation somewhere in Asia, or Alex in a civil war somewhere in Africa, or Henrik in a drought operation in the Caucasus, we will meet again as old friends. As if we never parted. Sharing the memories of this operation. Sharing the bond.

But for the time being, we have to go. We part. We say goodbye. Knowing there is never enough we can express at the moment when we give that final handshake: “Thank you for your help, it was a pleasure working with you”, while we really wanted to say is “You know, I loved working with you. You are now part of my heart. Thank you for being part of this”.

So for all of you, this is not goodbye. But “I will see you again”. You are in my heart. We did well. We made a difference!

Once the French actor Jean Gabin made a song “Maintenant je sais”, “Now I know”. He tells a story that when he was young, he always thought he knew everything, and as he grew up, he started to doubt what he really knew, what he really understood of life. He concludes saying as a 60 year old, his life is mostly behind him and “there is only one thing I know for sure: I never know”.

Maybe as you are young and are trying to find your way in life, you need to reassure yourself not to be swept off your feet by everything happening in life. And as years go by, you learn about your own strengths and weaknesses, so you no longer need to hold on to the straws of false assurances… So you can give yourself the liberty or privilege of doubting.

Another way to look at it, is: when you are young, 8 or 10, you look up to adults as if “they know what they are doing”. A job, kids, house, financials, life in general. As you grow into an adult yourself, you start to see the doubts and struggles that also your parents have experienced: they did not know neither, but tried their best.

I will turn 50 this year, believe it or not. When I was young I always said I would die falling of a tree, a cliff, freeze to death on some mountain top, crash in a remote area in Africa before I turned 50… I never believed I could turn 50, me, who was always the youngest and the wildest in the bunch…

But now I do turn 50, I also learned that struggles and doubts continue if you live life intensively and to the fullest. I know these internal battles will never stop. I learned that bit, and came to terms that “I will never Know”… I will continue to doubt whether the choices in life I am making, are the right ones for me, for those around me. Whether the choices I make at work are the right ones, whether I do things right. And somewhere that is the beauty of life. And maybe it is the strength of a person: the strength to dare to doubt. The strength of understanding you will never know.

Last night I arrived back in my apartment near Rome. As I opened the door with a key I had not used for almost three months, the familiar smells and sights engulfed me. It felt as if I had just walked out of the door for a few minutes, to buy a pack of cigarettes in the shop downstairs.

A pair of shoes stood under the small table in the hallway, with next to it some spots of volcanic sand from the previous stroll on the beach now ten weeks ago. I walked into the kitchen to unlock the backdoor, switched on the boiler, picked up a glass on the way back, hooked up my iPod to the sound system, selected Italian opera, checked messages on the answering machine, drew the curtains aside and opened the living room windows.

The smell of distant sea-silt, the fresh breeze, the trees waking up from a winter sleep, the laughter of the kids playing below in the street, the dog from the house across the street barking, and the meshed conversations from the people coming out of the ristorante on one corner, with the those sitting on the terrace of the coffee shop on the other corner.

All of it made it feel as if I only left for a few minutes. But it did not feel this was the place I missed during my travels to the Dominican and Haiti. It did not feel this was the place I dreamt of. It felt as if I wasn’t really gone. A piece of me stayed here. A big piece of my heart never left. Coming back felt like two pieces of my heart were joined again, making it skip a beat for a second. I smiled when I realized my heart pounded faster. I felt happy. “Honey, I am home”..!

But what is “home” for a wandering aidworker? I will be here for four days, then off to the North for a few days, followed by another plane ride to Belgium, my other home, for a week. Then I will drive off for a week of skiing, and back. Plane back to Rome for a day, and then to my other home, in the Dominican, for a few months.

What is home really? What defines home? The pillow I lay my head on? The hands I held in thoughts? The smile of my girls?

In thoughts, I pushed my travel bags in a corner, sat down, and opened a bottle of Prosecco, realizing this life I lead is a weird life. But it is the life I conscientiously had chosen since I left for a war-torn Angola back in 1994. Sixteen years I have been on the road, and made my home in dozens of places. What? Hundreds of places! From the hotel room in Georgia where the wind would swing the electrical wires on the street until they shortened with a bang, waking me up every night. To the apartment in Tajikistan where the tap water was as black as ink. To the bed and breakfast place on the border of Cambodia and Vietnam where I had to pick the leeches off my legs each time I walked in the garden. To the underground bunker in Kabul. The humid guesthouse in Islamabad shared with cockroaches. The Out-of-Africa villa in Lilongwe and the house on the hill in Kampala, known as “the house next to the big mango tree”, until the transformer next to it went up in flames, burning down the tree while it was at it, then to be known as “the house next to the big charred mango tree”…

This morning, before even taking a shower, I wanted one of the things I missed about this place: A Cafe Latte with a cornetto. As I got out of bed, I put on some clothes – realizing I forgot my jeans in my Domingo home, and went down. Laura, behind the counter as usual, said ‘Ciao, Peter!”, as if I’d never left. I sat on the terrace tasting the coffee as if it was my first. Looking at the blue sky lined with palm trees as if it was the first time I saw it.

I thought a shower might be a good idea, but, as I went through the last piece of the croissant, I realized I took my electric shaver with me, but forgot my charger in Santo Domingo. Strange how you realize things clearly sometimes, but at the moment where you should have remembered, you forget. I dug out the keys to my car, brushed the pine tree needles off the wind shield, and went to buy a razor. Got distracted by the early spring flowers on the way back. Conscientiously took a different turn, and drove off to the sea. Locked the car, and walked up the beach.

It was then I saw a large piece of driftwood. It was then I realized my life was as if it were driftwood. Floating from one place to the other. Each place left marks on me, in me. And as time went by, each place sculptured me bit by bit, making me who and what I am.

It was then I realized this is the life I like. Drifting from place to place. Not rooting in any, but loving all. And particularly loving this beach where I was pulled ashore, right here in Italy.

“Mañana, por favor!”, I answer when housekeeping knocks on my door. Mañana, please, I am working…

I sit, computer on my lap, on my bed reading through a backlog of emails, catching up on work done, being done, and work to do.

I just got back from two days in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. It has been almost two months since I landed in Santo Domingo to coordinate the support functions for the Haiti crisis, out of the Dominican Republic. My days are full. My attention is switching from a meeting with one of the ministers, staff recruitment, debugging a cash advance problem, a meeting on limiting the overtime the drivers can do, a shipment which seems to be lost but really is not, stamping the numbering on the food coupons, staffing contracts and a security incident.

It is not the amount of work that tires me, it is the intensity in which issues come, and need to be dealt with. Not that I don’t like it, but in the evening, I pass out on my bed…

After two days in Haiti, I wonder how my colleagues can deal with their work, which is a ten fold more complex than mine. They don’t have a comfortable hotel room, five floors up and 1 minute away from the office. They either live in Camp Charly, the tent camp for the humanitarians, or have to shuttle to the boat anchored off shore, to spend the night. Given, the boat is more comfortable, but it takes anything between one to two hours to get there. Some of the staff pitched their tent in the back of the container park, in “Log Base”, right next to the airport, where most UN agencies set up tents, tarps and office containers, making it the “humanitarian nerve center” of the operation.

The humanitarian part of Log Base is nothing but one narrow road, lined with parked vehicles, crowded with people moving around between the offices, and filled on either side with “offices”.

The fortunate have a 20 foot office container, some with airconditioning, with tarps over them to avoid water sipping through the joints. The less fortunate have massive tents to work in. Meetings are held in open spaces covered with tarps, or half open shelters. Lack of working space is common with most containers cramped with four people, hardly fitting the make shift desks, filled with files and folders hardly leaving space to fit their legs inbetween.

The noise is constant, mostly from planes and helicopters taking off or landing on the airstrip a few hundred feet away. During the meetings, when the screaming noise of yet another Ilutsin taking off builds up, people just stop their sentence for thirty seconds, and then continue as if nothing happened. Like pushing the ‘pause’ button on a video.

Most of the containers are now properly wired up onto the generators, and have network connections to the servers and satellite links. Nothing much we can do these days anymore without connectivity, be it for emails, telephone calls, or registering all procurement or logistics transactions onto the central servers in HQ.

Luckily, during my two days, it was neither hot, nor raining, and many staff commented “this weather is as good as it gets”. I can imagine the dust, humidity or mud on other days.

There is a constant flow of visitors. Army personnel, staff from the other agencies and NGOs, civilians, people from the government and local communities, people coming back from assessment missions or distribution points. It makes it hard to keep concentrated to the task at hand, as people get interrupted every other minute.

And although the spotlight of the world’s cameras is no longer focused on Haiti, the humanitarian operation is still to peak. While during the first six weeks, the utmost urgent needs were being met with loads of cargo being flown in, the steady massive flow of the aid cargo coming in per ship has started. While one plane can bring in up to 100,000 kgs of aid supplies, a ship can bring in 400,000,000 kgs in one go. So the logistics and distribution challenges are only starting now.

On top of it all, the rainy season has begun, making the need of the bringing in supplies even more urgent. And we have the hurricane season just around the corner.

So, sitting back in my hotel room on this Sunday, I can not have but admiration for the staff working in Haiti. Many of them were present during the earthquake. They have lost their homes, suffered from loosing family or friends, scarred by seeing the human misery day by day.

I wish anyone criticizing the humanitarian agencies on the ground in Haiti, could spend a week there, working with them and feel what it is to be faced with the daunting tasks ahead, where “Mañana” might not be an option.

Pictures from my visit to Haiti, and random snapshot from day to day life here, can be found on Shot from the Hip.

For almost 9 years, I headed different emergency response teams while I was based in Uganda (the Great Lakes emergency), Kosovo, Pakistan/Afghanistan and later out of Dubai. Back in 2006, I took a sabbatical and after that worked for three years in Italy, outside of the emergency response scene.

The Haiti operation is my first emergency since four years. Just before leaving Rome, on my way to the Dominican Republic, I wondered by myself, if I still had it in me. If the tools I built for myself over the years were not rusty. But already the first day on the ground in Santo Domingo, it was clear the past experience I was able to build up, did not fade. I felt -once again- as a fish in the water.

In our office, we manage about 80 people, most of them coming from different operations all over the globe. People were picked from other offices, all over the world. From North Korea to Ecuador, from Rome to Indonesia and Malawi. I think they must come from 50 odd different offices. Some are experienced staff, and for some, this was their first emergency response. Some are logisticians, others finance officers or procurement staff, others are administrative assistants, fleet managers, air operations specialist, counsellors, warehouse managers or nutritionists.

How, as a manager, do you make these people fold into one team? I often think about what makes a team work. And the role of a manager in a team. Off the top of my head, let me sum up some points I find crucial.

1. Give direction
Define the team goals from the beginning. It gives people a sense of direction, it helps you face all the different units the same way.

2. Care
As a manager, your staff is your main asset. Your staff will make or break an operation. Be sensitive to the individuals in your team. Debug conflicts right at the start, before they become major issues. Ensure your staff keeps healthy, care for their wellbeing. A fruitbasket a day sometimes makes all the difference. Mind their energy levels. Chase them out of the office when needed, so they don’t burn out.

3. Give feedback
Tell your staff when things are not done well, knowing they do their best, and have the best intentions. Praise when praise is due.

4. Structure
Draw up the team organigram from the start. People need to know who they report to, and what unit they belong to. Put a person in charge of each unit. Ensure the reporting structure is respected, and assist the unit heads where needed.
Brief new staff as they arrive. Explain the team goals, the organigram, the way the office is run.


5. Smile
Everyone has a bad day once in a while. I for one, never hide it when I am in a pissy mood. But I also love to walk around my team and hand out a friendly word and a smile from time to time… Amazing how much difference it sometimes makes.

6. Enable
As a manager, you are an enabler. You have to give the people the tools they need. Be it the budget, connectivity, a decent office space, or equipment. Without their tools, the best team members will not be able to function.

7. Debug
After defining the initial team structures, the basic systems and procedures are put in place, and your team has the tools it needs, one of the main tasks of a manager in emergency operations, is to be a debugger. Ensure people come to you with their issues, and help them on the spot. Don’t let problems ‘breed’ or ’simmer’… Keep your door open.
Often people ask me what I do, as a manager. Apart from my task in linking the teams to the ‘outside world’, be it the government, the UN system or our HQ, my main day-to-day task is “debugging”. I see myself as the guy who walks around with the stick and the rubber tab, sticking it into the toilets and going ‘Zwonk-Zwonk’, until the garbage is gone, and the water flows again. I am the toilet-declogger.

8. Involve
Teams working in emergencies tend to become very focused, which is good. Well functioning units concentrate on their task at hand. All well, but ensure also they maintain the overall focus and the context of the operation. Even after the first month in this emergency, I still have an all-team meeting once per day. Even if it was to get people from behind their desk, even if, for a few minutes, I can give some info on what is going on beyond our office, within the emergency. Everyone likes to feel part ‘of the big machine’.

9. Delegate
In a fast evolving emergency, it is impossible to micromanage. Ensure you have staff you can entrust with the task at hand. Empower the supervisors within their own team, and delegate the tasks. Pass through the supervisors rather than tasking people directly. Often one of my big challenges, by the way.

10. Spot check
It is impossible to check everything going on. But random spot checks on what’s up, gives you as a manager a good idea what’s going on. Read the signs. Sloppy expense reports might point to a sloppy finance officer. Delayed attendance sheets, might point to a sloppy HR officer…

And now I am thinking “Where did I sin against my own rules, today?”

Picture courtesy Jonathan Thompson

I woke at 3 am today.
An ideal quiet time to connect to the wireless network here in the hotel in Santo Domingo, to catch up with my backlog of Email, and to catch the first Emails coming in from our HQ in Rome.
In the Emails, there is a series of exchanges on call-forwards of staff on standby for deployment. Unblocked the deployment of two staff due to arrive asap to help us set up the communications here in the office, and updated the list of another four staff the buro is sending in. Wrote some quick terms of reference for them and just worked my way through some outstanding issues.

8 am: Quick shower and down to the office which is installed in two conference rooms downstairs in the hotel. The usual suspects are already present: the people from aviation are already up and running. The ICT guys start their usual shift at 7:30. The finance and HR people are already at their desks.
Breakfast with some of the staff and we are ready for another day.

8:30: the room is full and buzzing. We are squeezed with about 40 people in one small conference room. Staff come in and out, talking on their mobiles, working on their laptops. All tables we work on are make shift conference room tables filled with files, wires, computers, and stuff. There is laughter and a buzz of activity all around.

9:30: A quick brief with Brenda who just arrived and who will assist our project manager in finding a permanent location for our office.

10:00: Time for a short meeting with our security officer, trying to make some sense of the new security arrangements at the border with Haiti.
We agree it is time to beef up the security arrangements for our border operations.

10:30: Georges, our procurement officer, who normally works in Afghanistan, rings the alarm bell that the food shipment for our base camp in Port-au-Prince is not ready for the afternoon flight.

11:00 meeting with the heads of finance, supplies and logistics of our supplier for the base camp food for Haiti. Agreed on the line of credit and the way we will work to call forward the food next week. We stress the importance of the shipment we had scheduled for today, as it has to be on the plane taking off at 14:00. We have now two and a half hours left. The supplier leaves with Cecelia, our assistant procurement officer (normally based in Ecuador), to the wholesale food shop, to buy one and a half ton of food for our staff in Haiti, in one hour.
Georges winks at me “we will make it, but it will be ‘just in time’”

11:45 Meeting on the ICT requirements for the pending move to the new temporary location of our office, with Dane, who coordinates the ICT deployment in both Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Another wink: “All will be ok!”

12:00 Catching up with my emails again. More debugging. Some releases in our ERP system. Saying hi to more new staff who arrived last night.

13:00 Anisa, who normally works in Dubai, is our office manager (or ‘mama’ as we call her) and the admin crew, have arranged someone to bring in food every day. A quick bite, sitting outside the office. I walk around for a bit of fresh air. We have a dozen of our staff sitting around in the parking lot, eating their lunch.

13:30 Agreed how we will pay travel advances for our staff passing through Santo Domingo, inbound to Haiti. Gwyn, our travel guru from Rome works overtime. Ximena and Beverley, our HR team, come to tell me, proud as a peacock, we just processed our local payroll. Hurray…! A first!

14:00 Mario, who normally works in Indonesia, Tony (from HQ) and Alex (from Panama) form our finance crew. They have me sign off on our monthly bank reconciliation. Once again a first, as before the earthquake, the office here did not have a bank account, had no access to the ERP system… We are processing all transactions online now, set up in less than one week. Another first…. HURRAY! The balance shows our office processed about US$700,000 in payments, in the past three weeks.

14:30: George tells me the food for the basecamp made it in time for today’s flight. Cecilia bought 1.5 tons of food in less than two hours. She reports even the managers of the wholesale store ran around the huge warehouse with shopping carts for her. Good going guys!

15:30 Time for a nap. Unicef calls twice. A VIP is flying using one of our planes in two days. Final arrangements on the schedules.

16:25: a quick shower. Walking out of my room, I cross Henrik, my head of operations. There is a problem in Fond Parisien, just across the border.

16:30 I do my daily briefing with the newly arrived staff. Something I do religiously so newcomers know what we do, how we organise ourselves, and understand what a pain the boss is over here (me!). But I get sidetracked for a meeting with the hotel manager who wants to speak with us.
We desperately need to firm up the agreement we have with them. Jane, our “Head of Support Services With A Friendly Smile” from Panama, Michael (from our Dubai office) and Luigi stress: Yes, we want 70 rooms blocked, with a block allocation of 100 rooms, and priority booking for 150 rooms. Yes, we want to have the locks replaced on the doors of our new offices, and floodlights on the back of the office is a must, thankyouverymuch.

17:45: for the first time, I miss the 17:00 all staff meeting. We needed to firm up the agreement with the hotel, otherwise we would never be able to cater for the 50 local staff we are recruiting in the next two weeks. So instead of walking through our two office-slash-conference rooms shouting “5 o’clock – meeting!!!”, I now shout “Quarter to Six, meeting!” which causes a collective “Booh, you are late” tease from the staff. We use these daily briefs to streamline any issues that need to be discussed, announcements to be made, and short briefs. It is also the ideal moment to introduce all new staff who arrived in the past 24 hours.

18:05 We are ending the brief, and Henrik gives me a sign. I can see there in his eyes there is trouble. “The situation we discussed this morning might run out of hand, we need to act now” is his short message. I call the head of one of our implementing partners in Port-au-Prince via his satellite telephone and we discuss briefly to the head of IOM at the border. It is clear, we need to move fast.

18:30 We call the head of UNICEF and cochair of the nutrition cluster in the Dominican Republic. She confirms the dire need of food in two small camps. I call Carlos in Haiti to clear the upcoming distribution. He gives us the go-ahead.

18:45 Jose (from Rome) and Sam (from our Sudan office) our newly arrived head of aviation confirm I can have a helicopter for tomorrow, take off at 9:30 to fly to the border, to meet with our programme staff there. We assemble a team of 6, file our security clearances online, and fill in a local travel authorization which Gwyn processes.

19:15: We get confirmation for the helicopter. All set. Luigi goes around and gets the names and UNLP numbers of the staff who will fly with us, so we can file a flight manifest.

19:30: a session of signing local purchase orders and finance papers, catching up with email.

20:00 the head of our implementing partner in Haiti calls me back. His team will drive from Port-au-Prince tomorrow to meet us in Jimani. We prepare the food logistics.

20:15 for two weeks in a row, I have been cross with the admin staff, normally working in our Panama office, as they are always staying up to 11 pm in the office. They can not keep that rythm, so I am happy to see them packing up their laptops. I hope they won’t cheat and go to their rooms to work!

21:00 More emails, signing papers. WINGS releases. A debrief with a PI person coming back from Haiti.

22:00 I remember Tine, my wife, asked me to book a flight for her to Rome. We were supposed to meet there, but I won’t be there, so she will stay in my apartment. Last financial releases, cleaning up of my emails.

23:00 I am happy to see my bitching on the staff to leave earlier worked… They all left before 11 PM.. Maybe there is some authority left in me, hahaha… I call the front desk and ask them to lock up the office. As I walk to the reception, one more staff walks to the office “Sorry boss, I have one more email I forgot to send”.. Darned.

24:00 End of the day. Maybe 3 am is not a good idea for tomorrow morning. Good night everyone!

00:15: Darned my authority has failed on me. In my last Email replication of the day, I get more mails from our staff here in Santo Domingo. They are still working. They cheated… They left the office, but are working from their rooms.

I will call it a day. And you know what my last thoughts for the day are? I am happy I have a comfortable bed, in a room. Not so for the hundreds of staff we have in Haiti. I feel lucky for me, sad for them. And hope we made a difference for them today. And for the two million beneficiaries we are serving there… To all of you in Haiti… Good night, our thoughts are with you!