Tag: journal

Disaster Relief: Day 4

UN tank used to protect disaster relief workers
UN tank used to protect disaster relief workers

Well, it was one of those roller-coaster days.  Check-in was at 6:30, so Adoum reliably picked me up at 6:00 and we rattled off to the airport.  My bag was 17kg and sometimes they’ll make a fuss over even 2kg, so I was relieved when they let it go, though later I found they’d lost a bundle that accompanied the checked bag.  There is only one gate at the airport, though it is dutifully numbered “gate 1” and about 5 flights of passengers were all crowded into the one cramped waiting room.  Just as my flight was due to head out, a bunch of soldiers armed with AK-47s, rockets and other small arms formed a perimeter around the parking ramp in front of us.  It was rather disconcerting that they were facing our door rather than the world at large.  Then President Deby’s plane came in to pick him up, people rolled out a red carpet, others swept it, soldiers in formal dress lined the carpet and everyone waited – for two hours, while the entire airport was closed down.

I didn’t mind waiting; I’m used to that.  But it was making me miss my connection to Goz Beida and I knew Nick would pay me back for my bragging about not having to spend the night in Abeche.  We landed in Abeche a couple of hours late.  I registered with the local government official and called our local man to come pick me up.  Stepping out onto the front step of the two-room airport building to wait for him, I heard someone say “all passengers for Goz Beida.”  I grabbed my bag, pushed it at a guy with tags and a stapler, and said, “Goz Beida?  I’m going to Goz Beida.”  So he grabbed my bag, tagged it, tagged my knapsack carry-on, and pointed out the tiny airplane parked across the crumbling brick-paved parking ramp.  I caught up with the 3 other passengers and told the pilot I was going to Goz Beida.  He scribbled my name onto the manifest and away I went, wondering when they would pitch me off the plane.  But they didn’t.  Usually there is a painfully long and bureaucratic check-in procedure in Abeche, so I was astonished that I was going to be let onto this flight.  Quickly I sent a text message to our man in Abeche and to the guys in Goz Beida that I was on my way.  Life occasionally throws a bone your way and I reveled in it.

All the team’s senior staff and Nick met me at the dusty clay airstrip.  It was a nice welcoming.  Off to one side was the MINURCAT (UN peacekeepers) compound with helicopter gunships stationed in a barricaded compound.  Last February rebels overran the local government military in Goz Beidafor the second time and occupied the town for the better part of the day before they were chased off.  Our team took shelter in their compound for a night or two.  To prevent another battle, UN peacekeepers have been based here to support the Chadian military.  If NGOs like World Concern have to leave because of security, then about 60,000 people will not get such basics as food, water and medical care, so the role of the peacekeepers is very important.

I was dropped at the house to collect my wits and eat the first food I’d had today.  Jetlag had me up at about 4am this morning, so I wasn’t much good.  Later, we went over to Oxfam’s compound to use their internet connection.  Even though I’m in Chad, I’m still supporting responses in other countries, so I had to answer several emails each from Kenya, Myanmar and Sri Lanka to keep things from stalling, as well as various administrative duties from HQ.  It’s hard to be in a place like Chad and think about budget planning for 2010.

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Disaster Relief: Day 2 & 3

disaster relief aid chad
A 'tent city' where people in need of disaster relief live

This post is direct from the journal of Merry Fitzpatrick. She is providing disaster relief to the people in Chad, Africa.

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Today is Thanksgiving and I’m in Chad.  It means nothing to the people around me.  I knew I’d be out of the States today, so I celebrated with a nephew and some neighbors last Saturday just before leaving.  That helps.

I arrived on Tuesday afternoon (along with my baggage, hallelujah) and was picked up at the airport by Jonas, our local logistician.  All our work is on the other side of the country so the rest of the team is there.  Unfortunately, the capital has the one international airport so we have to pass through here when we arrive and depart.  So we keep a simple house and a room for Jonas’ office here.

Because of security, we have to take UN flights to get to the field.  Last week we were sending out a 4×4 vehicle we’d purchased and it was attacked along the way by bandits.  No one was hurt and nothing was stolen, but we did have to replace a couple of wheels.

Disaster relief supplies in chad
Disaster relief supplies

Jonas met me with Adoum, a taxi guy we use on occasion.  Adoum borrows a car off the owner and they split the fare.  The car is an ancient little sedan that rattles and shakes along on 2 to 3 cylinders at a time.  Sometimes the windows will open or close, sometimes not.  At the house I met up with Nick, our Deputy Relief Director who is also visiting Goz Beida.  All houses here are surrounded by high walls, even if your house is made of mud.  Our compound is rather small and the kitchen, such as it is, is tucked away in a little cement block room in the back corner of the compound.  Just inside the gate is a large bougainvillea vine that sprawls along the wall, showering down bright pink-purple flowers during the night (which the guard sweeps with maddening enthusiasm before 6am).  These plants are great in that they grow in both rainy and dry areas and their thorny confusion of branches provides much better security than barbed wire – while also being quite beautiful.

The walls and floors are cement and the walls are painted an odd pink.  The 3 bedrooms contain beds and nothing else.  Some built-in closets in one room provide storage for our field team’s city clothes and such.  The living room contains a small fridge (the only one in the house), a sofa/armchair set and a coffee table, and nothing else.  The house is mainly just for people to transit through, so it doesn’t need much more.  The compound across the narrow sandy street is occupied by a variety of young singles, so loud contemporary African music blares through most of the day.  Noise isn’t the villain here that it is in the States so you confuse people if you are upset by loud music or whatever.

Down the street, across an open sandy area littered with trash there are a few shops and restaurants.  The restaurants are tin shacks with plastic tables and chairs set around on a dirt floor.  In a corner 3 sinks with running water are lined up – a bit of a luxury in a place like this.  Usually there is just a metal tank with a spigot.  People eat mainly with their hands, so washing is important.  There are rarely ever any women in the restaurants as this is a Muslim section of town.  Because I’m obviously a foreigner, they don’t mind when I go there to eat.  Last night Nick and I went down there for a plate of fries and a large glass of fresh guava and banana juice for supper.  It didn’t make me sick, so I’ll probably go there for supper tonight too.

Disaster relief helps hungry children in Chad
Disaster relief helps hungry children in Chad, Africa

Nick’s flight to Goz Beida left early this morning and Jonas is chasing down a number of different signatures, so I’m largely on my own today.  Today is Thursday; Monday morning between flights was the last time I was able to download emails, so Jonas took me to a cyber café on the back of his motorcycle and dropped me off.  It is the best connection in town, but is still slow and erratic.  It took me about half an hour to receive my emails, then another hour of constant trying and retrying to get the emails in my outbox to send.  Everything here takes more time and effort.

Normally, we have to overnight on our way to Goz Beida in a pit of a town called Abeche, but miracle of miracles, I will be on a rare flight tomorrow that will connect directly with a flight to Goz Beida, arriving almost the same time as Nick, even though he left 24 hours before me – which I’ve kindly reminded him of about a hundred times.  The flights are coordinated by the UN and we’re allowed only 15kg (about 30 pounds) of luggage, including our carry-on bags because the planes are so small.  Considering an ordinary laptop weighs 4 to 5 pounds (2-3kg), this doesn’t leave much for personal gear.  There are also always supplies and spare parts to take to the field as well.  So we usually end up with about half the weight for our personal items.  That’s about enough for a few toiletries, shower shoes, a flashlight, about 4 changes of clothes, a towel, a book or two, and some small odds and ends.  Really though, that’s about all you need as long as you can get your clothes washed once or twice a week.

I pray all goes well tomorrow and I don’t get stuck in Abeche.

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Disaster Relief In Chad: Day 1

Disaster relief in Chad
A Helicopter is about to deliver disaster relief supplies to people in Chad

Still traveling.  It’s already been a long trip and it’s still only half done.  Leaving Seattle on Sunday evening, I’ll arrive in Ndjamena on Tuesday.

On arrival, we’ll immediately apply for my travel permit to go to Goz Beida, the town in the east where we work.  Because it is a conflict zone, the government must control which foreigners go into the area.  As we have permission to work there and an on-going program, it is little more than a formality, but it must be done and it takes time.

Usually about a day – if we catch the right people at their desks.  Then I’ll get a seat on a UN flight to Abeche, the main town in the east where I’ll have to spend the night, arriving in Goz Beida on Thursday or more likely Friday.  So that means travelling from Sunday to Friday to get to our base.  The airline I’m on is notorious for losing bags – about half the time I have to wait days or weeks for my bags to show up.   Once, after 4 months, they showed up on another continent, 6,000 miles away.  Another time they never did arrive.  Now, I carry the essentials with me plus any valuable equipment I am taking to the field.

disaster relief chad
A worker unloading disaster relief supplies

I’ve been doing disaster relief work for about 13 years now.  It is unlike anything else in the world.  Mind-numbing days of tedium and discomfort mixed with unbelievable moments exhilaration when things work out that more than make it all worthwhile – when you can provide disaster relief to someone.  After so many years, the learning curve is still very steep.  It’s one of the things that makes disaster relief and aid work so exhausting while at the same time so compelling.  Until the last few years, I was always based in the field, working for months and even years in a single place, on a single crisis.  Now, I work more as an advisor and hop around to different programs.  One of the things I miss most in my new role is the close relationships with my teams.

Although I helped start this program in Chad (a country in Africa) a year and a half ago, I expect to learn a lot on this trip, as I do on every trip.  I expect to learn not just about Chad, or this particular crisis, or about specific techniques, but also about people in general – the people we are there to serve, our team on the ground, and even myself.  As Chadian food isn’t exactly my favorite, I expect I’ll lose a bit of myself as well (in pounds).

Today is my brother’s 40th birthday.  I wonder if I can call him from the airport in Rome where we’ll have to sit on the runway for an hour between 8 hour flights.

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