Chief executive's blog from our tsunami projects

26/02/2008

Our last day in Sri Lanka, back in Colombo for meetings with senior colleagues from the Sri Lanka Red Cross.

As the "host" National Society, their role in the response to the tsunami (and the conflict) is key. We discuss what went well, and what we might have done better. Also how to ensure that the work we have done to build their capacity as a National Society, particularly in disaster response and first aid, is sustainable into the future.

The Sri Lanka Red Cross has worked enormously hard to support the work of more than 20 other National Societies who raised money for the tsunami, working bilaterally or through our Federation mechanisms, and are now scaling down their activities, as we are beginning to scale down ours. This is difficult, not least because it means bidding farewell to colleagues and friends who have worked well together.

Tsunami projects completion

They are keen that we should carry on supporting them as they implement their new five year strategy - we would love to but our tsunami funding will all be spent this year as planned, and we have no spare general funding. We talk about the technical support we may be able to offer, and how we can ensure that the lessons we have learnt together during the tsunami response can be captured and incorporated in future responses.

We celebrate our partnership, and reflect that, despite all the challenges, we have made a real difference for those who were left with virtually nothing after the tsunami.

We have a last lunch on the beach with Ben and his small Colombo team, and remember some of the experiences of the visit:

the Red Hot Chilli Ladies; the devastation still evident on the coast, and the smart new houses now almost all completed; houses smashed by hungry elephants in a village already ravaged by war; Sri Lanka Red Cross volunteers in their smart T-shirts singing Happy Birthday; the wonderfully bouncy 'community mobilisers' who work in each village to help the beneficiaries put together their plans and set up their livelihoods activities; egg hoppers for breakfast (crispy bowl-shaped pancakes with a fried egg); rice paddies in the evening light; pelicans and egrets, and kingfishers flashing by; the tragedy of community conflict in this magical land.

With thanks and a tribute to Ben and his team for a great deal of hard work and a job very well done.

25/02/2008

Two lovely sunny days in the field around Ampara with our local project manager Mick Dyson and his team of extremely enthusiastic field officers. The sense of engagement with, and real understanding of the community, is a feature of our livelihood programmes in this isolated and deprived part of the country. We have been deeply impressed with the depth of their knowledge and empathy.

On Saturday we were in small hamlets strung out along bumpy tracks and sprinkled about the forest, many of the inhabitants being early Singhalese settlers encouraged to come to this mostly Tamil part of Sri Lanka by a government keen to regain ground 50 or more years ago. Now they are caught in the middle of a war, receive little or no help, and appear to have developed very little since those early days.

In one village we inaugurated a new office for the Development Commitee, raising flags, cutting ribbons, lighting candles, and then waiting anxiously for a pot of milk to boil over onto the ground in just the right way to guarantee the success of the venture...

Praise for Red Cross work

In another, we sat in an open-sided meeting hall in a sunny forest clearing, a new plantation of cashew plants nearby, as the village elders described our work together in glowing terms. The British Red Cross was the first outside agency to assist them. There was an intricate map showing each house in it's forest plot, plus family details vital for the needs assessment.

We visited a young woman in her mud wall hut, spotless and almost completely empty but for a few paltry belongings on a rickety table. Her garden path was picked out with marigolds lovingly tended like her new little herd of goats.

In the afternoon, after a picnic curry that later blew all our tummies to bits, we saw more goats, some huge fish pulled from a nearby lake with new nets, newly cleared cooperatively-farmed bean fields funded by a group grant - and soldiers everywhere.

Today, Sunday, we have been east of Ampara, along the tsunami-ravaged coast, the ruins of homes and houses decaying quietly in the long grass. New houses have to be built at least 65 metres back from the high water mark here, much to the disgust of the local fishermen who, for decades, have lived alongside their boats.

Restoring livelihoods in Ampara

A group of young girls in smart Sri Lanka Red Cross T-shirts met us with "short eats" and coke and a highly decorated cake for birthday girl Zehra (21 again!) our livelihoods delegate. It seems that all over the world everyone recognises the tune of "Happy Birthday to you!"

Then we were off around the village - to a group of petite young ladies who have bought themselves some sewing machines and are learning dressmaking. We also met a great team of jolly, elderly widows who have cornered the market in chilli powder, instantly christened the Red Hot Chilli Ladies.

Finally, before a rush back to Kandy in time for the 5.30 curfew, we saw some of the houses we are funding, in a joint UN Habitat/Federation project in which the owners themselves hire the masons etc and the UN provides technical advice and supervision.

These houses provided welcome relief from some of the agency/contractor-built houses which, though perhaps higher quality, do have a sameness about them. The other advantage is that those owners with a few savings can supplement the basic design and add an extra room or two.

So we said good bye to the Ampara team. Their project is itself coming to an end, and soon the British Red Cross "family" here will split up. Already, and understandably, there is sadness at the thought. Like their counterparts in Batticaloa, they have achieved something special here, with infinite care and considerable passion making a real difference for people who had very little. We should all feel very proud of them.

23/02/2008

Pouring with rain first thing, but then the sun came through as we went to visit the 43 staff in our local office. Both David and I felt so proud talking with them, as they explained their careful and thoughtful approach with the beneficiaries. "Aren't we rather top down?" asked David. "No no" they said, "it's only bottom up here, we only do what the beneficiaries feel is right for them!"

Later, we went to visit three people who received British Red Cross livelihood grants on the coast west of Batticaloa.

Elderly tsunami survivors

The first was a widow in her 60s who used her £350 to replace her drowned goats, which she rears to make a living. She lived through the big wave on the roof of her house, and then crouched in a tiny cellar.

Her neighbour, nearly 80, lost her husband and three children. Caritas has built her a house, and we have helped her buy some chickens "but nothing can replace my family" she said simply.

Finally, we met a young fisherman whose three babies all drowned. He now has a new boat and net to replace the ones he lost, but it's hard to make enough money to make ends meet for his new family.

Tsunami first aid volunteers

In the afternoon, we were on the road again, travelling south towards our second project team who are based in Ampara.

On the way, we visited a small village Branch of the Sri Lanka Red Cross, where the chairman Mr Ganesh had managed to gather about 300 active members around him, 80 per cent of them women, most of whom were there to greet us with garlands of flowers!

We are helping them construct a Branch building, and they are sure to make good use of it. They are keen first aiders, who did a wonderful job after the tsunami, looking after 10,000 residents from the nearby coastal villages who were forced out of their homes by the tsunami.

Mr Ganesh refused to reveal the secret of his success, though he did mention that many of the women were widows!

22/02/2008

Started today with a three hour drive east into the conflict area, now relatively peaceful with thousands of Government troops and police patrolling the main roads and tracks. There seemed to be a soldier every few yards, frequent checkpoints and several strategically located military camps.

We met up with members of our 40-strong Batticaloa team, including Jo Burton and Ruth Aggis from UK Office, and drove to one of our "beneficiary villages", Kirimichai. The land here is flat, and you can all too easily imagine the tsunami rolling in from the ocean a kilometre or so away.

But the community we are visiting suffered, not so much from the water, but from successive waves of fighting, which have forced them to flee their homes several times in the last decade or so. And when they left during last year's battles, their homes were battered by herds of marauding elephants looking for food - we could still see elephant-sized holes in the walls.

Cash grants support

We have been distributing livelihood grants here - payments of $350 to the 88 households in the village to help them get back on their feet. Our field officers work extremely closely with the local people making sure that our approach is totally "bottom up", and totally in accordance with their wishes and priorities. Here, most people have used the money to buy seeds and plant rice, which we could see ripening in the paddies all around. In a week or so they will be able to harvest, and the natural rhythm of life will have been restored.

``What would you have done without the grants?’’ we asked. ``We would have been living from anything we could find in the jungle,’’ they replied. ``We had no savings left, so we could never have re-established our livelihoods like this.’’

We spent a wonderful few minutes with an elderly lady called Selammah and her family, the latest recruit to the Village Development Committee, which we have set up. She showed us her extensive vegetable plot - papaya, aubergine, tomatoes, beans, cashew nuts - and insisted on loading us down with fresh sweetcorn as a thank you.

Driving on, we came to the village of Kayankerni, all the houses newly built by several aid agencies. This village was forced to relocate by the Government's ruling that any rebuilding had to take place 200m back from the beach.

Supplying fishing boats and nets

Here, as part of another extensive livelihoods programme, we have supplied fishing boats and, to one group of villagers, a Beach Seine fishing net hundreds of metres long which the village women are now sewing together. We met the Committee, who explained the economics and practicalities of this form of fishing, and then headed for the beach to see another team in action.

One end of the long net had been towed off the beach in a huge loop, then back to the beach, enclosing a great arc of sea and, hopefully, fish. Then slowly hand over hand the net is pulled back up the beach the fish are forced back into the business end and the catch is landed, dried, and sold to the local dealer.

Building community centre and school

Finally, we visited Satandi, a crowded little village cramped between sea and lagoon, and subject to regular natural flooding. Here we are building a small community centre with local labour, which will provide both a safe shelter from the floods, a meeting place, and a source of income generation from hirings.

We have also provided an elderly local English teacher with a permanent shelter for his 120 eight to 12-year-old pupils. They gave us a delightful recital in their lovely singsong voices, I taught them about the "ragged rascal and his rugged rocks", and then they sang a special song for our team leader Dave Overy which began: "Twinkle Twinkle Handsome Dave!"

The day finished with a meeting with the local Branch Chairman and his Chief Exec - and an interesting debate about governance and management with David Fall (our newest Trustee) and I! Also a negotiation about how much more we can do here before the allocated funding is spent and we have to go home.

A fascinating day, down at the grass roots seeing how small sums of money can make a huge difference to an entire community, restoring hope, confidence and dignity.

17/12/2007

High winds and storm warnings make it unsafe to take the six-hour speedboat trip to visit our islands. This is a long and uncomfortable journey even on a good day, and we discuss options. I am determined to see Vilufushi, assess progress and meet the contractors, a company we have had to bring in from the Philippines, because no local firms have the capacity or skills we need. We decide to hire an air taxi and fly through the storm.

From the air, the island is an extraordinary sight, a small green core (the original island, smashed by the tsunami), surrounded by a huge ring of white coral sand with a new harbour on one side. Somewhat unwisely, the pilot decides to land the small seaplane actually in the harbour, but misjudges the space and narrowly avoids a collision with the harbour wall.

In lashing rain, we head for one of the few buildings remaining from pre-tsunami times, where our construction manager Darren briefs us on the state of play. The contractor has been slow in bringing labour and equipment from Manilla and we are running behind target, so we discuss the balance we need to strike between being firm about our requirements, whilst maintaining good relations and a warm sense of partnership. This is by any standards a tough assignment - building hundreds of houses on a remote, bleak island miles from anywhere in the middle of the Indian Ocean, where literally every nail and brick has to be brought in by sea - and we can't afford to let things slip, but neither do we want to end up in an unnecessarily adversarial relationship.

We tour the site in the rain – it takes about 20 minutes to walk from one end to the other. We are pleased to see that work has started on every single house, with 18 already up to roof level. The key is to make sure that the workmen take time and trouble to get these early houses right - then they can bash on quickly, when they know what they are doing.

We meet the owner of the company and his design and engineering team; also our own building supervisors. They check every one of 36 separate steps in the construction of every single house as they go along, so that quality is maintained, and any mistakes are picked up quickly and corrected.

This is a tough place to live. When we start building the power and sewage systems, and possibly a school as well, there will be several hundred men on site, from several different countries - with very little by way of home comforts, and very little to do in the evenings. We will have to organise a social programme, health facilities, security, and keep up a good standard of cooking too!

Meanwhile, groups of Vilufushians visit from Buruni every few weeks, to see how their new homes are developing and to discuss issues and questions with our team. When will the houses be ready? What colour will the walls be? Where will I smoke my fish? Can I have an extra bedroom? Why are these houses different to those on Madifushi (a neighbouring island)? Can I live near my friend? Why can't we have bigger windows? The questions, comments and criticisms are endless, and each has to be handled carefully and sensitively, if it is not to develop into a bone of contention in the future.

When they do all return, in a few months time, they will find beautiful houses, very much better than those they had before the tsunami. But it will be a different way of living - closer together, as required by the Government's plan for the island, and with sewage treatment and power plants that will need careful maintenance. We will be working closely with the Island Chief to make sure that a potentially traumatic homecoming is a success, and that the agriculturalist Burunians do not suffer economically as their temporary guests return home.

The challenges are immense - and every day brings a new one. Our team here, fantastically supported by recovery experts, economists, lawyers, accountants, communicators and so many more in our UK Office, are doing a wonderful job of responding to these challenges, learning as they go along, and doing their very best to "build back better". By this time next year, inshallah, our work in the Maldives will be done, and the team will have moved on to disasters elsewhere. They will not be forgotten by the Maldivians though.