Veloma Madagascar

...the last 4 weeks were busy. I visited my good friend Karsten in Ethiopia and time flew by after I came back. I will leave Madagascar tomorrow at 21h to attend the debriefing in WFP HQ Rome...but before that we will have a nice fare-well dinner with friends and colleagues.

I wont make it a big conclusional blog-entry, but just let me say that I had a great time in Madagascar where I met amazing people and learnt a lot.

Thanks to all of you who made that possible.

Veloma Madagascar....Fabi

PS: I will be back in Germany 1st April!

After the Cyclone...

So I am back from my field trip to Tamatave, where Tulika and I were assisting our Emergency Preparedness and Response Officer Solveig Routier.

Before I will tell about my personal experience, I’d like to give you a brief overview about the situation after cyclone Ivan hit Madagascar, which was the reason for our trip:

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The number of "affected" continue to increase. According to the National Bureau of Catastrophe and Risk Management (BNGRC), 83 people have been reported killed by the cyclone Ivan.

Around 320,000 people have so far been affected, including some 187,000 who lost their homes. The number of affected people may still be revised upwards.
The most devastated area is on the north-eastern coast with some 163,000 people affected in four districts.
The main problems, besides the massive infrastructure obstacles, are floods, making in nearly impossible for the people to return to their homes and having lost most of their possessions.

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After we arrived on Wednesday night in Tamatave we met Solveig in our hotel, where we had the first briefing. To our astonishment Solveig and partners from CARE International explained to us, that in Tamatave itself the situation is okay. This was of course great to hear and put our emergency mindset a little bit into perspective. But in the region of Tamatave the situation was obviously way worse.

For the next day we divided work: Solveig met again with CARE and we went to see the NGO’s Catholic Relief Service and the Malagasy Red Cross (CRM). We told them that WFP could provide them with food aid to facilitate the emergency food response.

Our meeting with CRM was at the beginning more successful as they could provide us with figures of people in need in the different areas. According to those figures we calculated the rations needed for a 15 days project with a general food distribution and Food for Work activities.

We put everything in place and arranged another meeting for the following day to prepare the Letter of Understanding, which is the contract between WFP and its partners.
As Solveig returned to Antananarivo to attend the coordination meetings, it was up to Tulika and me to finalize the contract. Even though we negotiated passionately, we unfortunately could not make it happen. The reasons therefore where beyond my understanding but clearly showed me the difficulties and vulnerability of a partnership between WFP and a NGO.

I was very disappointed that we did not mange to work together in that specific case, but I have to say, that it was a very valuable “lesson learnt”.

The rest of our assignment we spent in the office at the biggest warehouse of WFP Madagascar. From there we coordinated the delivery of High Energy Biscuits which had to be sent to Antananarivo and other regions of Madagascar, which were flooded.

So that was it: briefings, meeting partners, assessing needs and capacities, quarrelling, frustration and eye opening lessons in general.

All that belongs now to my first emergency response experience!

Footnote:

The relief operations are still fully ongoing and now we have a lot of new colleagues coming in from the regional bureau in Johannesburg and the headquarter in Rome.

Our office is now even more active and lively and I belief that it is one of WFP’s major strength to react appropriately to emergencies like cyclone Ivan.