By Lizzie Babister, Senior Shelter Advisor Feb. 7, 2009
In the mornings, as the little tent circle of staff in the garden of CARE’s office wakes up our most precious items here the small padlocks for locking the tents. A token gesture towards security since anyone could cut through the fabric, but with the garden busy with CARE staff this would be noticed immediately. We are relieved from the inconvenience of staying with our possessions while I work. Many of the camps in the city are congested with people, strangers to each other situated in the same place by necessity because open land is so scarce. There are no locks or fences between families. CARE will be supporting community leaders to organise committees in order to empower families to work for their recovery as community.
A truck rumbles by as the first distribution teams head for the field. The security guard opens the gate for it, parting the crowd of hopeful men waiting there, looking for work.
We slept well last night on a mattresses for the tents. There’s a short window at night when it is cool enough to sleep, but without the mattress the cold had woken us regularly. Many displaced families have a makeshift shelter the same size as my one man dome tent made from tree branches, bed sheets and found materials. Mattresses are one item in CARE’s distribution of household items. Although they are a headache to transport because they are bulky, they can prevent fatal respiratory infections in vulnerable people like pneumonia by lifting them at night from the cold ground.
The hour’s journey to airport where the coordination meetings are held provides a rare period of relative calm. Some CARE drivers are ex-taxi drivers which comes in very useful when we need to avoid rubble, queues for distributions or protests.
We pass a settlement on the way to and from the airport where around one hundred families that have settled on the central reservation of a dual carriageway. It is about two metres wide and the line of shelters stretches along the road for about two hundred metres. Many shelters contain children playing just a few inches from the moving cars. Some families have set up small market stalls on the other side of the road and they dodge the traffic to reach their new places of work. Nearby there is an empty field and our guess that it is privately owned and that families have been refused access. CARE is advocating for safe site selection as the top priority with other NGOs, the UN and the government.
The coordination meetings bring home the scale of this emergency. So many people attend the meeting we are at that we all sit on the floor of the meeting tent because there is no room for chairs. Every fifteen minutes we pause our discussion as planes take off and voices disappear into the jet engine roar. CARE was luckier than some agencies who lost many staff when their offices collapsed. CARE has seconded two staff to the shelter cluster coordination team to support the process.
On the return journey we see black pigs munching on garbage in the drainage canals. We pass buildings with their front walls missing, revealing the rooms inside like giant dolls houses.
Back at the office the internet goes down. It works again. It goes down again. Luckily lunch is then served, giving the internet time to make its mind up. Lunch in the office is simple but delicious prepared in the garden by two friendly cooks. We’re providing food twice a day to staff because they have lost their homes, everything. News that food is ready spreads through the office in seconds and a long queue suddenly forms. Everyone from the smart office workers to the dusty distribution teams appears. Outside CARE is taking part in the mass WFP food distribution of rice. The distributions have been calm and orderly, as CARE has good relationships with local authorities who can arrange the process. However tensions can run high towards the end of these distributions when people start to worry that food will run out.
After lunch I call my husband before he goes to bed in the UK. We talk about quotes for dog insurance and the phone bill. I tell him about the camp in the middle of the road. Suddenly I need to change the subject and shut the door on the emotion this triggers. I ask him about the weather.
The afternoon brings satisfaction when we receive the quote we have been waiting for to order plastic sheeting, one of our most critical and most expensive relief items. I enjoy the necessary calculation involving weight of material and airfreight cost. It focuses my range of emotions on a practical task. Things get even better when we receive news that another aid agency may donate some sheets to us. As decisions are made at a pace we follow up both possibilities. CARE will distribute plastic sheeting for families to improve their shelters making them bigger, waterproof, durable and private. It will also be used for constructing latrines. Rainy season is coming in March, so we need to be prepared.
