Medair Logs Workshop 2019

In early April we had a Medair Logistics workshop in Dubai. Logisticians from all of the Medair programs around the world came together to discuss different aspects of logistics - from the new procurement software that Medair will be using to negotiation skills. We also talked about a lot of

Medair logisticians from around the world!

nuts and bolts issues such as how to avoid disallowances with donor auditors.

One of the reasons we held it in Dubai is that this is one of the few countries in the world where Afghans can get visas.

It was an amazing group of people! Here are some of the nationalities represented: Kurdish, British, Afghan, Cameroonian, South African, Dutch, Syrian and Bangladeshi (my senior logs officer, Juwel, attended with me – he is in the middle on the other side of the table that I am at). So it was really amazing to interact with such a diverse group of people doing amazing work in all the different countries where Medair works and at headquarters!

Logistics (logs) varies so much from one country to another. The South Sudan program, for instance, is one of the most complicated logistics programs (along with Afghanistan and the Democrat Republic of Congo). South Sudan and Afghanistan are both long-running programs, which means that there are multiple bases in each of these countries. So logs often is buying at a central location (like the capitol city) and then expediting to far flung bases around the country. In South Sudan a lot of that expediting happens by air cargo, which is obviously quite expensive. In Afghanistan there are places in the highlands were all supplies are moved by horses. In comparison, Bangladesh is a pretty simple program. We have one base alone. And we have good enough roads to move all our supplies with trucks and other vehicles.

Simulation NSAG

One aspect of the learning during the workshop was negotiation training. There is, obviously, a lot of negotiation involved in logs. One of the primary procurement principles we live by is “best value for money.” So we are negotiating to get that best value for the money that both donors, and individuals like yourselves, give to the Bangladeshi program. But while we were at the workshop a Cameroonian colleague relayed to me how he had had to negotiate with an armed faction in a neighboring country for the release of a couple of his staff who had been taken hostage. This picture is from the simulation we did during the negotiation training. This simulation had to do with negotiating with Non-State Armed Groups (NSAG). My colleague from Afghanistan played the part well! But the training was really helpful! Negotiations are not something that I would say I am necessarily naturally gifted in. So it was really helpful to learn more about negotiating methods and styles.

The things that we learned at the workshop will definitely help my team to better execute our duties. I am grateful for the learning opportunities!

Prayer points:

1. Pray for Medair logs personnel around the globe: for integrity, for strength and for grace to offer others.
2. Pray for Christine as the UN Food Programme project reporting system weighs on her these days.
3. Pray for Rohingya and Bangladeshi alike as almost all celebrate Eid al Fitr over the next 3 days (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eid_al-Fitr)

Time recently came out with a great exposé on the Rohingya. Check it out!

http://time.com/longform/rohingya-muslims-exile-bangladesh/

A Rohingya photographer

I just want to quick send out a blog in order to share the following link with you:

https://rohingyavision.com/life-through-the-eyes-of-a-rohingya-photographer/

Our comms guy just shared this link with us today. And I am sharing it with you because it tells of some of the difficulties of being a Rohingya youth in the refugee camps. You have to be highly motivated (like this young man) to continue to learn and to grow.

I recently learned that the average amount of time that a person remains a refugee is 17 years! The Rohingya have been here for 2 years thus far.

What he says about education is true. Beyond pre-school education, little else exists. And so the plight of youth is really dire.

And he highlights the fires as well. Here is a picture that one of our staff took of a fire on the 24th of April. He describes well the challenges that fires pose (because he lives that reality).

I think this gives you a better idea of the reality of Rohingya youth! Thanks for continuing to pray for them! 

Home renovation

Building on the hillsides - photo by Tamara Berger

Have any of you done any home renovation recently? We did a ton of this the last year before leaving for Bangladesh. His brother, Jay, helped Phil (actually Phil lent the grunt labor and Jay lent the expertise) to frame up our basement in preparation for renting out the main part of our house. Our brother-in-law Rod may have spent more time at our home than at his own helping with the finishing of the basement. And we did some renovation of our upstairs to make it into an apartment for our family while we rented out the main floor and the basement.

Well, Medair is helping do home renovation for the Rohingya refugees (but as you might imagine, this doesn’t look at all like the home renovation that you or I might do in the States). When the refugee homes were first built over a year ago for some, the upright bamboo poles were simply stuck into the ground. As you can imagine, that bamboo is now rotting, calling into question the integrity of the entire home. So the objective is to upgrade so these homes to be able to resist high winds during the upcoming monsoon and cyclone seasons.

We have shown you, in previous posts, photos of the construction of the Nutrition clinics that Christine manages. The homes of the refugees are built in a similar fashion out of bamboo, usually with tarpaulin roofs.

And a huge part of Phil’s job in logistics is to manage procurement. So he and his team (particularly his colleague Juwel) have been working at purchasing the materials that the Shelter team needs to help facilitate refugees upgrading their own homes.

Schematic for the new anchoring system for Rohingya homes

Here is a diagram of how these upright bamboos will now be anchored in the ground:

There is a “helix” which is essentially an augur that the refugee family (and the objective is to have the families rebuild their own homes with some assistance from Rohingya who have been trained in these building practices) will screw into the ground to a depth of a little over half a yard. This will serve as the anchor. Then a round cement block with a hole in the middle is sunk partially into the ground with the helix “stem” coming up through the middle of the block (which is solid other than the hole in the middle). The upright bamboo (each house will receive 8) - which will then constitute the corner or side main uprights of the home - is inserted over the stem which has an eyelet at the top. The bamboo rests on top of the block so that it is no longer in contact with the soil, prolonging its life span. And holes are drilled on each side of the bamboo so that a bolt can be inserted through the bamboo, go through the eyelet in the augur, essentially bolting together the entire unit. Then the families will construct their homes around this foundation with woven bamboo mats as walls and tarpaulin roofs held in place by both bamboo mats and lengths of bamboo running over the top of the tarps to hold it in place.

One of the blocks we broke apart

So yesterday Phil and a Shelter colleague, Hans, put in a few hours working on the procurement of the blocks that will be used as described above. The Shelter team was concerned that some of the blocks might not have been built to their specifications (proportions of sand, gravel and cement; whether the two iron bands have been put in the block, etc) that team had given to the vendor. When we contacted the vendor with our concerns, he said that we could come to where he is making the blocks, he would mix up the cement mixture in front of us, and make the blocks in front of us. So we did that yesterday and marked the blocks so that we can use them as a comparison with the blocks which have already been delivered to our warehouse. Then we went to the warehouse to break some of the blocks that they were concerned about to see whether the blocks had indeed been built to our specifications. Hans seemed to enjoy pounding on these blocks with a hammer to break them open! And we were pleased that as the blocks have cured, they seem to be as hard as we had expected.

Our hope is that these new improved foundations will give the Rohingya better safety during the upcoming storm season. 

Please pray/praise: 

• For the Rohingya as they face the monsoon/cyclone seasons again in what is essentially temporary housing. 
• That we can get all the procurement of these shelter items for the construction to happen in a timely manner. 
• For international staff that have various family issues making it difficult for them to continue in their roles. 
• For what seems to be an inordinate amount of still births in the camps and all that may surround that issue.

News from the Shire

Our home/office nicknamed "The Shire" or "Alcatraz"

Wow! There has been a lot of water under the proverbial bridge since our last post. We almost cried when we saw 6 comments this morning in reaction to that last blog.  Thank you all for your prayers, your kind words of affirmation, and just news from people who are dear to us. You have no idea how much this means to us!

We particularly want to thank you for your prayers during the move to our new base in the rice fields of Court Bazar! This process was as hard as Phil anticipated it would be! In fact, we are still working some of the details out. Phil had been having regular contact to prepare things with the landlord in advance of the actual moving day (we knew we were really pushing him to get things done faster than he would have if we were not moving in). But the day that we showed up with all our office furniture and documents the workers were still living in our offices and there was still finishing work to be done! There was no turning back at that point, so we moved the furniture into the offices (knowing that it would be safe), stuffed all our documentation in a shop out front of our building (in which the landlord had been storing building supplies) locked the door, and prayed the Lord would take care of

More rice paddies around us

the rest! The next day the workers had moved out, and finishing was moving forward!

One of the minor details to be worked out was that, in the beginning, we had to use the jerry rigged electrical connection that was pulled from someone’s house, across the rice paddies on bamboo poles and into our building. The official electrical connection from the utility company had not yet been hooked up. And our generator had not yet been delivered. So we were a bit limited in electrical usage for a bit! But now the generator is online. We have received the electrical connection (though we still need to get more transformers to increase our capacity). And we are cooking with gas (literally and figuratively).

Honestly, the landlord has been very good at working with us. I am so thankful for Mr Nurul Absar’s cooperation. And I am thankful for your prayers. It is humbling to think of how those prayers have sustained us through decades of ministry around the world!

Phil has loved the challenges of the new job. Since he took over as Logs manager, there have been some failures, and there have been lots of successes. He always tells the team that they win or lose as a team. So they celebrate the wins, and correct the losses!

Christine’s work in nutrition - Funding remains a challenge for the nutrition programs. As the

Get the idea? - we are literally surrounded by rice

Rohingya refugee situation moves from the initial immediate emergency related to the huge influx of refugees to a transitional phase of semi-permanency the broader global interest has shifted to other more immediate crises. Partial funding has been received for continuing to run the 3 nutrition sites that provide support to children under 5 and PLWs (pregnant and lactating women). But the uncertainty of funding is causing us to strategize around all the different possibilities including looking at how to cut back on nonessential services.

The Rohingya face significant challenges these days. The government here has said that the Myanmar government has not put in place structures and provisions allowing the Rohingya to return. These stories tell more about this government’s plans in the face of that: https://www.dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/rohingya-crisis/2019/03/03/rohingya-relocation-to-bhasan-char-to-start-by-mid-april and https://www.thedailystar.net/rohingya-crisis/news/un-envoy-fears-new-crisis-rohingya-if-moved-bangladesh-island-1713532.

Prayer points:

• Pray for God’s good purposes for the Rohingya to be accomplished in all aspects of their lives so they can flourish materially, spiritually and emotionally. Also pray against the principalities and powers that would hold them hostage.
• Pray for funding for Medair’s programs in Bangladesh
• Praise for our move to what we, as Medair staff, call “The Shire” – a peaceful home in the middle of flourishing rice paddies

Advent in Bangladesh and other news

It has been too long since our last blog post. In the meantime we had a wonderful Advent season here in Bangladesh! We decided as a Medair team that we wanted to do a Advent devotional together, and found one written by Dietrich Bonhoeffer! Many of the writings were from Christmas sermons he had given, then complemented by writings to family, friends and his fiancée from prison before he was executed by the Nazis. This was really a meaningful addition to work and a great preparation for Christmas. One of the things that Christine & I love doing is adapting Christmas traditions to wherever we are living. So it was fun to find a Christmas tree of the same variety that we once had in Benin!

Our colleague, Robert (from Uganda), has pizza for the 1st time!

We had a lot of meaningful team time. We had a pizza meal together one evening. And on Christmas morning we had a brunch together (which included Christine and Phil's world famous cinnamon rolls - they must be world famous as we have made them around the world!) before our gift exchange. About half our colleagues were gone over the holidays. But we loved celebrating with the ones who were here!

On of the benefits of having a few days off around the Christmas season (primarily because our programs were shut down for a week because of elections here in Bangladesh) was that we were able to talk with all three of our kids who were in Minnesota over that time period. Anna's parents live in the Twin Cities, so Nathan and she were there for around 10 days. And so for around a week we talked with various combinations of kids each morning and each evening (we are currently exactly 12 hours ahead of MN, so our day was happening during their night). This was so special for us as we miss them so much! It was difficult to be away from them this Christmas, but speaking with them so often helped dull the pain of the absence a bit! This is a picture that we took on FaceTime during one of our conversations.

(from left to right - in case you don't recognize them)
Lydia, Annika and Nathan

 You may have been read about the Rohingya in international news over the last 3 months as well. There was an aborted attempt to resettle a first group of Rohingya back in Myanmar when they simply refused to go. There was an outcry from the international community over what appeared to be a rushed effort (https://www.medair.org/42-ngos-warn-return-refugees-myanmar-now-dangerous-premature/). There have also been persistent reports of repression of their people in their home country and settling of other ethnic groups in Rohingya villages that were burned during the crackdown of 2018. All this has had a very sobering and unsettling effect on these people alongside whom we are walking.

Please pray/praise:

1. Praise God for a wonderful Christmas time and relatively uneventful elections here in BGD.
2. Pray for last issues to be resolved with our new landlord as we need to move into our new office/accommodation nearer the camps by the end of the month.
3. Please keep the Rohingya in your prayers, that God's vision of shalom for them would be accomplished!

A wedding celebration - Going the extra mile

Christine with Osman at the bride's House

Yesterday we attended the wedding celebration of one of our nutrition staff. His name is Osman and he is the Outreach Supervisor in Camp 16 where we have one of our nutrition sites. His job is to supervise the 52 community nutrition volunteers (CNVs) we have in Camp 16. These CNVs visit regularly the women and children who receive food from our nutrition site. They share health and nutrition messages and generally look out for the well being of these families.

When we arrived at the house of the bride, we found Osman sitting at a huge table. Around the table were all of the male volunteers - 44 of them - eating together in this joyful celebration! Now, you have to realize that the CNVs are all Rohingya refugees. Most have been living in the camp for over a year now, and, like all Rohinga are not allowed to leave the camp. Osman and the CNVs managed to get special permission from the camp authorities to leave the camp and attend this wedding celebration in Cox's Bazar. Osman organized a bus to bring them into town - a trip of about 2 hours one way - so they could join him on this special day.

The Rohingya CNVs at table with Osman

Christine was literally speechless when we arrived and saw all of the CNVs sitting together with Osman around the table. Osman's job as an outreach supervisor with these CNVs is obviously more than just a job for him. Osman's desire to have them at his wedding celebration, and making that happen, is really an example of going the extra mile. This is an illustration of the love of our staff for the people they serve.

In Medair we like to share stories about going the extra mile. We are humbled to work with staff who live that out, not just in their work life, but their personal life as well.

Elizabeth, one of Christine's Managers, with the Bride

As we approach the end of the year please pray for the ongoing work of the nutrition staff and all the volunteers as we are at the end of project cycle. We are hopeful for renewed funding in the new year. But we don't yet have enough assured funding for the entire year.

Prayer points:

1. Funding for health and nutrition programs for next year.
2. A smooth handover of two Medecins Sans Frontières (MSF) clinics  to Medair as of the 1st of January. 
3. For the country of Bangladesh as it heads towards elections on the 29th of this month - there is much uncertainty around these elections.

Emergency Contingency Planning for the Rohingya

A month or so ago I was involved in emergency contingency planning.

This means that Medair was doing planning for the eventuality of an emergency like a cyclone (we call them hurricanes in the US - one of the most likely emergencies that we face here in Bangladesh). The focus was both on what we need to do in order for Medair staff to be safe and secure as well as what we need to do for our staff so that they have the ability to respond to the needs of the Rohingya in such a situation.

Our contingency plan says this about the situation that the Rohingya face in the case of

Erosion in the camps (photo by T Berger)

massive monsoon or a cyclone: “Experts  have evaluated  the  current  landscape  in  which  the  refugees  are  residing  and  have  noted  critical  concerns  for  at least  102,000  people  who  are  living  with a risk  of  flooding  or  landslides. 32%  percent  of  these  households included are  considered vulnerable  with female-headed  households,  elderly  or  disabled. In addition, it  is anticipated that lifesaving services such as health facilities and water points will also be flooded, leaving the population  on islands,  isolated without access  to services.  Widespread flooding will  cause  latrines  to overflow and further infect already contaminated water points. Use of untreated surface water could quickly result in outbreaks of water borne diseases such as cholera or hepatitis A or E. In addition, landslides on small and  large  scales  are  anticipated  leaving  small  groups  of  households  to  large  blocks  of  100-200  households suddenly without shelter and also needing immediate support for search and rescue, triage for injuries, and psychosocial support.”

That paragraph gives you an idea of what the refugees could be facing in an emergency. We have talked before about the risk of landslides. And though officials continue to move the most vulnerable to better sites (refugees do this spontaneously to some degree as well), this remains a risk for the refugees and the host communities.

Photo by Tamara Berger

Cholera is everyone’s worst nightmare in this situation. Given the population density that I mentioned in an earlier blog post, the conditions are perfect for massive morbidity and mortality from a cholera outbreak.

So the Health Project Manager prepared her Mobile Medical Teams to be ready to go into the camps with lifesaving measures immediately after such an event. Christine also has a Mobile Nutrition Team that has been trained in emergency nutrition and is currently working at practical simulations with nutrition clinics in order to be able to respond to the most vulnerable after such an emergency.

I assisted the Health Project Manager in getting foodstuffs, water and other essentials out to a house that we rent just outside the camps. I organized with the vendor from whom we rent vehicles to make sure that we could have two of his vehicles stay 24 hours/day at this house in case of an impending emergency. And we generally prepared to run emergency services from that house.

A Rohingya Woman (photo by T Berger)

The normal monsoon season in Bangladesh runs from June to  August  with  cyclone  seasons  on  either  side  in  May  and  September.  Average  rainfall  is  between  400-600 mm  a  month (15-25 inches)  with  single  days  reaching  200mm  in  the  past.

Thankfully, we seem to have missed the cyclones here in Bangladesh this season! We are thankful.

I have some specific prayer concerns to ask you to pray for:

1.    1. Christine has a particularly difficult World Food Programme report due in the next couple of days. Please pray for patience and wisdom in knowing how to best do this.

2.    2. I have moved into the Logs Manager position as our manager is leaving in mid-December. Pray for my preparedness and capacity building over the next two weeks, for wisdom as I take over this role, and for our logistics team to continue to pull together!
3. Continue to pray for a future with hope for the Rohingya!

Thank you for journeying with us.

Phil