Red Cross Blogs

Bragging for a cause

By Sarah Oughton
June 5, 2009 at 10:34 am

Most of the time I’m far too English to brag but it’s for a good cause so please indulge me – you see I want to show you a picture of one of the places I’ve had the opportunity to work with the Red Cross.

Yep, it’s the Maldives.

Although my day job at the Red Cross is international writer, I’m also a trained member of our logistics emergency response unit (ERU). This means I’m part of a roster and every year I spend one month being on-call 24/7. If a major disaster happens, such as the Caribbean hurricanes last year, then the four-member team is ready to be deployed immediately to help deliver and distribute relief items.

Obviously the chances of being deployed every year are pretty slim so it’s important we keep up our skills, which is done each year by a week-long training session involving a simulated emergency – I’d tell you more about this but my colleague Clare has just written a particularly amusing blog about the whole thing.

Anyway, back to my bragging.

Two year’s ago I was on call, nervously keeping an eye on the news and

ticking down the days of the month wondering if I would be deployed. Fortunately, no major disasters happened and on the last day I was sitting at my desk relaxing with my latte when I got a call. It was Clare and she said to me: “How do you fancy going to the Maldives for a couple of months?” You know what, it’s taken me a long time to get here, but I do love my job.

Since the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004, the Red Cross has been carrying out a massive recovery programme in Indonesia, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. The Maldives was a particularly challenging programme due to the nature of the country, which is made up of a group of atolls with more than 1,000 islands, of which 200 are inhabited.

The only way to get around was by light aircraft and speedboat – I have to confess, at times it felt more Miami Vice than Red Cross! But it also gives you an idea of why it was such a challenging programme in terms of getting construction materials out to these far-flung islands.

I was sent out as a logistics delegate to help the team out there account for these materials, from every

50kg bag of cement down to every last nut and bolt. It was extremely important that we were able to track every purchase on it’s journey from the supplier, via the capital Male, to our warehouse on Thimarafushi island and onto its final destination in a house on one of the five islands where we built new homes.

So just to reassure you – I did not spend two months soaking up the sun in honeymoon-like extravagance, it was more like sweating it out in stuffy warehouses or in the small portacabin used as the Red Cross office.

In fact, the Maldives I was privileged to see was nothing like the image conjured up in most western minds. It was certainly hot, but you wouldn’t be enticed by the beaches, unfortunately, partly because of the logistical nightmare of getting anything on or off the islands, there is no rubbish disposal system so most rubbish tends to be thrown into the sea.

Also, as I was working on the islands where locals lived and where tourists are forbidden to go, I had to

follow local Muslim customs and keep covered up. Anyway, despite the fact I got very sweaty and found that there’s only so much chilli tuna you can enjoy for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I was glad to have had this opportunity.

Visiting Vilufushi island was probably the most sobering experience of my time there. It is an island that was so devastated by the tsunami, only two buildings were left partially standing. Before the construction programme could even begin, a third of the island had to be reclaimed.

Anyway, the reason for my bragging is this, the construction programme has finally finished and the inhabitants of Vilufushi who have been living on a nearby island for the past four and a half years have finally moved back to their “beloved island”.

This brings to a close the British Red Cross tsunami recovery programme, which has been a massive

undertaking over the past four and a half years. If you want to find out more, then please watch the video interviews and read some of the really moving stories from survivors in the Maldives, Sri Lanka and Indonesia.

Picture three © BRC

All other pictures © Sarah Oughton

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Comments (10) »

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Tags: Caribbean hurricanes, emergency response unit, Indonesia, international delegate, Maldives, recovery programme, Sri Lanka, tsunami

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