from the horizon

For many people, visits to the field represent a chance to meet the beneficiaries of our programs and really get a feel for the difference which we’re making. Unfortunately I’ve chosen the wrong sector for this. Working in supply chain management means that a field trip only involves going to another office, in a remote area. The main difference is that the problems tend to be more complicated, and I’m more powerless to solve them!

I’m visiting our Bireuen Office, which is on the east coast of Aceh, in one of the areas most affected by the conflict, until the Tsunami put an end to it. It is also the site of the bulk of our reconstruction – which presents certain supply chain challenges. This is the fourth time I’ve been back here, and it’s often the same story. I come, I train people to do things a certain way, to use certain systems, they do this, I leave, they stop doing it. Fortunately this time I’m returning with an Indonesian Supply Chain Managers. Although my Indonesian is reasonable, there are certain subtleties which I’ll never understand – and I’ll always be an outsider. Hopefully he can help to get things running in a more sustainable way.

I arrived at the hotel in Bireuen on Sunday, and fortunately managed to get a room with a window this time. The room however, did come with the following warning to me: “[IS] NOT AGREED TO BRING ALCOHOLIC DRINK, COLD STEEL, DANGEROUS OBJECT6, PENINAP CAN BE RELEASED FROM HOTEL IF GENERATING ATMOSPHERE IS NOT BALMY”. I like to think that I generate a balmy atmosphere… they didn’t kick me out at least.

I arrive at the office on Monday morning to find out that the warehouse supervisor who I should have been working with is going to be away all week because his wife has just given birth. I’m a little perplexed as to why we couldn’t have been given some prior warning, although someone explains that away from the main centers, it’s hard to know exactly when a woman will give birth. But you’ll still got to have some approximate idea you’re going to be giving birth, don’t you?

I found out that the procurement staff member who I needed to work with wouldn’t be back from their leave until the Tuesday – so I try my best to remain patient, not get irritated and move forward with what we have.

I took a visit to the warehouse, which is massive. The warehouse was currently filled with pre-cut housing components, which we have been importing from Canada to rebuild the houses destroyed by the Tsunami. It’s a safer bet than using local timber, which is almost definitely illegally logged (although I am reassured that the local timber we are milling outside the warehouse is in fact legal).

The warehouse also contained a number of scrap material. In recent weeks, both the TNI (Indonesia Army) and KPA (offshoot of GAM – the Free Aceh Movement) had separately contacted us, requesting to use the scrap materials to build a firing range. Of course this isn’t exactly in line with the mission of the organizations, so their requests weren’t approved, although I thought it could be a great peace building activity – get them to set up a firing range together – as long as they didn’t fire from opposite ends. What could possibly go wrong?

I find that although the warehouse staffs are still completing their documentation in triplicate, they are still not following the standard procedures. On a positive note, one of the Warehouse staff, who I taught to play Solitaire to familiarize himself with computers on my last visit, is now using Excel. Progress. Now the challenge is to get them to use the database correctly.

The next day in the office I meet with procurement staff member. I taught him how to use the supply chain management database which I’d developed earlier this year. He was smart, a fast learner, and didn’t have any problems using it. However this had only lasted a week after I left. There had been some technical difficulties, but I suspected that the problem was bigger than that.

“Do you actually want to use this database?” I asked.
“No.”
Despite the fact that I’ve spent the past year of my life developing the database, I knew I shouldn’t and couldn’t take this personally.
“Why?”
“Because it’s faster to do things manually – just using Excel,” he replied.
“I’m pretty sure that I could complete a purchase more quickly using the database than by using Excel,” I argued.
“Of course – you developed the system. I find it easy to use Excel to generate the forms and reports I need.” He had me – there was no way I could argue with his personal truth, and with that I lost the main selling point which I had been using to push out the database – that it saving people time, and made their jobs easier. I had to change tack.
“OK, if you don’t want to use the database, I can’t force you.” (absolutely true) “And no one else is probably going to force you to either” (also probably true – the management isn’t very ridged and it’s hard to enforce things remotely) “However this database is being standardized throughout Indonesia.” (true – albeit slowly) “It’s going to be used in offices from Aceh to Papua.” (that’s perhaps optimistic) “And you won’t be able to work in another office for our organization, if you can’t use this database here.” (probably a stretch of the truth)

Although I think that I convinced him to keep using the database, I don’t think that it was the best approach. I should have put more emphasis on standardization, sharing information, helping people to work together, increased transparency and accountability, the value of his role in setting up this new system. Hindsight is 20/20.

That evening I got some more insight into what it means to have more direct contact with the beneficiaries. One of the engineers said that when they handed the houses that they’d built over to the families, they were often offered gifts, and as it is somewhat a part of customs here, sometimes they were offered bags of ganja. I’m not entirely sure what the balance between our policies for accepting gifts, drugs, and cultural appropriate behavior would be – the issue’s never come up for me.

The next day I move to Lhoksemauwe, a bigger office with fewer problems. In fact everything is running smoothly, and apart from a number of minor issues, they don’t really need me. I love these sorts of visits! I also get to stay in a guest house with satellite TV. The only working news channel is Al Jazeera (which is somewhere between BBC and CNN in quality) and I manage to get the latest headlines: 90,000 children in risk of dying in Somalia; 22,000 dead in Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar. The USA have pledged $250,000 – nothing compared to the hundreds of millions we are still trying to spend in Aceh. And what am I still doing here? However I know that despite the appeal of riding off into the sunset to the next disaster, the real work lies in developing communities so that they are more resilient to disasters. Although my work in Aceh started off during the emergency response phase, 3 years after the Tsunami, it was now very much moving towards that long term development.
Despite this I still feel that working in an emergency response would be much more rewarding – that I would have a real sense that my efforts are contributing to the greater good.

The next day I’m helping our Indonesia Supply Chain Manager to calculate how many of our emergency supplies, prepositioned in Indonesia, we could fit into a plane to send to Myanmar. It reminded me of a first year engineering design problem. However 5 years of workplace experience has taught me that the mathematically perfect solution would probably be rendered useless by practical constraints which will only become known during implementation. I did run a couple of simple calculation with weight and volume, to work out the total capacity – and then out of interest, divided that by the cost of the plane. The transport alone would cost $200 for every family kit – which included basic shelter, kitchen and hygiene supplies. I was somewhat stunned by the cost. Could the money be better used later, if we shipped the supplies? What about the children in Somalia? Is this even something that should be considered, given that these people may have lost “everything”? I am callus for making these calculations? I was glad that I wasn’t the one having to make the decision.

Fortunately there were other problems to distract me. The data from the database was getting corrupted when it was being transferred from one computer to another. After some investigation, I discovered that the problem lay in the difference between the “.” and the “,”. It appears that there seems to be two international standards for representing a number such as one million five thousand point five: “1,000,500.5″ or “1.000.500,5″. It seems as this difference roughly occurs between countries colonized by England (including the USA) and the rest of the world. Unfortunately Indonesia didn’t have the fortune of being colonized by the British (The Dutch were the ones who won the colonial power struggle for the Spice Islands) so they use the “,” as a decimal point. And because some of the computers have their regional setting as the “USA” (it is an American organization), and some of them have the setting as “Indonesia”, I have a problem. After consider a number of conversion functions I decided to impose some imperialism of my own. All computers were set to “USA” – Problem solved. Although I do believe in embracing the difference in cultures, and adapting to the local context – I also think that it can be taken too far.

On our way back to Banda Aceh, we stopped off at another office. I was amazed to find people living in temporary barracks directly outside our office gates. I was told that many people chose to continue living in the barracks, even though they had news houses built. Maybe they were renting out their houses, maybe they were getting food, healthcare or education in the barracks. The story is never simple. At least they had satellite television there!

We ended up leaving late, which meant that were wouldn’t get back before our Curfew of sun down, and thus be exposed to all sorts of risks (terrorists, bandits, zombies, vampires, terrorist bandit zombie vampires). Security was slightly higher, since a group of Chinese miners had been kidnapped in South Aceh. It seems that the motives were purely financial – they were after ransom money – which was paid. That’s what can happen when a conflict ends, but the economy doesn’t improve.
ex-combatants + guns – jobs = bandits
But the trip back was uneventful, and we safely returned home to Banda Aceh.

The following week a grenade was thrown at the Bireuen Office. No one was injured and the damage was minor. The incident took place at 6am in the morning, which indicates that it was only intended to intimidate. If they had really wanted to hurt people, it would have been thrown at 8.30am or 5.30pm. The motives were unclear, it could have been someone who didn’t get a contract, or a bribe, disgruntled beneficiaries, employees, ex-employees, military, the list goes on.

Grenades may be pretty common in an ex-conflict zone, but a grenade is still a grenade.