Post Tsunami Indonesia: working as the last man standing by Soji Adeniyi

I landed in Jakarta Indonesia, after almost 20 hours of flight from Lagos Nigeria, it was my first trip to the city of Jakarta and a very challenging trip as I barely had sufficient time to plan for the trip itself( that’s a story for another day). I had assumed my journey ends in the capital city, but I was wrong, Indeed it was only half  of the journey. I was met on arrival by the highly efficient UNICEF protocol team who handed me the local flight tickets for two more flights to Medan and finally a dingy once in a week flight to Banda Aceh.

I was met by the Administrative Assistant who will be working with me and we had a good laugh over my expectations for accommodation etc. Like most small towns, the choices were very limited and of course only few of such hotels were approved for UN staff to use due to security reasons.  We settled for the accommodation recommended by the UN security team and by the next morning (after 3 days of travel) I arrived in the Office.

My assignment was simple( or so I assumed) until I got to work. I was expected to support the official closure of the UNICEF Aceh Office following the successful  emergency response to the Indian Ocean Tsunami which occurred on December 26, 2004,It was triggered by a massive earthquake off Sumatra, Indonesia, affecting several countries including Indonesia's Aceh region.

 The tsunami devastated Aceh, causing widespread destruction and over 130,000 deaths in the region. Waves reached up to 30 meters high, destroying coastal communities and infrastructure. The disaster prompted a massive international relief effort and reconstruction process in Aceh. On assumption of office as acting Operations Officer, I was expected to finalize the closure of the office, meet and agree with staff members, especially the nationally recruited staff, many of whom had served the office since its opening and now had to go. We had to close the office, sell off the assets including office furniture and cars etc. One major obstacle we faced was the absence of an official guideline for such closure in the UNICEF Operations Manual as at that time, we had to rely on assets management policies, incident management manual etc. It was complicated, but we survived and most importantly, we learned how not to do it!.

 One year later, I was invited again, this time to close another UNICEF office in Nias Island, a different region, but the good thing is that the lessons of Meulaboh, Banda Aceh became useful in closing the Gunungsitoli Office in Nias Island over a year later. Lessons from this activities were carefully documented and shared with DHR, UNHQ and Im sure contributed to the uodated HR Manual chapter 10 till date. Looking back over 20years later, I think it was one of my best field experiences  in my entire 22yrs UNICEF and 25yrs United Nations experience. Let me know if our path crossed during this interesting periods of our lives! Reply to this post and lets share lifetime memories.

Soji Adeniyi writes from Abuja Nigeria.