Shiny Shoes and ECB T-Shirts

My best intentions to have a blog entry hot on the heels of each day’s activities fell flat. So like others have did for Geneva, I’m doing some retroactive blogging from Guatemala, where I went from October 24-28 to collect some information from people who had been involved in the multi-agency evaluation of the Hurricane Stan response.

Let’s start with day 1. After a very convenient 3-hour direct flight from Atlanta, while scanning the waiting crowd outside the airport for somebody from my hotel, I pondered the unknown – who exactly would I be speaking to, what field visits would we make (a bit of a last minute trip that’s hard to discuss when you don’t speak Spanish).

Lost in my musings, I made an easy target for the shoe shine boy who zoomed in on me and, sensing my momentary hesitation, began to buff my shoes. Okay, so he got a customer and I got to enter Guatemala with shoes so shiny I could almost see my face in them.

After a quick lunch with Ivonne, my interpreter, it was great to see Juan Manuel’s familiar face as he whisked us off for a meeting with Carla Aguilar of Save the Children, who had coordinated the evaluation during its early days.

Carla was friendly and animated (though in retrospect, I did not come across unfriendly or deadpan people in Guatemala). She talked of the sheer ordeal of trying to get the agencies involved in the evaluation, the frustration of unanswered calls, the high staff turnover at meetings. I scribbled and nodded knowingly – this was not news to me.

But here was the part that she and Juan Manuel seemed adamant I understand -- they had learned a lot from the evaluation and the process had gotten them to work together more closely. Carla seemed as excited as anyone who, flush with a recent victory, looks back charitably on the arduous training it took to make it to the finish line.

Juan Manuel, having been at an IWG director’s meeting that morning, also asserted that the directors spoke of the evaluation with a recognition that it had been very useful for them. For e.g. CRS had developed emergency response protocols and integrated DRR into their regular programming. <

I was forced to temporarily lay aside my line of questioning as Carla and Juan Manuel went on about how IWG agency relationships have now reached a stage such that the agency barriers have come down. They’ve moved on to an ECB “we.” Agency t-shirts have been cast aside, Carla said. I quipped about an ECB t-shirt but Carla seized upon the idea… “or even a pen,” she said fingering her red Save pen. I reminded them that the IWG had been quite deliberate about not creating a brand identity for the ECB. “The T-shirt could be one with all the agency logos on it,” offered Juan Manuel.

Back in the truck Juan Manuel pressed in with this request--that I carry the message back – that the agencies after an arduous process were close knit and ready to collaborate on disaster reduction. Having come this far it was illogical to them that their joint activities would cease after the end of Phase I. In fact, the meeting they had that morning was to ensure that they would continue to collaborate and learn together after Phase I.

What I heard reminded me of ECB experiences elsewhere. No one seems to like making the collaboration soup. There seem to be too many elbows in the kitchen, and the cooks chafe at poorly conceived or communicated HQ-missives. But everyone seems to like the broth!

Malaika