September 16th - Communication problems

I have spent this whole week in the Banda Aceh main office and, to be honest, nothing really exciting has happened. I continued to help one of the CDR teams in the Banda Aceh field office with the community proposals, which are slowly but surely heading for approval. I have spent the bulk of my time, however, analyzing the information in our CDB member and CDR profile database and incorporating the results into reports. I have also finished writing a number of cases and started collecting new information for our main database. Unfortunately, I have little luck with the latter; it was already clear that communication sometimes is a problem but now there is no doubt about it! Last week the teams received a new form and were asked to provide us with some additional information. We requested them to let us know about any questions or concerns they had and whether they felt they could make the deadline. Halfway through the deadline, we repeated the request when we found out that some of the teams and not even read the original e-mail yet. But there were no questions, no concerns, and nothing pertaining to the deadline. But when the deadline passed by it is eerily quiet. Only after the deadline did the questions and concerns start come pouring in, provided you ask for it. For the first set of questions, I have been to the different field offices to help collect the data and to make sure everything will be done on time. I find it a shame to have to conclude that it cannot yet be done any other way. The CDR staff is absolutely great, they are exceptionally friendly and they are competent enough. It is also sufficiently understood that the teams are working under pressure and that their work is not easy. Nevertheless, efficient planning and task distribution can get them a great deal further. I don’t think the deadline was unrealistic and if it were, a simple timely message would suffice to let us know. Communication, within the CDR programme as well as with other departments, is extremely important; we will have to find ways to stimulate and improve this.

I am going to leave it at this. This week’s log is short because I am working through the weekend to finalise analyses and parts of a report. So I still have many things to do! By the way, today marks exactly three months since I first arrived in Indonesia; time is flying by! Also, we had another earthquake today, it was only the second one I have felt since I have been here (although I hear there have been more). This was a small but quite long quake with a little peak towards the end. I find earthquakes very odd to experience. Because I have not been in the field this week, I have included some pictures from the CDR teams below.

See you next week. Take care,

Alex