WASH Cluster Meetings…

The size of the 2002 tsunami overwhelmed the agencies. With 1300 non-governmental agencies in the Indonesian response there was a lot of chaos just working out who was who and who was doing what. An outcome was that the UN has set up sector clusters to give better coordination in relief responses. The Water, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) cluster is headed by UNICEF.

First thing off the plane in Maputo I am into a national level WASH coordination meeting. I did not have any information on the situation where we were working nor of any of our progress to date. I took a bit of heat on behalf of my organisation about insufficient situational knowledge and apparent lack of progress. I don’t know that 14 years of process engineering has provided me with too many practical skills for WatSan field work but it has given me a thicker skin and the knowledge that in meetings it is better to say little and have people think you no nothing than to speak out and have people know you no nothing. I was able to repeatedly say “I do not yet have the information but will get back to when I do have the info” which was the right way. After a while the heat cooled of and I had not taken on any promises that I could not deliver and nobody was lead astray. A full on meeting though!

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