MY FIRST DEPLOYMENT TO MALAWI 

By Olaf Steenbergen 

After graduating, I applied for a job at the International Federation of the Red Cross (IFRC). Within a month I said my goodbyes to friends and family and moved to Budapest. I started my new job in a rather calm period, as it was outside of the hurricane and flood season. This allowed me to get up to speed and get to know the mechanisms and the millions of abbreviations!

I quickly got the chance to go to Malawi as the country was hit by a tropical storm. When I applied to go on the mission, I had to catch the plane within four days so I had to be flexible. Normally, the Red Cross would organize different training sessions on data collection, mental health, and calamities. But due to Covid, these training opportunities did not take place. Luckily, we were deployed with a team of 4, so we always had each other.

The Red Cross is an international organization, so the arrival in Malawi was well arranged. As soon as I stepped out of the plane, I saw so many new things. In the car from the airport to the headquarters (an old building with broken windows), I experienced a significant culture shock, especially because I’d never been to Africa before. But this also helped me to get to know the country. At the headquarters, I walked to every department, met the people, and asked what they do. 

What does the country look like? What are the problems? What do people need? I used the first two days in Malawi to get up to speed by attending a lot of briefings. At first, I thought housing might be a major problem. But after some days I realized that the biggest problem was agriculture. It was harvest season when the hurricane hit, so many people had no harvest. But they did have housing or could shelter with others. My previous assumptions on the issues were false, so I had to be open-minded to be able to help. At the end of each day, I ate together with my team, talked about the day, and mentally supported each other.

At first, I was working with secondary data from other organizations. For the first two weeks, I was mainly busy with analyzing and visualizing the available data and validating the liability. Next, I went into the field to gather information. For about a week, I visited displacement camps, asking about the damage and their needs. At times, I was also collecting very basic data like the number of people living in each camp, because even this type of crucial information was still unknown to us. The difference was big: some camps were giving shelter to 8000 people, while others only consisted of 35 people. There were about 200 camps in Malawi, but we could only visit three camps a day. There were paved main roads, but most of the camps were located at about 1,5 hours of those roads. Hence it was very difficult and expensive to gather data ourselves. We tried to take a sample of 30 camps which were a good reflection of the society. Collecting data has helped us to create an overview of the necessities, so the Red Cross could meet these needs and truly help the victims of the flooding.

It was difficult to go back home, leaving all those people behind after 6 weeks. After returning to the Netherlands, it helped to take a few days off and reflect on my experiences.

Looking back, I had a great experience, not only personally but also professionally. I’m quite a perfectionist myself, thinking we could have done better or more, but that is something I had to let go of. It is not possible to help everyone and it is a crisis situation, so I had to act fast and without all the information. I worked closely with the local Red Cross of Malawi, so I hope they can continue my work in the long term.