Indonesia - Medair's Hylton Cannon reflects on the challenges he faced as country director of a recently closed Indonesia project — particularly in Aceh Jaya province, where a surprising evaluation spurred Medair to take remedial action.
Q: What sort of work was Medair doing in Aceh Jaya?
Before Medair went in and worked on WatSan (water and sanitation) in the seven villages that we chose in Aceh Jaya, the residents didn't have any toilet system at all. They would go into the rivers, or they would just go down into the open-bush area, and use what they called a sling-bag system—where they would put the waste in a plastic bag, swing it around their head a couple of times and let it go, and wherever it lands, there it stays.
When Medair came in, we did a proper sanitation system with a squat toilet, and we gave them a bath-house. We installed a system to control the waste coming out of the toilet into the various systems, and then going out into a treatment garden, instead of the waste going into the environment.
But Medair's systems appeared to be poorly constructed. After I had finished as country director in Pakistan, I was asked by Medair if I would go to Indonesia with an external evaluator to review the project done in Aceh. We discovered during the evaluation that the sanitation units had in fact been poorly constructed. My wife and I were asked if we could take over aspects of the programme, and I became full-time country director in May, 2008.
Q: What were the problems with the Medair sanitation systems?
The evaluation showed that septic tanks were leaking, pipes were cracked, and treatment gardens were blocked. It was a significant problem, and people had a real health situation in their yards.
What happened next, though, demonstrates the way Medair acts out their values when they talk about accountability and dignity. Medair identified that there was a problem in Aceh Jaya, came back, spent extra money (thanks to two donors: Swiss Solidarity and Tearfund U.K.), and repaired everything. The local authorities even made the statement that no other NGOs came back to repair problems in this area, so they were really impressed with Medair coming back. To me, that is an incredible advertisement for Medair. Being accountable not only to their donors, but being accountable to the beneficiary for whom they originally set out to raise the standard of sanitation.
Of the 628 units we had originally installed, we did remedial work on 595 of them. So now beneficiaries truly have a healthy system, and they are really impressed that Medair came back and repaired their system—and a lot of them have made statements to that effect. Medair has not only given them extra dignity—because now ladies can go to the toilet in private—but also cleaned up the old health problems. Women can now also bathe behind closed doors, not down at the river. They can wash their children and their clothing at home, without having to walk a couple of kilometres to a river.
Q: Will these units require ongoing maintenance?
They do need maintenance, so that was part of our remedial project: maintenance training. We showed the beneficiaries how to keep their waste pipes clear, what not to throw down the toilet, what not to allow to go into a treatment garden... We gave them training on what to do if a pipe is blocked. We did a lot of modifications to the old system to prevent any further blockages. It was really intensive, one-on-one. Every one of our beneficiaries was trained one-on-one, which was a big improvement.
Plus the national contractors now know how to construct a WatSan system, as they've been exposed to a lot of training on that side. The contractor and his staff said they'd never done a project like that before.
Q: In what ways did we serve the most vulnerable?
In the villages where we worked, Medair was the only NGO working there... We went into some way-out villages where there is really nothing there, and we gave them a WatSan system. It broke down, and people were then open to possible health conditions and disease, and Medair came back. And to me, I am so glad to be part of Medair because I know a lot of agencies would just turn a blind eye to their errors and would have packed up and left.
In the end, this was a challenging project. That's the enjoyment of life, to take a challenge, although I didn't realise it was going to be such a challenge. But in the end, I think we put an excellent project together, which our final project evaluation said quite clearly as well: it turned out to be a really, really good project. And I think hats off to Medair, for honouring its commitments and coming back.
Medair began operations in Indonesia in July 2006, first working in tsunami-affected Aceh province. In February 2007, we launched our work on remote Nias Island. With those projects closed, Medair is now assisting earthquake-affected people in the Sumatra region following a devastating earthquake in September 2009.
