May 25, 2009

First day in the Mercy Corps Indonesia headquarters office in South Jakarta. The staff is huge, much larger than I was expecting. The taxi (“taksi”) took a while to get here because he kept thinking the address was “tiga puluh” (30) when it was tiga (3). I tried my best to explain it in Indonesian by politely asking “tidak, tiga atau tiga puluh” (no, three or thirty) and showing him the paper with the written address – all proud of myself for using the bahasa but it didn’t work. By the time I arrived I was a bit late but no one seemed to notice (late being 8: 20 instead of 8:00am). The taksi took me through the Mercy Corps security gate in which there were three or four guards outside, all with big smiles, and then he dropped me right at the front door. When you walk into the office its slightly air conditioned with a receptionist desk and a seating area with the Kompas and Jakarta Post (daily newspapers here) and then you walk through another set of glass doors ot the main office where there are lots of cubicles. Not the normal kind of cubicles you would imagine with the carpeted walls, but dividers made of dry wall (basically ½ walls).

I was taken to see Malka Older, the Program Director, in a back office that she shares with Vanessa, another ex-pat from Arizona who has been here for seven years and has a four year old. After a brief chat Malka gave me the tour of the first floor. The cubicles are divided by teams, the Flood Risk Reduction program, the Healthy People, Prosperous Places Program, the breast feeding program, the Urban Povery Reduction Program, and a few others. I meet Sean the Country Director (I think he’s Australian) and was shown the back yard and kitchen where there’s a maintained swimming pool and a break room in the back. The break room was occupied by two national staff members, one laying on his back and the other rubbing his feet. The one laying down seemed to be sick and contemplating going to the hospital. Malka turned to me as we walked away saying sometimes you see weird things with the national staff. I just laughed. There’s tea and kopi (coffee) every morning. The kopi is gross but the tea is pretty good.

The great thing about the office is that it is mostly local staff, which can be a problem with international organizations always hiring ex-pats instead of employing local knowledge. Later I learned from Sean that in 2007 when he arrived there were 15 expats and now about 5, and Vanessa is leaving in 15 days for a long sabbatical back to the states with her family. They are actively trying to reduce the number of expats and increase nationals as time goes by. Oddly he did mention that part of my job would be to increasing the self-confidence and English language skills of the staff in Padang, West Sumatra where I’ll be headed on Thursday for the summer, because there are no ex-pats there and they need help with their capacity. I am also going to be helping them learn how to process data into decision making which I wasn’t expecting but am prepared to do. Feels a bit elitist but I am sure necessary tasks for me to be doing this summer.