On the job: damp tents, 20-hour days

Slathered in bug repellent and sunscreen, they work around the clock in crisis conditions. They catch brief snatches of sleep on cots or sleeping pads surrounded by mosquito netting. Outside their tents, the air is a blast furnace; inside, it's a humidified oven. Torrential rain that arrives like clockwork each afternoon turns the ground into calf-deep mud stew. Formal showers are unheard of and toilet facilities are crude, if they exist.

Compared with the plight of those who lost everything here in Banda Aceh, the circumstances of these relief workers are hardly dire. But the relentless pressures of their 20-hour days does raise the question: Who signs up for this?

As seen through the stories of three aid workers in the immediate aftermath of one of the world's worst disasters, the answers were remarkably similar. Moving forward despite occasional fear, loneliness, and feeling overwhelmed, they say they want to be at the center of the effort to help.

Tracked over several days, each working in a different venue of Banda Aceh's post-tsunami confusion, the narratives of the three - American, Irish, and Indonesian - provide windows into the motivations and challenges of those thousands on the ground who put their own lives on hold and on the line to save and restore others. They are buoyed, they say, by the courage of those they are serving and seek their own growth in spirit by connecting to a larger cause.

"I feel like I am getting the most out of my life," says Kirsten Gelsdorf, humanitarian-affairs officer for the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA). The seven-year veteran of similar operations in Liberia, Zambia, Mozambique, Ethiopia, and Kenya arrived one week after the wave hit, and says that at the one-month mark, in late January, she is hitting her stride.

"The people who do this are tackling the most serious, complex problems under high pressure and solving them because of incredible presence of mind they have developed over years," she says, sitting on a brown sofa at a small compound known as the Humanitarian Information Center (HIC). "Being here is challenge, excitement, and privilege all in one."

Ms. Gelsdorf was hospitalized with malaria after a stint in Liberia when the tsunami hit. She called her office and was on a plane to Banda Aceh two days later.

Now, she sits at the communications and logistical crossroads of dozens of aid organizations. Small, large, and in-between - doctors, water experts, sanitation workers, and more - the groups arrive in town, visit HIC for standardized assessment forms, and fan out across Sumatra.

Gelsdorf is tracking which organizations are here, where they are working, and what they are finding. Her job is fourfold: coordination, information gathering, advocacy and problem solving.

Once the big picture becomes clearer - what kind of aid workers are available and where - Gelsdorf turns to micromanagement. "If their speciality is water, then [we ask], are they able to do latrines and toilets or just water purification and delivery, or what," she says. "The planning and logistics are endless."

Gelsdorf arrives at her desk inside the HIC compound at 7 a.m., and works until at least 9 p.m., often longer. One day is filled with meetings with arriving nongovernmental organizations; another is spent in four-wheel-drive vehicles visiting IDP (internally displaced persons) camps across the region. Gelsdorf must bring together workers from UNICEF, the World Food Program, OCHA, and others to map where the camps are - often using satellite coordinates. With so many groups representing different countries and languages, the challenge is compounded by the frequent use of different names for the same camps.

Page: 1 | 2 | 3