Oxfam America Blog

The powerful undersea earthquake that struck near West Sumatra on September 30 killed at least 1,000 people and destroyed homes, bridges, and roads in Padang and villages north of the city. Oxfam’s Kate Thwaites describes the complex logistics of providing emergency aid to the Indonesian seaport.

There’s a strange feeling in Padang as the city begins to pick itself up almost a week after the devastating earthquake.

To a visitor like me, parts of the city look almost normal – houses are still standing, traffic seems to be moving again. Read the rest of this entry »

A resident searches for victims under a collapsed hotel in Padang on Indonesia's Sumatra island. Photo by Reuters/Crack Palinggi, courtesy of www.alertnet.org

At a powwow here this morning, fund-raisers, press officers, and writers—not quite believing the cascade of bad news–huddled over the headlines sprawled across a table in one of the cubicles: “Quakes Ravage Sumatra and Samoas,” said one.

“Tsunami Came Too Fast for Warnings to Reach All,” said another.

“Typhoon Eases, Leaving More Than 300 Dead,” said a third.

And this one, which summed up the shock of it all best:  “Week of Tragedy for Asia.”

It’s a week that has left us here at Oxfam racing to help meet the needs of some of the countless people who have seen their homes crash down around them following the earthquake that hit Sumatra, their villages flattened by the tsunami that swept into Samoa and Tonga, and all that’s familiar washed away in the flooding unleashed by Typhoon Ketsana  as it roared across the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. Read the rest of this entry »

Clara Herrero, a program assistant at Oxfam America, recently visited an Oxfam project in Cambodia. She traveled as part of Oxfam’s travel lottery, which sends two employees – who don’t get to travel outside the US as part of their jobs – to see our work on-the-ground in developing countries.

I recently went to Cambodia, accompanying my colleagues from Oxfam’s Humanitarian Response team as they learned more about a project teaching local communities how to adapt to climate change. It was my first time visiting one of our regional offices and my first “in the field.”

Early in my trip, I went to the Tuol Sleng Museum. During the brutal Khmer Rouge regime, the museum was a prison where millions of Cambodians (and many thousands of foreigners) were starved to death, tortured, and killed. It’s now a monument to that history and a place, which lists all the crimes of the regime.  One stood out in my mind. In Cambodia, families place great importance on eating meals together. During Pol Pot’s reign, they weren’t able to share meals with their family.

I thought a lot about this tradition as I traveled with my Oxfam colleagues, Latif, Kheng, Jacobo, and Miriam. Over the three weeks I spent in Cambodia, we began to feel like a family.

Oxfam Staff Clara Herrero, Miriam Aschkenasy, and Jacobo Ocharan take in the sights at the ancient temples of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

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With 2008 behind us, we’re highlighting photos we think best capture Oxfam’s work last year. Here’s a photo of one of my favorite people. More to come from others.

My boss, Jane, has a saying. She wants the writers to “narrow the distance” between the poor people we work with and our readers here in The States. So, when each of us heads out into the field, we keep this mission in mind, filling our notebooks with the voices of the people we meet and the stories they have to tell.

Every year, a few people’s stories stand out. Sometimes it’s because of the sheer adversity they face. Other times, it’s the great success they’ve seen and the simplicity of the solutions they pursued. The woman I’m thinking of falls into the latter category. Her name is Seng Sreila, and I have visited her home twice in two years. She’s a rice farmer in Cambodia who took out a series of small loans from her village savings group to start her own business. With that money, she’s milling rice for other farmers in her village. Her success has become well-known in her community, and her status, that of a local celebrity.

The first time I met her, Sreila gave us the kind of welcome that’s typical of the people we meet during our travels. She was kind of shy, but had this beautiful smile that popped up whenever she was nervous. After just a few hours of talking, she treated us like good friends. When we were gathering our things to leave, she grabbed my arm in a familiar way, and walked me back to our car. As she thanked me for coming, she held my hands. I remember how hers felt; they were small, like mine.

Seng Sreila in June 2008 showing off her rice mill. Photo by Inazio.

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As 2008 draws to a close, we’re highlighting some of the photos that we thought best captured Oxfam’s work this year. Here are my own personal picks; more to come from others.

Photo: Steve Thackston / Oxfam America

This portrait of Biloxi, MS resident Mary Meltz appeared in Mirror on America, Oxfam’s report on the state of US Gulf Coast recovery three years after Hurricane Katrina. Meltz stands in front of her new home, where construction is nearly complete, thanks to the efforts of her son Michael (an artist who covered the walls with elaborate murals), community groups, and teams of volunteers. Visible over her shoulder is the FEMA trailer where Meltz lived for nearly three years.

To me, this divided image–and Meltz’s look of weary, patient hope–captures the in-between state of many of the people I met when I visited Biloxi in June. Three years after the storm, they are still struggling to rebuild their lives, even as they look to better times ahead.

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School in Lumphat village, Ratanakiri province, Cambodia; January 2007 - Photo by Brett Eloff/Oxfam America.

“The face of climate change is a child under the age of 5.” When Dr. Kristie L. Ebi said this at a brown bag lunch discussion in my office earlier this week, you could hear her words land like a ton of bricks.

Children, especially those living in tropic and sub tropic regions like Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, are most vulnerable to the increasing consequences of global warming. Read the rest of this entry »

A woman drives a motor bike through the busy streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Photo: Brett Eloff for Oxfam America.

Last June, I spent my final night in Cambodia taking in the sunset over the Mekong River. We had just returned from a grueling trip to interview traditional gold miners in Mondulkiri province; I was covered in dust, sore from the motorbike ride, and generally ready to sleep on a hotel mattress.

But, I’d had so much fun on the trip, whipping through the forests, slipping up through dry creek beds, I was feeling a surprising bit of apprehension about going home. So, in an effort to eke out one last memorable evening, I agreed to stop in Phnom Penh at what the locals called Snowy’s bar. This is where all my expat friends said they went to chill out and escape the constant hustle and bustle of city life. After the trip I’d just been on, and three weeks in general running around the region, I understood the allure. Perched on a stool on the open-air deck, I watched the boats float by and the sky turn a soft shade of orange.

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