Last Hours at WFP Antananarivo

Today is my last day in the WFP office in Madagascar. Last week I have not been realising I had to leave and now I put this on paper I do and it really makes me sad.

 

When I started my last year in university my dream was to be a part of this programme, so I decided to take up extra French courses, in case I had to go to a French speaking country and was dreaming about what I could do and how it would be like doing such an experience. The moment I was selected, I could not have been happier, although I had no clue what I was actually in for.

 

I do not think living in Madagascar changed my character very much, although it does makes you more aware about the things that are going on in this world. This experience was the perfect introduction to humanitarian work, being involved in many different projects, going to the field often and meeting a lot of people working in this field really give you a great idea what it is like to work for an organisation like WFP.

 

It might sound simple, going to (maybe small and very remote) communities who are in food insecure areas and giving them food. Well, that is the basic idea of course, to fight hunger in the world, but with around 1 billion people in this world being undernourished, the job gets a little more complicated. Working also in 73 countries and assisting around 90 million people this year you can imagine the work is complex. Considering the logistics, programmes that have to be developed and executed, fundraising to start and ensure continuation of programmes, vulnerability assessments, to see whether the people are food insecure, disaster preparation and so on and so on.

 

Besides that fact that you realise the importance of the work you also learn. For example about how such an organisation runs, what kind of programmes you can develop to fight hunger, other partners involved in fighting hunger, what works and what does not.

Also how to work in another language apart from (Dutch and) English, working in an international environment, I consider it all to be very valuable and will never ever forget this experience here.

 

This week we had some final meetings with partners and I explained that I left and I did not want to leave the projects alone. Like my colleague is saying: “ce sont des bébés de Guido.” And it does feel like that.

One of the things you will never forget is the moment you see the smile on the face of a child that is getting food, or when you drive for hours to remote communities and the villagers see the WFP car and all start clapping, that is when you know, the work we are doing is good and it does help.

 

I will now enjoy my last couple of hours at the office, which feels so familiar after all these months. We just went to visit a partner from the private sector and we decided on a text to put on a t-shirt: “Un enfant nourri est un enfant heureux”, and with that message I would like to finish.

 

Veloma,

 

Guido