Chapter 9 Big Move, Big Country “And when we think we lead, we are most led.” Lord B yron The long move from Peru on the western shore of the Pacific in South America to Indonesia on the southern fringe of the Pacific in Southeast Asia involved more than mere travel. It meant absorbing, living and working in a new culture (more than one, actually), a new language, a new environment, a new development atmosphere. While these things were new to us, they were not “new” in the larger sense – just different, more complex and requiring serious reflection. Still, for all of us, it was an entire new set of circumstances, an adventure to be undertaken, a new set of practices and habits to learn. Before the big move, I made a preliminary visit to orient myself to the office and some of the issues and people I would be involved with in my role as country representative. Finding a place to live was a major challenge. Jakarta was an important metropolis that had known foreign residents for centuries, though never so many at one time. The amount of housing available at affordable prices was limited. Owners saw a good market among the foreign residents and asked for long-term rental contracts, with most of the amount due to be paid upon signing a complex lease. Foreign corporations and agencies were allowed to purchase real estate; individual foreigners were not. A good number of foreign missions, principally in private petroleum companies, had no problem coping with the financial underwriting required. Companies in the extraction business built compounds for its employees, not only for convenience but to accommodate family life when the breadwinner was away at the mines or oil fields for extended periods. The U.N., however, had limitations. We settled into a set of rooms at the Hotel Indonesia while we searched for a more-permanent home. It took some weeks. The U.N. provided an allowance to
cover modest “settling-in” costs, but the size of our family and its consumption habits were stimulants to completing the search with urgency. This always included emotional tugs between “Let’s take this one and be done with it” and “It really is not suitable so let us try a bit more.” The search included an introductory course in the layout of Jakarta and what was needed to survive the noisy complexities of the traffic. We were glad to have the services of a driver who knew how to negotiate among the seemingly endless supply of dodging-and-weaving, overcrowded motorbikes and scooters and the ubiquitous three-wheeled, man-powered betjas plodding along the fringes with their calm cargo of passengers. We marveled at the agility of drivers and passengers to keep their sarongs from sailing away in the wind. Many streets could not accommodate cars, but the betjas seemed to go anywhere. After daily forays for over a month, we found a house that was big enough for us in a convenient neighborhood. It gave us shelter, at least, as we waited for our furniture to wend its weary way by ship from Callao in Peru to Tanjung Priok in Java and then through customs clearance. Our house-hunting experience and history of previous problems led us to suggest that UNICEF consider buying property and renting it to international staff. Louis Gendron, the new director of personnel, visited us and came to the same conclusion. I think this was the first such venture for UNICEF. “Furniture Arrival Day” was festive and exciting. Ours was a large house that the children later made good use of as they paraded through with their friends in almost constant streams. We were a family of eight, but it seemed we were always serving a banquet at meal times and a playground at others. The children began attending the Joint Embassy School, so-named because embassies sponsored its opening some years earlier when political times were even more challenging. During the latter part of Sukarno‘s rule, he had made it difficult for foreign-supported schools to operate. In response, some embassies banded together and sponsored a school that met the standards and guidelines required. The school was a cooperative and the cost of purchasing shares in it for our large family made me a longtime friend and working partner with the U.N. Credit Union.1 The bus picked up the children at the front gate. Sukarno had declared himself the country’s first president in 1945, though legally that became a reality only after independence from the Netherlands some four years later. In 1965, he pulled Indonesia out of the United Nations, the first 1 The Joint Embassy School comprised one of the most active family groups in drama, sports and public events, and we spent a lot of time at the school.
country ever to do that. A variety of political reasons was offered for this action, but underlying all of them was the central point that Sukarno felt there was too much Western domination of the U.N. He believed the world body was not conducive to unaligned developing nations.2 In his fit of unhappiness, Sukarno ordered all of the U.N. agencies to leave the country. In actuality, all of the agencies except the World Health Organization were ordered out. Local legend has it that this “oversight” was the result of WHO not having “U.N.” as part of its name in directories. More likely, it was because a government minister had been elected to membership on WHO’s board. After General Suharto came to power in 1966,3 he revoked the expulsion and allowed U.N. agencies to return. Ernest Gregg of Canada opened the office for UNICEF. It took a good bit of time for me to make the rounds of introductions to the many government entities with which UNICEF was engaged in this large and complex country. These initial discussions revealed clearly the esteem with which UNICEF was held, a product of diligent and highly professional work by a team led by my friend Martin Sandberg. The Norwegian, who was gifted with a great sense of wit and a shrewd analytical mind, had succeeded Ernest Gregg some years before. Two of his colleagues remained for a period and we worked well together. We all remained friends, enjoyed professional relationships for many years and, in each case, served together in later posts. Steve Umemoto, an American who was the planning officer, went off to study for a period but then returned to UNICEF. Years later, we worked together in India. His quiet, analytic intellect was a great contribution to UNICEF and to national development efforts. Harry Lucker, from the Netherlands, was the deputy in the office and remained for a period. His dogged pursuit of good management made all things run smoothly. He later moved to India, where I also had the pleasure of working with him. Starting to Understand Indonesia The archipelago was always on the trade routes in South Asia. Travelers brought trade and they also brought different ways of life. The culture and religious beliefs of the indigenous people were influenced by Hinduism in the centuries before inroads by traders from the Middle East brought Islam to the islands. Indonesia was, and still is, the country with the largest Muslim population. 2 Sukarno and other like-thinking leaders, including Prime Minister Nehru of India, founded the Non-Aligned Movement in 1961. As of 2011, it had 120 members. 3 The deposed Sukarno was placed in internal exile in Bogor, and lived there the entire time of our stay. He died in 1970.
There is a sizable Hindu population centered in Bali now, which developed also in East Java and built Borobudur, home of the largest stupa4 in South Asia. The fabled “Spice Islands,” which sparked demand for a more-direct route from Europe to Asia than sailing around the Horn of Africa, had long attracted adventurers, scoundrels and explorers. They were followed by traders and investors, who brought political and economic domination from faraway Britain, Holland, Portugal, and China. It was Western powers’ struggle for control that led to colonization, a struggle that Holland won over time but ceded following a violent uprising after WWII that created independent Indonesia. Only a few enclaves remained for foreign powers. These powers all brought languages with them that mixed with the languages of the people in the islands. What emerged was a new language altogether. While English was widely used among government officials and many still spoke Dutch (those over 40 years of age), it was obvious we would need to learn Bahasa Indonesia. This is a language that literally grew up with the people. The Netherlands’ long colonial period here introduced Dutch as the working language, but the native population always spoke Bahasa Indonesia, or Javanese, or Sumatran in various forms at home and in their villages. It can be said that almost more than anything, Bahasa Indonesia helped to consolidate the people behind independence and national development. It was a great unifying nationalistic force. The language is made up of words and concepts from the languages of the country, and its grammatical structure is unique. The word for “man,” for example, is “orang.” Thus we have “orang orang” meaning men and “orangutan” meaning man of the jungle. The children took to it with ease and were comfortable rather quickly. Lessons were included in their school curriculum, while Lynn and I took private lessons. She became better at speaking it than I did, but I became better at reading it. Together that helped considerably, but when left alone to bargain in the market, I was usually the loser. I was more comfortable with work-related vocabulary. A Nation Evolves I believe that if you live in a country other than your own, you are obligated to try very hard to understand the provenance of the society, and the ways in which decisions are made, and how people feel toward one another. I also believe that representatives of U.N. agencies must understand the relationships 4 The Borobudur stupa was built in the eighth century and is both a shrine and a place for Buddhist pilgrimage.
between the country of assignment and its neighboring countries and how it sees itself in the community of nations (if it does). Indonesia is enormous and spread out, extending from just off the coast of South Asia near Singapore to the waters of Australia. Its 13,000 islands include many that are not inhabited at all and some that have but modest populations. If the islands were superimposed on a map of Europe, they would stretch from the west coast of Ireland to Central Asia and the Black Sea and from northern Germany to northern Italy. Because the population was not evenly spread out, the government had a huge transmigration program underway to move people from crowded Java to less-crowded Sumatra and Kalimantan. Indonesia’s location in the ocean crossroads of Asia gave rise to commerce but also to competition over trade and disputes over freedom of the seas. Spices drew the attention of many, as did the richness of the forests. Later, minerals and petroleum attracted foreign interest and challenges. Hindu explorers and traders came and left their mark. Traders and settlers from Islamic populations also frequented the islands and waters and had great influence. The Chinese were among the first to be accommodated and, over time, the fortunes of people of Chinese extraction have been a roller coaster of political activities. The Dutch and British and Portuguese all came and bumped into each other, with the Dutch finally gaining the upper hand over native populations for more than 150 years. All of these ebbs and flows and competing philosophies and forms of governance provide a rich and complex national outlook. All of these influences not only had an impact on Indonesia’s national thinking and growth, but were strong elements underpinning a foreign policy stance that included attitudes in the U.N. and with U.N. agencies stationed in the country. The premise was to remain out of the orbit of the U.S.S.R. and the U.S., both of which were engaged in a struggle of ideas. The Chinese influence in the early years of independence was seen as a good thing, a counterbalance to the Soviets. However, when it was sensed that the influence was unwelcome domestically, relations between Indonesia and China soured. Japan occupied Indonesia for three years during WWII with unhappy results and resentment. Relations with the Dutch were of a love-hate nature, but considering their long history convivial and collaborative and mostly comfortable. The official position toward the U.S. was cautious and aloof, though in private it was another story. The government was controlled every step of the way with a colorful title for its policy: “guided democracy.”
Problems with neighbors brought disputes, but over time they were settled and Indonesia became a strong and visible member of the Non-Aligned Movement and a founder of ASEAN.5 I attended a meeting of ASEAN in Bali as an observer in February 1976 where the agreement was signed and have always regretted not being able to persuade ASEAN to take aggressive political action on issues of nutrition. We tried, but not well enough. We had to be aware of these currents in thinking in order to negotiate with the government and understand possible hesitations, restrictions or interpretations of proposals we might make. It began to teach me this truism: Almost everything in life is about something else, past or present. This is reflected not only in attitudes and stances, but in the ways that problems are approached and discussed. Moreover, this helped to explain the dichotomy between the soft-spoken, confrontation-shy Javanese with their deep-rooted sense of community and the (seemingly) sudden violent outbursts in the political arena. One of my first duties in Jakarta was to attend an oath-taking ceremony for a group of provincial and sub-provincial officers of the public health system. It was held in the ministry’s courtyard and spots had been marked on the pavement showing where each person would stand and take the oath, according to religious preference. Indonesia is a secular country by choice, historical practice and law. The standard oath was administered by the minister and each participant took it in the company of a cleric. If the Spirits are Willing ... The offices we occupied were owned by the government and they wanted them back, which was fine with us. The periodic sorties by rodents looking for scraps (while folkloric) were disturbing and the roof leaked in odd places, but not always in the same places. We were relocated to larger premises where all of the U.N. agencies could be housed under one roof. In order to keep lost time to a minimum, the physical move was scheduled for a weekend. Wilfred d’Silva, a diminutive, hard-working Bangladeshi who stayed on for some years and was a great contributor to the work, took charge of assuring that each office would be packed and delivered to the appropriate new space. But just before the effort was to begin, a staff member approached me with the suggestion that we change the moving day. According to her reading of the evidence of the spirits, it was not a propitious day and bad luck would accrue to UNICEF if we ignored that. 5 The Association of South-East Asian Nations
This information came to me the day before the long-planned event! But after some discussion, a compromise was reached that satisfied both the cultural needs and our management needs. It was agreed to call Saturday the official moving day. Sunday (the day originally chosen for the move) would be considered a continuation, and thus was acceptable. So, it was agreed “officially” to move one desk, one chair, one filing cabinet and one waste basket on Saturday. Everything else was moved on Sunday. The operation went very well. However, after some days it was reported that one set of office furniture simply disappeared. Spirits? Thievery? The mystery remains. It was an introduction to an aspect of life that would arise again from time to time. Most of our meetings with government officials were conducted in English. But at other meetings, especially of working groups and task forces, the language used was Bahasa Indonesia. Our team included many nationalities, and the Indonesian side represented a wide range of groups from around the country. The process was enlightening and indicative of how things got accomplished. There was always an agenda and a chair, but the most influential person in the room might not be in the chair. The discussion method was called m ushawarat (deliberation), which gave everyone an opportunity to speak. Once the discussion concluded, the chair would indicate the meeting had been interesting and fruitful and then he would rise. At that we knew two things: The meeting had ended and a decision had been reached. But we were not sure exactly what the decision was! This is a key to understanding the country and its people: Consensus is vital, confrontation is to be avoided, quiet discourse is the norm. There are five or so ways to say “yes” in the language but no way to say “no.” So we always had an after-the-meeting review to assure ourselves that we understood what had transpired. Over the years I have suggested that the puppet show can be seen as a metaphor for how Indonesia is managed. Puppet shows are ancient communications channels in the country and entire villages will patiently sit long hours watching shadow puppets reveal once again the time-tested and venerable stories from the Ramayana. I suspect that during the time of the Dutch, and surely during the Japanese occupation, these performances offered conduits for the traveling puppeteer to transmit messages from village to village. My comparison of the village viewing process as a key to governance in Indonesia has helped me understand national
actions a bit better. In the village, for example, the spectator sees the shadow of the puppet on the white screen and often might see the puppet as well. But the puppeteer is never visible. This helped me grasp decision-making in political and government circles. Members of the team assembled with Martin Sandburg were, for the most part, deployed to the country at about the same time, so transfers to other duty stations were frequent in the first months after my arrival. One by one, we were able to persuade people to accept transfer to Indonesia and some staff members were recruited from outside the system. It has always been my conviction that the team assembled in Indonesia during this time was one of the best collections of talent in UNICEF. I presided over staff meetings and programme design sessions with these extraordinary professionals and always felt that everyone in the room was more intelligent than I. What a lot I did learn from them as their leader during a most challenging and exciting time in Indonesia. I mentioned our planning officer from the U.S., Steve Umemoto, earlier. In addition, the team included senior coordinator Andre Louis (France), who joined UNICEF in Vietnam after he left the priesthood. Wilfred d’Silva (Bangladesh) looked after our health and drinking water assistance, supported by Ibu Satrio. Pak Suleiman, chief of supply and logistics, was from Central Java. Jane Campbell Bevan (U.S.) led the community development section with support from Ibo Murpratomo. Rolf Carriere (Netherlands) joined UNICEF in Indonesia from a post in FAO. He took over the newly created unit on nutrition and soon co-opted Jon Rohde of the Rockefeller Foundation as a senior advisor. He was one of the most eager and persistently curious staff members I ever knew. His quiet composure, thorough study of the issues and willingness to experiment were constant contributions to the work. Hans Narula (India) took over our planning section. He was analytical to a fault and, sitting as he did at meeting tables, often gave the impression that Lord Ganesh was present with us! Kul Gautam (Nepal) joined us from his post in Laos and took over the work in non-formal education. He was new to UNICEF but had experienced a tough period in Laos. He absorbed the complexity of the work with ease and intelligence and made constant contributions in innovative thinking. Edwin “Joe” Judd (U.S.) was our advisor on urban development. His advice on how to deal with complex problems and even more complex personalities in development were assets we appreciated, and later so did UNICEF in general.
Farid Rahman (Pakistan) provided advice and professional support on rural development. He knew what he was talking about, having worked in rural Pakistan in difficult areas with contentious political and social groups. We had a number of official volunteers, mostly from the Canadian International Development Agency and the U.N. Volunteers Programme. Steven Woodhouse of the U.K. was in place when I arrived, and Peter Berman and Robert Drogin of the U.S. joined us. Tom McDermott, also an American, signed on as staff officer just before my departure, as did Alan Court. All of them achieved significant levels of leadership, mostly in UNICEF but also at such disparate places as Harvard University, the Ford Foundation and the Los Angeles Times. We all remained friends over the years. As I often said at the time, I was always confident that I was their friend. I always hoped that I had earned their friendship. It was my custom and practice to work with the team leaders to reach agreement on goals and our broad strategy, then delegate responsibility and accountability. In short, get the ball rolling and get out of the way and allow the professionals to do their work. UNICEF was a decentralized management system globally, so there was no reason that philosophy should not prevail in national offices. When officers went on field trips, they knew that whatever decision was made during their travels, it would be supported from Jakarta. The country programme between UNICEF and the government of Indonesia was in place when I arrived and being pursued diligently with positive results. We had about a year before we needed to write another one. We used the plan to analyze the situation of children and publish a book on the results, which had good and positive resonance in the government, especially in BAPPENAS.6 Our review of the situation of children in the country, province by province and service by service, yielded three major conclusions: (1) that UNICEF collaboration was appreciated at all levels and respected because it was blended into activities owned by the community or the ministry involved; (2) that the ideas presented by UNICEF had made an impact on reducing the magnitude of problems faced by children while providing strong support to infrastructure and personnel needs; and (3) that services were getting better but vertical delivery systems might not suffice. 6 BAPPENAS is the national planning department, the authority in Indonesia to which UNICEF was accredited.
We began to think more about “converging” services. We wanted to make sure that the same services could reach the same children in the same village at about the same time and at the same costs – thus a need to look more at children than at the services for them. This implied a need to examine services that cut across, and perhaps through, normal and traditional delivery systems – services like improved nutrition, non-formal education, community development and literacy efforts, especially for girls and women. This also implied a need to discuss with BAPPENAS the idea of selecting parts of an urban complex and specific districts in the country as targets from which activities could radiate. The vertical delivery systems remained fully supported, but after development target areas were determined, we worked to have vertical delivery bend a bit to get needed services delivered on priority to those areas. The idea took hold. It soon became evident that “going to scale” was the next step. The combined emphasis on improved water delivery, more accessible preventive health services, improved nutrition services, better learning opportunities for small children, and family planning education began to reinforce one another and thus improved public support. It also proved the more efficient use of limited resources. I was grateful for the good leadership training I had while in Peru and Colombia. The long days of village consultations and trying to learn how communities function and how they see priorities in their lives paid off in Indonesia. My management “style” (if that term has meaning) was to study each element of the country programme and try to be as conversant as the officer in charge of it. We used each other as sounding board. Once agreement was reached on a specific objective, we looked at a range of tactics. It was the job of the programme officer to set down measurable goals in line with our long-term strategy. A common phrase used in UNICEF is “on a field trip,” but one needs to put its meaning into context. For a person based in New York, a field trip could mean traveling to Kuala Lumpur or Jakarta or a regional office. For an officer based in a national capital, a trip to a provincial capital could be considered a field trip. But, to me, a “real” field trip was about visiting villages, traveling on the roads that connect them, or attempt to, and spending some days seeing and feeling how people behave, survive and work together. It is good to witness the impact of a development project and see how people use it or benefit from it. But it is just as vital to find out why all people don’t use a particular service, or don’t use it to the fullest, or don’t like it. I still recall what women in the Guajira Peninsula in Colombia told me when I asked, “Why do you not use the health center for delivering your children?” They said, “It was
uncomfortable.” Meaning? The health center had beds. Their custom called for hammocks. After spending the best part of a year reviewing the situation and analyzing the results of surveys and studies, we also opted for a greater concentration on village nutrition interventions of a cohesive and coordinated nature. Nutrition was seen as the key intervention and one that should involve almost all services. Rolf Carriere, John Rohde, Peter Berman and Bob Drogin led the effort based on proven concepts. We were able to make an important contribution toward eliminating iodine deficiency disorder after studies confirmed the severity of the problem in the country. With major interest and support on the part of the ministries of interior, industry and health, the production of iodized salt began, first at the major works on the island of Madura and later with smaller processors. There was rapid progress early on, but it gradually waned for lack of a necessary ingredient – the active collaboration of private and public sectors, scientific bodies and civil society. We were pleased when WHO adopted the elimination of iodine deficiency order as a regional goal. The Village Nutrition Programme The team was led by Rolf Carriere, who had taken charge of nutrition programming. The idea was to use recent reviews to build a village-based activity that would in good part sustain itself. During the preparation, we also felt it would be good if the planning department could be persuaded to view nutrition for children as a priority equal to family planning. The opportunity came when planning was in an advanced stage and test runs had been completed. Fortuitously, at just that time, the national family planning board (BKKBN) was in need of just such a program. Village leaders had been promised that high acceptance of the family-planning campaign would be rewarded with a village-based development effort from the central government. Now the board needed to keep that pledge. The essence of the Village Nutrition Programme was to build on what already existed in the community and introduce simple, replicable activities. School and village gardens were a long-established intervention, but even with the addition of small-animal raising as a complement, left much to be desired. Nutrition education was a tool, but not always related to village realities. Our team devised what was called a “Nutrition Intervention Kit.” Its major elements were equipment and start-up supplies and a communications package.
In effect, it was a footlocker-like package that villagers could manage. A fundamental was to promote and protect breastfeeding from the intrusion of commercial advertising and bad advice. Alongside that was the promotion of a growth chart that mothers and fathers could use to plot the monthly progress of their infants. If the babies were not growing normally, the chart would alert them so they could take remedial action soon enough to matter. For this we had to devise a growth chart attractive to the culture and functional in village homes (including protection from cooking fires) and teach people how to interpret the findings. It now seems almost outside the realm of belief, but until that time UNICEF and other development agencies did not have a baby scale that measured accurately in less-than-perfect situations.7 The scale that was available at the time was simple enough to operate – hang the apparatus on a tree limb or wooden beam, put the baby in the sling, note the weight. But what we were after was a digital scale that reset itself to zero efficiently and produced a card with the baby’s weight noted on it. Lessons in diarrhea management were an essential part of the intervention effort. Oral rehydration salts (ORS) in small sachets at reasonable prices had been developed and tested8 and we took advantage of that innovation for home treatment of the malady. The packets were also introduced through commercial channels. The procedure was simple: Open the package, dissolve it in tea or water, feed it to the infant. The “kit” contained a good supply of ORS packets, and national production cranked up to meet the expected demand. As a national endeavor, we were collaborating with the Expanded Programme of Immunizations against six maladies. The growth chart we provided parents also had space to record what vaccinations had been given (as a reminder for the next stage). Vaccines and immunizations had to be given by local health authorities. This was a demonstration, too, of the merging of national program delivery on priority to the selected villages in the Village Nutrition Programme. Literacy programs for women were an integral part of the programme from the start, recognition that family life improves (and especially for children) when women are educated. We had BKKBN and BAPPENAS as our national partners and there was substantial support from the government as well as major foreign donors, including the World Bank. 7 This was mainly because the scales were designed for use in centers and fixed services. Joe Rohde had been part of the team that ironed out the wrinkles in Bangladesh. 8
This added weight to the argument for making mother and child nutrition a priority. In fact, when the central authorities became comfortable with the design and intent of the Village Nutrition Programme, it was deemed eligible for support through the “presidential account.” This allowed financing to flow directly to the village leadership from the highest authority in the country. I had two long private conversations with President Suharto about this concept. The original Village Nutrition Programme was designed as a “demonstration.” (It is wiser to emphasize new ventures as demonstrations, not as experiments, since demonstrations are not subject to failure!). The plan was to reach 200 villages in the first year or so and then evaluate the results. However, acceptance of the program was such that the government approached us for a more rapid scaling-up of the effort. In the next stage, we expanded to more than 500 villages. Over time the programme reached every village. Activities similar to these were also being successfully demonstrated and delivered in East Africa and Nepal. Later, after a review by UNICEF’s executive director and a globally recognized team, this concept was combined with experiences in other countries to become the GOBI-FFF Programme, UNICEF’s flagship advocacy and child survival endeavor. Undoubtedly, the successful planning and development of this endeavor was due to intellectual input by the programme staff and built upon the general policies of UNICEF. But the practice of what I call “wandering the hallways” also played a key role in the negotiations. Our people needed to be seen as members of the team; they needed to know how the ministry worked and how the sections within it worked and interrelated; and they needed to become colleagues of the national staff on whom the effort ultimately depended. It was vital to make field visits to understand the issues first-hand. This helped in discussions on how baby scales did or did not work, how growth charts might be designed better, how people shared water sources and managed latrines, how people saw home treatment of diarrhea. Jon Rohde used to teach practical nutrition at the university and as part of the course, he gave each student the cash equivalent of a village woman’s budget for food for one day. Then he sent them to the market to buy what they were recommending that the village women buy. The lesson was clear. The entire effort to improve nutrition had impact. By attracting political attention to the challenges, it made things a bit easier to negotiate. In addition, UNICEF’s advocacy efforts in Indonesia gained a bounce in being associated with the Intergovernmental Group on Indonesia, a body formed by the World Bank
and made up of major bilateral donors such as the International Monetary Fund and the United Nations Development Programme. This gave us a seat at major policy discussions on development investments in Indonesia and led UNICEF to be invited to similar bodies for other key developing countries. From “Berita UNICEF” to “Berita Anak Anak” UNICEF in Indonesia published a quarterly journal in the Bahasa Indonesia language as a derivative of the global “UNICEF News,” and it was well received in intellectual and development circles. It seemed to me, however, that the focus should be amended to stress news about children, not just about UNICEF. The format change proved to be a hit, and we were able to collaborate with national NGOs to publish studies in the national language. After a couple of years, “Berita Anak Anak” received official recognition from the academic community with a special citation. This experiment with development communication taught us all some basic lessons. It also confirmed to me that each UNICEF country office should dedicate more time and resources to reaching specific sectors of the public and the leaders in various available communications channels. Blending this kind of communication with “project support communications” and constant personal advocacy by staff in various ways was essential to the success of the country programme. At times, the pressures for change and review are not altogether welcome, but constant returning and adjusting of tactics demonstrate the value of communications to the development progress. The essence is to have an advocacy plan with measurable objectives, a few well-designed strategies and a range of tactics through a variety of channels. We kept in touch with political leaders by visiting them; television reached them at home as well. Print communications and visual aids produced for individual use at various levels were also part of the mix. Once the major messages were created and tested, the team used them almost as “branded” items. We used all of the channels we could: cabinet ministers and their senior staffs, journals and other print media, television and radio, discussions with non-governmental groups and professional bodies. The campaign was not limited to just the village nutrition effort. The team also worked through support channels to promote primary health care, the new approach being pushed globally by WHO and UNICEF (and for which we wrote a case study on an Indonesian experience for the conference in Kazakhstan, U.S.S.R.).
Special efforts were designed for safe drinking water and sanitation work, which later attracted the attention of the Swiss Embassy and its ambassador, Max Feller. Max became a promoter of the work with his government and obtained a large grant for efforts in the Jogjakarta area of Java. The long years of work with community development people provided a powerful network of concerned development workers. We broke new ground in this field of programming work by contracting a social communications company to undertake research, development and presentation of visual advocacy materials. It was a good investment. Wounded on the Homefront For the most part, life in Jakarta was calm and orderly, but our peaceful domain was interrupted in the most frightening way one evening. It was about midnight. Anne was having trouble sleeping and Lynn got up to sit with her and have a mother-daughter chat. As they entered the living from the long hallway, Lynn screamed that there was a man with a gun. That jolted me awake and from the bedroom door I could see that Lynn ... and perhaps Anne as well … had taken refuge behind a rattan chair. I was desperately trying to find the correct words in Bahasa Indonesia to tell the intruder that whatever he wanted, we could arrange. But then he aimed his pistol at Lynn and that ended any attempt at negotiation. I charged the man and he fired, hitting me a glancing blow in the chest and in the foot. We later found five bullet holes in the floor and walls. In my tussle, I called out for help and David charged out of his room with his sarong flying, looking somewhat like an upset banshee. At that the fellow fled out the door and through the fence. The family rushed me to the hospital, but not before Tom had an opportunity to practice applying a tourniquet fashioned from a towel and branch ripped off a bush outside. The surgery went well, and I was none the worse for wear and tear. But recovery meant spending some days at the hospital. During that time Foreign Minister Adam Malik, a charming and witty person, called to express regret for my injury and to offer any assistance I might need. He promised that the resources of the government would be used to chase down the gunman and bring him to justice. I took rehabilitation training to avoid a limp, and that also consumed time but worked out well. The whole incident was upsetting to the family, of course, and we had trouble sleeping for some time. It was also upsetting in the international
community. Indonesian authorities held a dim view of resident foreign people being endangered. I was able to return to work with a heavy cast and crutches. Some weeks later, a call came from the police department asking if I could come and identify a possible suspect they had recently captured. I went to the station, but there was some mix-up and I wasn’t able to see the man and a second invitation from the police never came. However, a letter from Minister Malik did come. In it he reported that my assailant had been captured and was in jail and “after appropriate review would be confined.” The gunshot episode was one of a number of health issues visited upon the family. Lynn came down with a severe case of typhoid fever, which put her in the hospital for a period. David contracted dengue fever, which kept him in bed. I contracted a severe case of food poisoning, which caused a major challenge to the plumbing when our electric generator decided to stop working. Even after we got the generator running again, the plumbing remained tentative. So Lynn consulted with an engineer friend, who advised us to adjust a particular valve in a sunken chamber in our garden. Weak as I was, I climbed down into the chamber and turned the valve as instructed. And that is how we learned where the discharge unit for the septic tank was located. For me, in my delicate condition, this was the final blow! I was a walking odiferous person. The children, unsympathetic, threatened to make me bathe outside. Independence for East Timor The island of Timor has some historic benchmarks, though most often they are treated in footnotes. Captain Bligh landed on its shores in 1787 after the famous mutiny aboard his ship, the H MS Bounty. For nearly all of WWII, a tiny unit of the Australian Army used the hills of the island as a base to harass the Japanese with the support of the Timorese. Until Indonesian independence, the island had long been divided into two colonies: Portuguese in the eastern half, Dutch in the west. The great surge for independence that swept through Asia and Africa came to Portuguese-speaking territories later than most. The British had led the way in India and Pakistan in the 1940s, though not without difficulty. French colonies began to agitate successfully in Africa and the Mediterranean, with uneven results. Some locales erupted in violence and some did not, but most colonies gained independence in the 1950s and ’60s as did the Belgium-held lands in Central Africa. All of these actions had an impact on services and development assistance for children.
The far-flung holdings of Portugal’s dictatorial government were kept in check until Francisco Salazar died and a military government took over in 1974. The ensuing struggle for democratic processes led the government to declare it was ready to deal with independence petitions from Angola, Mozambique, West Africa, and South and Southeast Asia. In each there were divisions of thought: Some supported the homeland; some wanted outright independence; some supported independence but had social, political and commercial ties with foreign neighbors. The future of Goa, a Portuguese enclave on India’s west coast, was settled in a plebiscite that opted for joining India. Macao on the China coast opted to stay quiet. East Timor had three distinct political groups and they all wanted independence, but with different slants and proposed policies. One group favored association with Indonesia; another wanted to keep a special relationship with Portugal; the third group, FRETILIN, wanted complete independence. War broke out. The first group quickly concluded it had little chance for success without support from the government of Indonesia; the second group had little chance; the third had the support of large segments of the population and they took up arms. When the fighting started, services were almost totally disrupted. As the nearest UNICEF representative to the conflict, I informed the foreign minister that I was obligated to go to Timor to see what services UNICEF could render to the people at risk. He said he understood but hinted that he would be grateful if I did not “leave Indonesia for Timor” directly. I said I understood. I departed for Singapore and then to Australia, where I hitched a ride in the International Red Cross plane in Darwin and flew into Dili, the capital of East Timor. FRETELIN, most popular of the political groups seeking independence, had set up a de facto government and was trying to resume basic services, secure food stability and fight the Indonesian-supported, well-armed opposition. But the Portuguese authorities had taken anything of value with them. The harvest was nonexistent. Fighting was underway all along the border with Indonesia and in some areas in the hills, with sporadic violence in urban neighborhoods. A blockade was being muted with a wink and a nod from the U.S. Indonesia was hoping to end the crisis quickly and in its favor. The Australian Red Cross and the International Committee of the Red Cross were already at work, and they offered me a room and board in Dili. Working with the representative of the IRC, the globally recognized neutral entity, and with full cooperation of the “acting minister of foreign affairs,” Jose Ramos Horta, we put together an emergency relief plan for food, special foods for children and women, medicines, vaccines and some educational materials. I sent
the proposal by radio from the IRC in Dili to UNICEF in New York, and repeated it by telegram from Darwin, Australia, on my way home. I received confirmation that UNICEF and the World Food Programme were diverting a ship to respond and that procurement had begun. The Indonesian Navy blockaded our shipments of relief supplies, but not for long. UNICEF also provided some relief services to refugees on the Indonesian side of the border. The uneven struggle continued, but the end was predictable. Ramos Horta left the country when the Indonesian Army got the upper hand. He spent the rest of his life advocating for independence and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts jointly with Carlos Belo, the Roman Catholic bishop in Dili who led the effort to provide relief and find a peaceful solution. Out and About in Indonesia Our family took advantage of holidays to learn about the country by visiting it. We explored Jakarta, Tanjung Priok and Bogor. David and Anne went on group trips to Bali by train and ferry boat. Liz went to East Java by train and bus. Tom worked as a volunteer in an East Javanese village near the old capital of Yogyakarta, where Lynn and I visited him with his village parents. Lynn went on two ventures to Central Java with friends and numberless forays into the byways of Jakarta. One weekend a month, we traveled to the north coast of Java to a small cabin built partly on stilts and equipped with kerosene lights and mandi baths.9 Krakatoa, the volcanic island that exploded in 1883 with global impact, was just over the horizon. Indonesia’s location allows for travel east or west to the center of the U.S. because it is almost equidistant. On the occasions when I had to travel to New York, it was convenient to visit the Philippines and Japan en route to seeing David in Arizona after he left for college. On home leave, we enjoyed Singapore and Hong Kong and the west coast of the U.S. en route to visiting my folks in Manitoba and Lynn’s in St. Louis before returning via Europe. On one home leave, we ventured to New Caledonia and Tahiti before taking in Disneyland in Los Angeles. The images of the three together made for interesting dinner table discussion. 9 A mandi bath is the traditional way of bathing in Indonesia that involves tossing water from a large container over one’s body, applying soap, and then rinsing the soap off with more water.
On one trip to Japan to seek additional resources for UNICEF, I received an award for development work from the Japan Jaycees.10 There was also regional travel. I visited Bangkok, the regional office and good friend Roberto Esquerra Barry, the regional director there, perhaps three times a year and the various country offices when we took turns hosting meetings of the regional representatives. On one occasion we met in Saigon during the war. It seemed odd that there was such a heavy emphasis on pretending that things were “normal” and that ours was “business as usual” at night from the roof of our hotel, we could see the flashes from shell explosions on the horizon and the airport was operating as though under siege. I always regretted not traveling more in Indonesia, but on the whole I did visit a good part of Sumatra and Java, Bali, Lombok, Irian Jaya and Sulawesi. The diversity of Indonesia was everywhere evident and the persistent efforts to build a multifaceted society were admirable indeed. Surrounded! A member of the staff advised me one afternoon that the streets around us were blocked with rioting people. With the tenuous telephone system in Jakarta at the time, it took awhile to find out that protests about an impending visit by senior Japanese officials had erupted into the looting and burning of businesses of Japanese interests. (The telephone system was so weak that we employed an extra person at the switchboard just to dial numbers over and over until a connection was made.) We set to work to protect ourselves. We were never in imminent danger but, as time passed, people were interested in reaching their families. We had some national colleagues pass through the crowds to nearby tea shops to buy food in case we needed emergency rations, and we organized our small fleet of cars to escort staff home with the U.N. flag on each vehicle as protection. The process was slow, but we managed to get everyone home safely by 10 p.m. and then I departed for my home. On the way, I remembered that we had taken our new Toyota station wagon to the dealer for a checkup just the day before. Our car was damaged in the mayhem on the streets and never really functioned well thereafter. Lynn used the car the most, and its persistent but irregular performance tested her strength and endurance. The riot subsided during the night, and except for debris in the streets the city returned to normal after a couple of days. But it demonstrated an undercurrent 10 Donald Regan, President Ronald Reagan’s chief of staff, was guest of honor at that ceremony.
of violence that might erupt in an otherwise quiet and peaceful population. Such periodic episodes seemed to fly in the face of logic and cultural custom. But under manipulation by troublemakers with a political agenda, strange things happen. The looting of Japanese enterprises was perhaps a metaphor for resentment and memories of Japanese occupation during World War II. Residual resentment of the Chinese is also a constant point of potential trouble. One-Party Domination Pancasila is a word used to describe the Indonesian government’s approach to development fostered by Sukarno (albeit in ways that created political friction) and carried forward by President Suharto (with more finesse). Pancasila as an approach was dominated by one political party; other parties were legal and active but lacked power. The parliament had elected officials, but not so many as to relieve the presidential and party nominations of their domination of all legislation and policy. I met General Suharto on a number of occasions, and he always treated UNICEF with concern and interest. He was an authoritarian and corrupt leader who ran things as though governance was a family business, with siblings receiving huge incomes. His wife, Tien, handled personal matters in a fashion that earned her the sobriquet of “Mrs. Ten Percent.” Even so, Suharto was a strong supporter of the expansion of the Village Nutrition Programme and the primary health scheme and he assured financing. He created the “inpres accounts,” a process that avoided the tortuous ministerial budgetary processes with all their potential for mischief. One of the major accounts had to do with national disasters, such as earthquakes. Indonesia is in the Pacific’s “Ring of Fire” as is Peru on the other side of the water. There were many tremors during our time there but only one major quake, which affected Bali and Irian Jaya more than other places.11 Staff was dispatched to both sites in support of the government’s emergency forces. The initial report from Irian Jaya via shortwave radio tested my general 11 There was much suffering and displacement, but the traditional structures withstood the shocks better than modern ones. In Bali, this was perhaps because of the design and composition; in Irian Jaya, because most village houses were on stilts.
approach that one should not second-guess the person on the spot. The message from Andre Louis requested authority to purchase pig fat! The local people, mostly animistic, used the fat to protect their bodies in high altitudes and cold weather. They preferred it to blankets. The Family and Changes Every year, we had more teenagers in the house. The entire clan was busy with community organizations, school activities and all the things that families do when children are active and participating in a range of things, from drama to music to sports to community volunteering to just having a good time. Lynn was busy taking courses in the religions of Java, browsing the markets for antique furniture, and taking part in some NGOs. We were both active in a social life that enveloped most evenings after homework and dinner with the family. However, as much as we enjoyed the learning and the many acquaintances and official friendships, we never really settled into things there as we had in other posts. Reflecting upon this later, we concluded that a lot depends on the state of family life and the challenges to it. We had experienced a few of them in Jakarta. David was the first to leave home, enrolling at the University of Northern Arizona. Anne was next, departing for Savannah, Georgia, and then to college in Durango, Colorado. Tom spent a long period one summer living with a Javanese family. We visited him and made him a bit nervous. He was worried we would not behave properly and decorously in remote Java! The departures made it difficult all around, but we understood they were natural. We got to see them on school vacations, and family reunions were fun times. The annual Christmas letter we started in Connecticut became more challenging to compose as we covered the antics of some of the children now living away from home. But the same general rules of composition prevailed that Lynn and I agreed on in 1958: no “super children,” no endless stories of grandparents and elderly relatives. Focus on life and living it. Talk about the children, not the parents. We issued a letter each year until 1998, when I published a book for the family comprised of the letters and connected by a bit of family history seen from the perspective of time. In 1977, the UNICEF Executive Board accepted an invitation from the Philippines to hold its annual meeting in Manila, and during those sessions the executive director approached me about a prospective new assignment in Brazil. The situation of the Fund in Brazil needed a review to adjust to changes in that
huge country’s development situation. There was a concerted effort underway to work with the government to “modernize” the approach to collaboration. I advised all concerned that I did not speak Portuguese, the language of Brazil, but that did not deter their recruitment of me at all. Language tutoring would be arranged as part of our home leave. After talking it over with Lynn, we agreed to move yet again. This time we had the sense that, in a way, we were “going home” because of our familiarity with South America. In addition to the challenges of packing and moving and extracting our family from Indonesia, I was asked to assume the post in Brazil immediately in order to avoid difficulties with the government. As a result, I traveled to Brasilia twice from Jakarta and back! It was tiring and difficult, but at least gave me a chance to look at housing. And because of that, we were able to move into a new home almost immediately. References Annual reports of UNICEF, 1973-1977. “Berita Anak Anak,” a journal about development and children published by UNICEF in Indonesia, 1973-1977. “Colonial Collapse in Mozambique and Timor,” David P. Haxton, G reensboro News & Record, November 1984. Indonesia, J.D. Legge, Prentice-Hall, New Jersey, 1964. Indonesia: Land and People, J. Hardjono, P.T. Gunung Agung, Jakarta, 1971. Nathaniel’s Nutmeg, Giles Milton, Farrar, Straus and Giroux Publishers, New York, 1999. “Remembering ... A Family Album,” self-published by the author, 1958-1998. The Art of Indonesia, Frits A Wagner, Crown Publishers, New York, 1959. The author’s diaries and journals. The Religions of Java, Clifford Geertz, University of Chicago Press, 1976.
Chapter 10 Challenges and Change “Life is not an empty dream, for the soul is dead that slumbers…” A major consequence of our family’s frequent changes of address, in addition to improving language skills and cultural awareness, was the need to look within our core for essential support. We all learned that, more than any other influence, we had each other and that we could depend on one another and share. We were aware of the difficulty teenagers have in leaving friends and familiar surroundings, but the problems manifested themselves more strongly on the move from Jakarta to Brasilia. David and Anne had both left for college in the U.S., but Elizabeth and Thomas were at home and now teenagers. Mark and Jeanne were close behind. The tug of friendship and the pangs of change were all too evident. There were exotic and new things to see and learn on the route, and they helped but were momentary distractions. We talked about this challenge many times, around the dinner table and in individual chats. When we broached the subject in later years, their reflections were for the most part positive, with just one or two reservations. A common one was the difficulty of describing what “at home” meant. When we moved, it generally wasn’t just to another part of town but to a different continent and a new culture. At college, when they tried to explain this to new friends, it often caused a lull in the conversation. But all in all, most look back on their unusual childhood as a positive adventure, a learning experience. And from the parental point of view, we see good, solid citizens, each with a determined view to help one another and to be active and concerned parents themselves. After we were settled a bit in Brasilia, UNICEF arranged Portuguese lessons for me and Lynn took lessons at home. The children started learning the language in regular classes at school, and they took to it well. Many people have a first
impression that Portuguese is rarely used, but in fact it is among the top 10 languages in the world – spoken in Portugal, Brazil, Angola, Mozambique and many smaller places in Asia and on the African coast. Getting Down to Work in Brazil The briefing I received for my new post included an analysis of the UNICEF operation in Brazil, and it indicated that the team had not adjusted to the changed economic and development circumstances in the country. It was still “supply oriented” and project oriented, with a narrow focus on a few small endeavors. The senior positions in the office and the international staff posts were mostly vacant due to transfers, departures or retirement. I had long known that UNICEF had four things it could offer to national plans for children: something hard, like equipment; something soft, like cash grants; something consumable, like vitamins and vaccines; and talent, expertise and ideas. The most important and vital by far, in my opinion, was talent. The challenge in Brazil was to alter the mix with a greater emphasis on providing advisory services and fresh approaches while assuring that expendables and equipment needs were met by national sources. After some long reflection and discussion with colleagues in New York, the priorities for action seemed clear. We needed: ● A cohesive plan for recruiting and strategically placing professional talent, both international and national. ● An advocacy plan aimed at persuading the central and state governments and a range of other bodies that children needed to be the priority in development planning. ● An orientation and training program for the national staff. ● A plan for seeking alliances within the central government and with national NGOs and other foreign assistance entities in the country. ● In addition, we needed to assess how the massive communications networks could be mobilized. The bottom line for exercising the action plan was how much money we had in the budget. The combination of the administrative services budget and the programme development budget had a ceiling of $1.2 million (in 1977 U.S. dollars) and that included all operating costs, staff costs and expert/consultancy costs. The bottom line was we needed the government of Brazil to pick up the largest part of the bill!
I was fortunate to have the full cooperation of UNICEF’s Personnel Division. Together we persuaded Jacob Matthai and Shob Jhie to join the team. Jacob, the new senior programme officer, had been an experienced hand in South Asia as well as East Africa. Shob was an experienced development economist from Korea who had distinguished himself in Indo-China and Pakistan. They and their families would become stalwart colleagues and lifelong friends. Together we sought talent for specific assignments. We managed to recruit Agop Kayayan, a sociologist from Lebanon with years of experience in Brazil, to take on some planning work. We recruited Gershon da Cunha for a special assignment: to design a national effort aimed at protecting breastfeeding. Gershon, a Portuguese-speaking Indian from Goa who was on leave from a private communications company, demonstrated the power of communications in development efforts. Advocating for Children A review of the basic document governing Brazil’s official recognition of UNICEF revealed that the government was obligated to locate offices for the Fund and pay the rent. That helped with our finances! The ministry to which UNICEF was accredited took immediate action to find us a new government-paid space. We prepared a children’s advocacy plan and I made an appointment to present it to the minister for planning, Delfim Netto. This was going to be a major test of my new language skills. While I knew enough Portuguese to get along, formal dialogue presented significant challenges. But I prepared well. I had a text and practiced it at home and in the office. I reviewed everything I could. I felt ready. The meeting began and I made my proposal in summary form with special emphasis on our hope that UNICEF, with the Planning Ministry, could help pull together a cadre of experts to design interventions and suggest alterations in practices. Left a bit vague was the issue of how to pay for this approach, but I was hoping the minister would offer a commitment in this regard. I thought I had done a pretty good job. Mr. Netto was focused on me the entire time. After I was through, the minister, a man of significant girth and size, tipped his chair back and stared at the ceiling for a long moment. I wondered if I had lost him. Could he be displeased in some fashion? After a time, he looked directly at me and asked how long I had been in the country. I thought to myself, “It is my poor Portuguese!” I told him the number of months it had been. “That explains a good bit, sir,” he said. “You see, if we had all the experts that you say we have, we would have already hired them!”
I was taken aback, but he looked at my paper and said that while he had modest reservations, he wished me luck and offered any assistance should I need it. After a pause, he added that he liked the approach and that the Planning Commission would be eager to see each proposal in due course and would make an appropriate commitment. That commitment was kept with no reservations for the entire time. Mr. Netto opened doors at the highest levels of each ministry for us and made our work much easier. The major point and central theme of our proposal was to persuade all elements of the vast government to take a new look at children and work toward making them a priority for national investment (instead of a target for charity) and the object of development planning (instead of merely the subject of it). And we wanted to persuade them to work at providing basic services for children equitably in rural and urban areas. The text of the plan underwent thorough review in the Ministry of Planning and then was sent around to the other arms of government. Brazil had a long list of semi-government organizations that operated in good part with federal resources but were mostly independent of ministry interference. We met with a good number of them. The document was also distributed widely within UNICEF as well and received comments from a good number of people, all with good criticisms. Most were positive and helpful, some not so, but all were welcome and we reviewed them all and gleaned what we could. Basically the paper argued that advocacy for children was an essential element of UNICEF work, and had been since it was chartered. And since UNICEF would never have enough resources to help all children everywhere, we must advocate for others to dedicate resources to focus on the priorities of child survival, child development and basic services. Giant of the South Brazil is a huge country. It covers an area equal to the contiguous 48 United States and has a border with all of the countries in South America except Chile and Ecuador. Over the years, most of the population had accumulated along the Atlantic coastline, particularly in the southern part of it. The Amazon valley, the Mato Grasso and the North East are vast areas but thinly populated. A major reason to move the center of government from Rio to the interior was to lead a population shift. The country is a republic comprised of 26 states and the federal district of Brasilia. Because of a papal decree issued in connection with the Pact of
Tordesillas in 1494, to make peace between the vast Spanish empire and the expanding Portuguese empire, the world was divided between them for exploration. Brazil fell east of the chosen meridian and, thus, was open to Portuguese expansion. This made Brazil part of an empire that included territories in southern Africa and the small colonies along the China coast and part of Timor. The migrating population from Portugal was small, but the language was implanted. In about 1808, Portugal’s emperor was unseated by Napoleon and took refuge in Brazil, making it the only country that could claim (mostly factitiously) that it had a colony in Europe! The empire was reconstituted in Lisbon in 1821 and Brazil declared independence. Despite all of the problems associated with governing such a vast territory, the nagging and persistent poverty, massive swings in economic fortunes, bad political management, and little practice until recently in practicing democratic processes, the people of Brazil have remained resilient with a remarkable, ingrained self-deprecating sense of humor. A personality in the country once joked that the outstretched arms of the famous three-story-tall Corcovado statue of Christ in Rio was a plea to get the telephone system to work! The celebration of Carnival, just before the 40-day season of Lent, is a key element in understanding what makes Brazil and Brazilians fascinating and magnetic. It is colorful, noisy, relaxed and musical, and also a most effective way to express social issues. Many of the songs and dances describe social challenges and people’s feelings from the street. Brazilians can be heard to say that a particular issue will be dealt with either “BC” or “AC” (Before Carnival or After Carnival), thus providing an insight into that person’s thinking and priorities! Goodbye Rio, Hello Brasilia Rio had been the nation’s capital since empire days and all through the years of independence until 1960, when the government decided to build a new capital city in a more centralized part of the country. Brasilia was planned and created by the architect Oscar Niemeyer in an area where there was nothing before. We arrived in Brasilia in 1977 and moved into a house in the planned residential area. The city was more or less complete at that time, though some things were still under construction and the suburbs had not yet expanded. Despite the passage of time, government officials who were forced to leave Rio retained a longing for it. Rio was vibrant, colorful and exciting and had marvelous views of the ocean
and vast beaches. Surrounded by grassland, Brasilia was replete with buildings of modern design, uniform in composition, with planned neighborhoods and shopping areas. At first there were no electric traffic signals in the city. There weren’t many cars and the roads had few direct intersections to bother people. Brazil’s foreign relations were as straightforward as they were complex, with a range of competing and overlapping interests one would expect of a large and influential country and people. Because of its size and economic power (unmatched except perhaps for Venezuela), Brazil preferred to be compared with North America and Europe rather than its smaller neighbors.12 The government looked to the U.S. as a major ally but they had issues from time to time, mostly about trade, which Brazil viewed as often unfair and unbalanced. We found the government helpful when we approached the Foreign Ministry about help for Portuguese-speaking countries in Africa. They were open, friendly and supportive. We did a lot of translating work for our colleagues there and opened a good number of channels for visits, orientation and training. Governing Brazil Brazil formed a republic after breaking from the empire, but all too often its political leaders were not adept at governance and the practice of democratic and parliamentary procedures was limited. The one unifying force often seemed to be the armed forces, which frequently tossed out the civilians and ran the government themselves. The years of authoritarian, military-led rule finally led to enough unrest and pressure that national elections were held with civilian candidates. A few lasted for some time, but the military again took over in the 1960s, and this time in such a fashion as to bring economic order more or less into shape. In the mid-1970s, reacting to pressure from both inside and outside the country, the military announced a gradual return to civilian authority and pledged to pave the path openly and honestly. We arrived in Brazil in the middle of General Ernesto Geisel’s term, and I called on him at the modern presidential palace in Brasilia. I remember well the long walk up the ramp over the lily pond. Harry Labouisse and I took that walk together later when he came on an official visit. In that visit, we made the 12 Brazil has demonstrated a particularly sympathetic attitude toward Paraguay, perhaps deriving from the tragedy it wreaked on that country in the mid-19th century. In any case, their special relationship spurred Brazilian investment in a massive hydroelectric project on the border that greatly benefited power sources for Paraguay.
acquaintance of General Joao Figueiredo, who pledged to be the last presidential candidate from the military. The general, we learned, had an interest in nutrition, arising from his experience in the Army. He told us he had observed a certain lassitude among recruits, which he had written off as “natural” until learning about the power of good nutrition on both mental and physical abilities. Harry and I made a case for more investment in nutrition, and the general promised to deliver (which he did). We also opened the issue of addressing iodine deficiency with iodized salt and iron deficiency with supplements and fortified food. A strong ally for us was Marcos Candau, minister of social welfare in the state of Rio de Janeiro. He had been a programme officer for UNICEF and the World Food Programme and a good colleague. Marcos later became a national minister and was a constant support for good programming. He was invaluable in our discussions with senior government officials. Since my house was on the way to the airport, Marcos would often stop in for a drink when he was headed to Rio or Sao Paulo or the north. On one occasion, he divulged that he and the leadership were having some tussles and he might receive a telephone call telling him he had lost his post. That call did come. We had an extra drink and he left for Rio, where he remained active. The School, the City and Social Life We quickly got used to spending more time at home, more time with the family, and the need to entertain ourselves and expand our social contacts. We enrolled the children in school in Brasilia. Most of the school’s population was Brazilian, but the majority of the classes were taught in English, only a few in Portuguese. The children were all active in sports and the schedule was filled as well with school functions, teenage parties, sleepovers and weekend jaunts to various places. We had a swimming pool in the garden, which helped with the long weekends and limited theaters and civic activities. A wonderful Brazilian habit was to have family gatherings on Saturdays. We could see our neighbors as their extended families descended upon them for a long lunch, lots of conversation and garden games, and sometimes we were asked to join. It was always joyous, happy and relaxed. After introductions, you were immediately called by your first name. All ages were welcome. At any family gathering one was likely to see three or four generations intermingling and enjoying one another.
The school our children attended was a joint venture, but largely influenced by U.S. school systems and standards. Parental involvement was strongly encouraged and some of the evening meetings on budgets, schedules and planning were spirited and time-consuming, but good fun and educational. Compared to other schools we had known, and certainly for such a school in Brazil, ours was small. But then, the foreign community in industry, commerce, banking and foreign trade was mostly centered in Sao Paulo and Rio, and the schools in those cities reflected that. Lynn and I kept up a social calendar. It was a blend of entertainment at home, a luncheon and dinner at least once a month, occasional and casual teas or drinks more often, and bridge frequently. In addition, we had the usual cocktail party-reception circuit, which was used not only for friendship and to learn, but to press issues for children and give greater attention to them. We enjoyed the people and the good conversations. The underlying guide was to focus our advocacy with embassies that could be interested and that represented member states on the UNICEF board, and to keep the issues of children elevated on political and financial agendas. Undoubtedly a highlight of the time was meeting Britain’s Prince Charles on his official visit. He arrived at the Brasilia Yacht Club by launch across the manmade lake in Brasilia’s suburbs. Our children did not travel much but did go with us on driving trips from Brasilia and on school ventures, mostly sports-related. Lynn accompanied me on a trip to Manaus, Recife, Bahia and the Northeast. In addition to calling on authorities and looking at basic services, we saw the opera house13 in Manaus where Enrico Caruso sang. Bahia is the home of much that is truly Brazilian in nature and should be on the list of every visitor who is seriously interested in knowing what Brazil is and who Brazilians are. The workers who toil to improve basic services for inhabitants of the vast slums of Recife deserve medals for their work, and the people who live there deserve admiration for their ability to survive. Our visit to the interior saw applied nutrition at work. After some days in the poorest areas of Brazil, we felt guilty about enjoying fresh fish cooked over an outside fire on the beach in Recife. We took a boat into the wide place where rivers join, making the Amazon even bigger and more dynamic. At the joining of the waters, two colors of water flow side by side for some miles but do not mix as the river from Peru and the 13 built during the years of the rubber boom (1879-1912)
tributary blend. In earlier days, oceangoing vessels called at Manaus and, when loaded, sailed to Europe from the central part of the continent. It’s All about the Futebol Brasilia had no ballet, symphony or basic theater group, though the National Theater was inaugurated during our stay. There were visiting troupes from time to time, both Brazilian and foreign, and we took in as many of those as we could. Most entertainment was over dinner at the growing number of restaurants, over one’s own dinner table, or self-generated. Politics, social development and family issues were the main topics of discussion, but in almost all gatherings, something about f utebol arose. The game is played literally everywhere – the open countryside, beaches, school yards, factory sites, empty lots, streets, and, of course, in the hundreds of stadiums around the country. Nearly every city has a team, and there is a vast network of amateur as well as professional teams. Competition is fierce and loyalties taken with great seriousness. When the national team is playing, whether at home or abroad, nothing else matters. So a snag naturally developed when Liz’s high school graduation was scheduled for the same day and about the same time that Brazil would be playing Argentina. Liz brought home the news that her class had seriously discussed moving the date of graduation in order not to compete with the game! But the ceremony won out, and Jim Stone, Canada’s ambassador to Brazil and a good friend, was keynote speaker. The Brasilia Police Band provided music for the event, nearly all of them bearing earphones and pocket radios! The graduating class consisted of only 20 students and we invited them and their parents to a buffet at our house following the ceremony. Everybody came, but nearly all of them opted to hang out around the television set upstairs rather than the buffet on the porch! Lynn and I caught an enthusiasm for the game in Peru, but only a bit. In Indonesia, because the children were more involved and interested, we became regular patrons and followed at least the school team’s progress and the national team’s fortunes. But in Brazil, the enthusiasm and interest was almost contagious and we caught a fever for the game. After that, we set aside time every four years to follow the World Cup – and we still cheered for Brazil!
Help for the Favelas I was often back and forth to Rio and Sao Paulo. Our offices there were primarily concerned with managing and expanding the UNICEF greeting card operation in the country. When I arrived, it was well established and making a profit for UNICEF. There were occasional hiccups with the government on imports and such, but under the basic agreement we were able to negotiate and keep the operation growing and flourishing. We sold the cards in national currency at the same level as in hard currency, and annually profits increased by a good margin. We paid our operating costs in the country (including staff costs) in cruzeiros, thus saving transfers of hard currency to support the programme effort. We always had a surplus and often sold the currency through the Central Bank to other U.N. agencies, both to reduce our balances and save on foreign exchange rates and losses from inflation. We had no activities to speak of in the southern part of the country, which was the most prosperous and developed, but we were beginning to work with local citizens and the government in the favelas, the massive slum areas of Rio. The challenge of improving services for children in the favelas w as enormous and our effort was extremely modest. After a lot of reviews and a range of consultations, we worked on two major themes: one was to work on policy changes required in the structure to release both resources and energy; the other was to demonstrate how a combination of civil, professional, private and public sector efforts could make self-sustaining improvements. A priority request from the people in the f avelas was for electricity, but the electric company could not provide it without having names and addresses to bill for the service and most people did not own the land they lived on. Most of them, in fact, were squatters in makeshift huts and shelters. Municipal authorities and the state government agreed to look at possible ways to provide them with titles to the land or confiscate the land and sell it to them at low cost. The solution sounds simple but was enormously complex. It took time and persistence, but the authorities were able to move forward and the result was dramatic. UNICEF’s focus also included introducing safe drinking water systems, using the natural gravity of the hills on which the f avelas clung, and also sanitary facilities that were low cost and could become self-supporting. An attempt at early learning centers was begun, but I left before results could be seen.
To achieve the goals of our agreement with the government, we stressed the need and value of communications to sustain political commitment, apprise people of their rights to services, and mobilize resources to sustain them. We met with leaders of the major communications channels – Rede Globo (the largest TV network in Brazil), national magazines and journals, think tanks and research centers, governors’ offices, national foundations, non-governmental organizations; trade unions and professional bodies. We also worked with the planning department to publish a book on poverty, especially addressing the question of how people lived and survived with the limited resources available to them. We resisted the temptation to develop “projects,” but there was a need for some. We worked hard to limit them to ones that would either break new ground or attract a lot of attention to an issue at low cost and maximum coverage. In the latter group, we designed and launched a national effort on breastfeeding – aimed at protecting the practice from the negative pressures of the commercial market, from weak practices in the public health services, and from a lack of understanding of breast milk’s impact on an infant’s growth and survival. In this work, Gershon da Cunha helped us design ways to make maximum use of communications and public education. We were able to persuade Edson Arantes Do Nascimento, otherwise known as futebol icon Pele, to be an advocate for us and his messages reached a wider audience with more effect than virtually all other channels we used. We worked in close collaboration with the National Nutrition Institute on education, communications planning and advocacy through state governments. A major thrust was persuading private salt producers to produce iodized salt as a major way to deliver iodine daily into people’s diets. It was effective, efficient, economical and safe. The team developed two macro designs for programs for children. One was designed to show the governors of the states how to make best use of existing resources and any additional resources that might be available from the federal government. The other was designed to look at the special needs of children in the favelas. This got some traction in Recife, Brazilia and Bahia. But it was hard work. International Year of the Child The U.N. declared 1979 the International Year of the Child, and our team in Brazil spent the year prior to that working with the government to create a committee and action plan and reaching out to a range of organizations. It was about this time that I was asked to speak at the National War College in Rio, and
after making my remarks, an official from Rede Globo television network approached me. He wanted to know what his company might do to help with the Year of the Child, and we kicked around some ideas. He arranged a meeting with Globo’s owner, Don Roberto Marinho, and when he asked what might be done, I asked for a series of messages on children every half hour throughout 1979, plus periodic feature presentations on selected subjects. To my surprise, Don Roberto agreed on the spot and asked his manager to get things underway. He wanted advice and opinions on the major topics and asked for advice to assure that the substance was correct. It was a most exciting year! He kept his word to the letter. We had no contract and nothing else in writing except a few letters with commentary from time to time. Working with the company was a pleasure indeed. The topics covered responsible parenthood, child survival issues, nutrition and protection of breastfeeding, immunization needs, early childhood learning and primary education, preventive health needs, protection and law enforcement, and development issues. Each topic was the subject of a short piece aired on prime time, followed by a daily message that appeared every hour every day for a year. The stimulation this gave the national effort to protect breastfeeding was an enormous success. Almost equal to that was the pull these TV presentations had in persuading private industry to adopt some changes, including crèches at workplaces, paid advertising for nonpartisan issues regarding children, and investment in local basic services. Celebrity of a Kind I was invited to a national meeting of the wives of governors to suggest ways in which state non-governmental bodies (over which many of them presided) could be more effective in improving services for children. I accepted the invitation, and Lynn went with me to the gathering in Recife. Routine, I figured. It was hot, which was not unusual, and the air conditioning was not all that effective. To add to the challenge, I was wearing a neck brace because of a back strain. Still, I had practiced my statement in Portuguese and was ready. But just as I began to speak from my oversized text, a fly appeared in front of me at eye level. I did not want to be seen waving my hand and I could not blow it away, so I kept talking and puffing from time to time in the general direction of the hovering beast. At long last the ordeal was over, and after some pleasantries we left.
As we boarded our plane the next morning back to Brasilia, the hostess gave Lynn a morning paper, but she quickly folded it over. And when we took our seats, she stuffed it in the seat pocket. When I asked to see it, she hesitated, hinting I might not like it. On the front page was a picture of me with lips puckered and a caption suggesting that the UNICEF representative to Brazil spoke in “quasi-intendival Portuguese” (almost intelligible Portuguese). Oh, the glories of an unfettered press! Charles Egger became deputy executive director after his work as regional director in Europe and Africa and regional director in South Asia. Trained in law in Switzerland, he took over from Adelaide Sinclair. Since she had simultaneously been director of the Programme Division, Charles assumed those duties as well. He had visited me in Indonesia on official trips and I met him in New York as well and in regional meetings. He had a solid sense of national needs and how to work with difficult government officials. He was always supportive of field officers but not hesitant to demand high and continued performance. Invariably when a field officer was in New York, Charles and his wife were good hosts and eager listeners on how to improve or move things forward a bit faster. They were open to new ideas, and conversations with them were always free-ranging, stimulating and fun. Each had a refined and quick sense of humor, which I much appreciated. He worked under Maurice Pate in Europe and Asia and under Harry Labouisse in New York. Charles reached retirement age just at the beginning of the James Grant period and moved to his home overlooking Lake Geneva, a short trip from the city. He was a good friend and colleague and a good analyst. International Nutrition Congress This important gathering of nutritionists and organizations with a common interest in public nutrition held its meeting in Rio in 1978. We were involved with the Brazilian organizers and together we wanted to invite Gertrude Lutz to be decorated by the government for her many long years as a UNICEF representative in the country. A true pioneer, her career preceded mine by more than a decade but she was widely remembered and respected for her service on behalf of Brazilian children. In addition, we wanted to play a key role in the discussions taking place at the congress, not just in regard to actions in Brazil but to advance the agenda for children.
To that end, Harry Labouisse was invited to address the opening plenary and in a unique manner for the U.N. agencies, he was asked to speak for both UNICEF and WHO. At the time, I was attending a seminar at Harvard, as was Peter Greaves, UNICEF’s senior officer for nutrition in the Delhi office, and Dick Heyward called us aside to work on Labouisse’s statement to the congress. Each of us had specific ideas we thought should be stressed. Dick drafted the text, and a key piece of it was a rather strong statement on the need for expanded access to iodized salt to prevent the crippling effects of iodine deficiency disorder. What we wrote for him to say was: “It ought to be a crime that we allow one more child to be born mentally retarded when we know exactly how to prevent it.” Harry, a careful and considerate lawyer by training and inclination, said the words exactly as written, and the statement became one of the most remembered on the subject. It is quoted yet today in UNICEF and other literature. Many Directions Out and Back David had left home for university in Arizona, but before his final year took time off and went to Peru, a clue to ‘the pull’ it still had for him and perhaps his need to review the strong feelings of separation from long-lost friends. He then came to Brazil and became even more fascinated with the country. He studied Portuguese and stayed on to continue his studies at the National University. Anne also returned to us in Brazil and stayed for a period, learning Portuguese and helping out at the school. When the time came, she moved with us to India. Liz graduated from high school in Brasilia, and we were able to get her enrolled in the college of her choice after some strategic telephone negotiations. She enjoyed Brazil and spoke good Portuguese, but was eager to get on with life. Lynn and Anne accompanied her and me to Rio when she left the country, and we had a memorable evening at the famous Curacao to hear the music of Jobim and Moraes. We missed Liz dearly, but realized that life is made up of separations and reunions and each adds love and respect and understanding at each step. Tom went off to Rock Hill, South Carolina, to a college that offered a course he wanted to take and in addition a partial scholarship to play f utebol, his passion. He was ready for this major next step, but still he waited until the last moment to board the flight and we found things to say that we hope helped us all. Separation at college age is, of course, normal and usual, but that does not make it any easier.
Lynn and I thoroughly enjoyed Brazil and Brazilians. They are a gracious people, open, friendly, kind and enthusiastic about life. We spent many evenings at one home or another talking. We loved the music, truly original and deep. Relations with the government were open, friendly, frank and productive. It was 1959. Harry Labouisse was leaving for retirement and Jim Grant was next up as UNICEF executive director. While attending the Executive Board meeting in Mexico, I was queried about my future and the post of director of the Programme Division in New York was mentioned. But what I wanted most was to stay in the field and go to India. Long discussions were held with senior management and it was agreed. I would be presented to the government of India as the next regional director in South Asia and UNICEF’s representative to India. While it was possible that Lynn and I might serve in an additional post before our retirement, I was hoping that this move was “it” and that the challenge of serving in India would last longer than the usual term. References D“AocPulamnennintg78P3er,sMpeacyti1v9e7f8or. Children and Youth: Suggested Next Steps,” UNICEF Brazil The author’s diaries and journals for the period. “UNICEF Participation in Brazilian Development: A planning perspective for children and youth,” David P. Haxton, UNICEF Brazil document 771, November 10, 1977.
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