‘My passion is to help people in need’ – WFP’s Juliet Akandu

Local and foreign humanitarian workers offering services and eking a living in South Sudan have been living in fear after widespread attacks that have targeted them recently.

Juliet Akandu is a humanitarian worker under South Sudan’s Female Real Life Hero initiative who takes up challenges facing current aid workers in the country by horns.

On the eve of celebrating International Humanitarian Day or Aid workers’ Day, Ms. Akandu who works for the World Food Programme of the United Nations shared some of the challenges and mechanisms she employs to tackle them.

Below is the full interview excerpt.

Sheila Ponnie (SP): Ideally it is the international humanitarian workers who provide the first response after a disaster, but, what difference do local humanitarian workers make?

Juliet Akandu (JA): South Sudan is big and it has over 64 tribes and that gives you a picture of how diverse the cultures in this country are and given the fact that this is a war-torn country we have internal conflicts.

We have a lot of things happening here and in the bordering states. But that is where we come in as the local WFP employees.

It gives our people a sense of comfort to know that it is their own people coming to serve them [and] so it makes a huge difference. And, keep in mind that we keep strictly the policies in order to serve people the way it is expected.

SP: How do you ensure that you acquaint yourself with victims’ values and cultures?

JA: If you understand the culture and respect it then you are not going to need a translator to help you achieve your objective at the time.

We [have] to understand these communities before we get to them so as to save our purpose of being on the ground other than making them feel bad about their communities and their cultures and how they carry themselves.

SP: What does a typical day look like for you?

JA: I am based in Juba [and] my normal day entails reporting to work and looking for the next emergency. I am more like a frontline soldier and always ready and alert for a call.

I give you an instance where when I am sent out to a hard-to-reach area to serve a certain community, there has to be capacity on the ground, especially from the implementing partner. Then, my duty would be to ensure that the facilities and storage that are on the ground are up to the standards of the organization and to ensure that whatever is going to be given to the people that we serve are in good health standards.

Also, I will ensure any other required aid is provided.

The implementing partners come as a result of the fact that WFP under RRM does a number of activities like monitoring of humanitarian aid action. We also conduct multiple assessments and implement several emergency responses. In a nutshell, if I am monitoring distribution, we might need to do an assessment on health in that area.

SP: What are your thoughts about women as victims of humanitarian disasters, and as actors in humanitarian response?

JA: Women have been abused, belittled, killed, raped, fired; you can name it. And, that happens globally every single day in places [where] they work but because women have the hearts of mothers they have hearts of bettering every little thing that gets in their way but they still hinge in there to give up everything to their families and meet the expectation of their families; the expectation of their societies and the religious values.

SP: What are some of the challenges you have faced as a local humanitarian aid worker serving in South Sudan?

JA: The list of challenges is endless. But I can say that is why they are called challenges, and we are supposed to learn how to deal with them because they are only happening in our work environments. Fortunately, WFP women are given training that prepares [them] mentally and physically for a number of challenges and that is how we are able to overcome one challenge to the other, especially where the situations are extreme.

SP: Can you share with us a good story about your work?

JA: I have been to a number of places, and one time when I went to a place called Pathi, I consistently ran into this little girl who always said something to me in another town.

She kept meeting me, greeting me, and I said hello back because I did not understand the language. And she kept saying the same thing. The more she said it, the more I realized it sounded the same as what she’d said the previous day.

This always happened in the morning when I’m heading out to work until the last day of our 15 days in the field when the helicopter came to pick us up.

I was there with her holding her hand, and she kept telling me things I did not understand until one of my colleagues came and told me she had been requesting to go with me to Japan so that she can go to school and be like me.

SP: What is it that people do not know about humanitarian work that you would like them to know?

JA: People need to understand that humanitarian aid is there at that particular place and time to bridge that gap by providing aid to solve the disaster until the country is able to sustain itself or be self-reliant.

Therefore, we should start looking at ways of being independent. This will involve dealing with our problems as a nation.

Sheila: What is your parting shot?

JA: People need to understand that we are humans that have feelings and go through a lot.