A ‘sparky’ in the action
By: Suzanne Fenton
Tags: Mozambique, Cyclone Idai, Technology, Telecommunication, Humanitarian

“You northern hemisphere guys get so excited about stars. At home we get this every night,” says Ryan Twittey, Emergency Telecommunications Cluster (ETC) Coordinator for the Cyclone Idai response in Mozambique in his usual say-it-like-it-is way. For him, home is Australia, land of the outback and big blue skies.

Although he is distinctly unimpressed by the luminous constellations above him, the rest of the ETC team have their necks snapped back, looking up and rhapsodizing about the undeniably spectacular Southern African sky. After another 14-hour working day, this is the entertainment in Beira.

It’s Ryan’s last day as ETC Coordinator for the response and he’s half-jokingly counting down the minutes until his replacement has his boots on the ground. “Yeah, I was nervous at the start, I didn’t know what to expect. I’d have preferred to have the IT knowledge behind me because at the end of the day if someone comes to you and says ‘Fix it’, it doesn’t feel good if you can’t. But we’ve got a pretty good toolbox here, so that was good. The team is great.”

That’s certainly true: his team, informally known as the dream team, has the most experienced — and most fun — partners from Ericsson Response, the Government of Luxembourg and NetHope.

Locals help Ryan get the vehicle out of the mud on the way back from Grudja. Photo: WFP Photolibrary

“I don’t mind the first three, four weeks [of an emergency] when it’s go-go-go and you’re getting stuff done. When it starts to slow down, and it’s all about reports and people wanting other stuff, yeah, it’s a good time to hand over.” He grins broadly. “I’m more operational than political. I’d certainly do this again, but I’d rather be in the first wave and be in the action.”

His preference to be in the action is unsurprising — if you met him you’d understand. Ryan is a proper Aussie — down to earth, direct and self-deprecating, with a dry sense of humour and a Crocodile Dundee hat. Even his dog is called Dingo. It’s taken about three weeks to pin him down to do this interview — he dislikes being in the spotlight and is happy with his day job as a ‘sparky’ as he refers to himself. It’s not entirely accurate, he’s actually a senior energy specialist with WFP’s Fast IT and Telecommunications Emergency and Support Team (FITTEST), but it’s testament to his nature that he describes himself that way.

Ryan was certainly in the action in Mozambique. Arriving in Maputo just one day after Cyclone Idai hit, he spent two hours in WFP’s country office in the capital before jumping in a car headed to Beira as the airport was closed. “There was equipment and luggage everywhere. We started a two-day drive to Beira and got three-quarters of the way before the road washed out so we went to Chimoio [further west] and flew back to Maputo and then flew on to Beira. It was a bit frustrating, to be honest. We were trying to go the quickest route and ended up taking the longest,” he shrugs.

He found places to sleep along the way and once he got to Beira, got a room in a hotel in town. “Well, yeah but my room had no roof so it was a bit open air and there was about four inches of water on the floor — but the bed was made and half dry.”