After 12 months of boot camp in a GeoScience lab, it’s time to get on with the mission: applying GIS with International Development. After a decade of academia and a hat-trick of degrees, my first contract as a professional is long overdue… but I sure can pick ‘em. South Sudan is undergoing a vital stage in its life. Just 4 months away from inevitable independence, the country stands with a near invisible infrastructure.
I’m barely off the plane landing in Juba when this fact has already been relayed to me. One quick tour round the Danish De-Mining Group’s compound and I’m already off to meet and greet Christian Relief Services and the Ministry of Peace who will spend the next few hours inundating my head with ‘development set’ jargon without actually mentioning the words ‘conflict’ or ‘landmines’. Considering my role for the next 3 months is to provide information for de-mining and to develop an early warning system to help respond to further conflict, I thought we should have talked a little more on the subject.
With limited staff the country here is really stretched, even at its new-to-be Capital. I can already tell that nobody has just one job for one organisation here…it’s more like three for three. Yet instead of woes, I am greeted with smiles and laughter. My hope is just not to disappoint an already demanding expectation of what GIS can bring in communicating what’s going on within communities with potential conflict. Even if computers and information systems could help, most of the laptops are in the arms of NGOs… and I have two now!
After only a few hours in the country my spoken words have been only questions. The only assurance I can make is that ‘de-miners’ are rewarding themselves handsomely with a cook, a cleaner, satellite flat-screen TVs and of course, a Christmas stocking filled with accessories…
p.s. thank you for my awesome new rucksack, satellite phone, fleece and victorinox!
Whats a victorinox?
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