day sixteen: not much of an early warning system for me

You have to be good at jigsaws if you want to have any kind of clarity it seems.  Little snippets of information get thrown at you from all directions and eventually you start to have a clue.  In fact, I find myself instructing others based on these small snippets in the hope that they have some idea what it is I’m going on about.

That was the second jigsaw today; involving myself trying to convince one Ministry to find two telecommunication engineers to be given to an organisation that I’ve never met before, to go to places I’ve never heard of before, and to do things I don’t understand at all – I don't play with RF radios... 

The second was about me and my travels to Khartoum.  By the time I’d pieced together a Friday night dinner invite in Juba, I knew it was going to be sooner rather than later.  So it seems I’m packing up again and taking the fun road to Juba tomorrow.  Whether or not I fly on the Sunday to the North is still up for debate.  Especially since my job up there was to accompany a database manager who is yet to be hired…

Either way it seems I’ll be missing out on my first chance to do some field work actually ‘in the field’.  I’ve mixed feelings over that.  On one hand I’m happy that I will continue to live somewhere that can afford electricity for my fan.  But on the flip side, it’s all a bit backwards; too often has information systems been developed without first tailoring itself or connecting with the happenings on the ground.  Maps seem to convince others of their ‘expert’ knowledge regardless; I was just hoping to experience some ground truthing before I started mapping my version of the truth on the ground…or before it gets hotter!