T-15
I had a 10:00 am meeting with Laurie Pierce, CoP, USAID/OTI, in Colombo. Tod’s trishaw (Rickshaw/Three Wheeler) driver took me and dropped me off. The meeting was very positive: Laurie and I chatted for about ½ hour going over the expected OTI projects as well as discussing the ongoing ethno-political issues. There is particular concern that the Trincomalee area (the North Eastern region of Sri Lanka) is a hotspot of tension and could be the flashpoint for renewed conflict. Before the tsunami, several incidents had occurred in the area; OTI had been forced to temporarily close their Trinco office on several occasions. In fact, before the tsunami, the general consensus was that the country was sliding back towards civil conflict. Initially, right after the disaster, there were a few reported cases of good will and cooperation between the Sinhalese and Tamil communities in the south (or Government of Sri Lanka – GoSL – and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Elam – LTTE), but that quickly ended, or at least I have not heard anything since. There has been some surprise at how quickly the situation concerning the relationship between the different ethnic communities has returned to the status quo: in military jargon, SNAFU.
While Laurie and I were talking, she received a text message alerting her that a Cyclone was bearing down on the eastern coast within the next 24 hours – what a mess! Sri Lanka is really taking a pounding. (As an aside, text messaging is something I am going to have to get use to doing here – everyone uses it, even my trishaw driver!) To finish, Laurie cautioned me with good advice: be observant of the situation and be very sensitive, people are starting to get over the shock of what happened and are becoming increasingly on edge as they process the impacts on their lives and everything else.
Today was also the first day of the school year for most of Sri Lanka. This is important because schools are being used in areas affected by the tsunami as shelters for IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), and many of those killed were children (13,000 of the more than 30,000 estimated killed at this point). Because of the urgent need to start the school term on time and return as much of a normal routine as possible to the children’s’ lives, the government is attempting to relocate the IDPs in schools to either other camps or encouraging them to return to their place of origin if possible (some peoples’ houses were hit by the tsunami but did not suffer serious structural damage – rather the people have been reluctant to return for fear of another tsunami or are simply trying to overcome the trauma of the experience, etc). Schools in the East (the most affected area) have been delayed until at least the 20th of this month.
After my meeting with Laurie, I went outside to meet my new, fulltime personal trishaw driver. Since the tsunami hit and Tod has become involved in the response, he has hired basically fulltime a trishaw driver, who is on call most of the day. Because Tod has meetings to attend, etc., and cannot guarantee me a ride when I need one, and I will be fairly busy while in Colombo, shuttling from meeting to meeting, Tod has arranged for another trishaw driver to meet me and work for me. Tod met this guy at some point in the last several weeks and made the mistake of giving his card to him. Now, he will not stop calling Tod to see if he needs a trishaw driver, so Tod decided to foist him off on me!
Well, I had this guy’s phone number and told him where to meet me, and I kept talking to him over the phone, but in 1 and ½ hours he never managed to find where I was. So I headed back to Tod’s place in a random trishaw because I had to grab some stuff I left there, and had Seeman (my trishaw driver) just meet me there.
While I was waiting for Seeman to show up from wherever he had managed to get himself lost to, I found a little street stand where I bought some of the local baked goods and ate that for lunch. They are just as spicy as I remember them being. I also had “Elephant” brand Cream Soda, which is the local Sri Lankan producer of soft drinks, and the only major competitor to Coke and Pepsi in the island.
After I had lunch, I finally hooked up with Seeman, and I began a quest for a Cholera vaccination. I visited a couple of locations but it was pretty fruitless – I visited a nice private hospital and a public institution catering to public health and visiting foreigners needing vaccines. Apparently, the Cholera vaccine is no longer available in Sri Lanka as of two or three years ago.
In the afternoon (all the previous stuff had taken me well past noon), I headed over for a drop by meeting at EMSO, the local ESRI representative and distributor (ESRI produces the software I will be using – ArcView for GIS, and ESRI-US had told me to get in touch with these guys here). The EMSO guys were awesome – very friendly and very helpful. I met with Mr. Eddie Appathurai and Mr. Thillai Nadaragan. They spent time with me discussing with me ongoing GIS projects and Sri Lanka, and particularly in Trinco. Apparently GIS has been used in the past by a couple of organizations in the Trinco area, and several are still doing so.
With regards to GIS activity in response to the tsunami, MapAction, a British volunteer NGO, came in to respond to the disaster at the request of the Sri Lankan government, and they have been heavily involved in GIS projects responding to the tsunami. But most of them will be shipping out this week (since they are all volunteers and have jobs back where they came from) and will be turning over their effort to the Surveyor General’s office, where I have been invited to a coordination meeting tomorrow.
After the meeting at EMSO, I went to get a reimbursement from Gulf Air for my travel expenses to and from the airport to pick up my delayed baggage. They were very helpful.
Immediately from there I headed over to the World Trade Center (WTC) where Microsoft has its local office, and out of which VolunteerSriLanka.org is based (VSL).
At VSL, I finally met Mark Ratnavira, a British Sri Lankan who is managing the day to day operations of VSL. He was the one Tod turned to, to give me an idea of where I might get a Cholera vaccination. Mark was a very successful IT head hunter in England and now is volunteering his services to effectively match up the incoming volunteers and their respective skills with the local organizations that need the manpower.
An important step was taken this afternoon with regards to the long-term sustainability of VSL: Tod finally was able to sit down with the CHA (The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella organization that is supposed to coordinate the efforts of the supposed 13,000+ NGOs in Sri Lanka, and now with the tsunami really has its work cut out). He presented the idea of VSL and got them to come on board and support the idea.
While Laurie and I were talking, she received a text message alerting her that a Cyclone was bearing down on the eastern coast within the next 24 hours – what a mess! Sri Lanka is really taking a pounding. (As an aside, text messaging is something I am going to have to get use to doing here – everyone uses it, even my trishaw driver!) To finish, Laurie cautioned me with good advice: be observant of the situation and be very sensitive, people are starting to get over the shock of what happened and are becoming increasingly on edge as they process the impacts on their lives and everything else.
Today was also the first day of the school year for most of Sri Lanka. This is important because schools are being used in areas affected by the tsunami as shelters for IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons), and many of those killed were children (13,000 of the more than 30,000 estimated killed at this point). Because of the urgent need to start the school term on time and return as much of a normal routine as possible to the children’s’ lives, the government is attempting to relocate the IDPs in schools to either other camps or encouraging them to return to their place of origin if possible (some peoples’ houses were hit by the tsunami but did not suffer serious structural damage – rather the people have been reluctant to return for fear of another tsunami or are simply trying to overcome the trauma of the experience, etc). Schools in the East (the most affected area) have been delayed until at least the 20th of this month.
After my meeting with Laurie, I went outside to meet my new, fulltime personal trishaw driver. Since the tsunami hit and Tod has become involved in the response, he has hired basically fulltime a trishaw driver, who is on call most of the day. Because Tod has meetings to attend, etc., and cannot guarantee me a ride when I need one, and I will be fairly busy while in Colombo, shuttling from meeting to meeting, Tod has arranged for another trishaw driver to meet me and work for me. Tod met this guy at some point in the last several weeks and made the mistake of giving his card to him. Now, he will not stop calling Tod to see if he needs a trishaw driver, so Tod decided to foist him off on me!
Well, I had this guy’s phone number and told him where to meet me, and I kept talking to him over the phone, but in 1 and ½ hours he never managed to find where I was. So I headed back to Tod’s place in a random trishaw because I had to grab some stuff I left there, and had Seeman (my trishaw driver) just meet me there.
While I was waiting for Seeman to show up from wherever he had managed to get himself lost to, I found a little street stand where I bought some of the local baked goods and ate that for lunch. They are just as spicy as I remember them being. I also had “Elephant” brand Cream Soda, which is the local Sri Lankan producer of soft drinks, and the only major competitor to Coke and Pepsi in the island.
After I had lunch, I finally hooked up with Seeman, and I began a quest for a Cholera vaccination. I visited a couple of locations but it was pretty fruitless – I visited a nice private hospital and a public institution catering to public health and visiting foreigners needing vaccines. Apparently, the Cholera vaccine is no longer available in Sri Lanka as of two or three years ago.
In the afternoon (all the previous stuff had taken me well past noon), I headed over for a drop by meeting at EMSO, the local ESRI representative and distributor (ESRI produces the software I will be using – ArcView for GIS, and ESRI-US had told me to get in touch with these guys here). The EMSO guys were awesome – very friendly and very helpful. I met with Mr. Eddie Appathurai and Mr. Thillai Nadaragan. They spent time with me discussing with me ongoing GIS projects and Sri Lanka, and particularly in Trinco. Apparently GIS has been used in the past by a couple of organizations in the Trinco area, and several are still doing so.
With regards to GIS activity in response to the tsunami, MapAction, a British volunteer NGO, came in to respond to the disaster at the request of the Sri Lankan government, and they have been heavily involved in GIS projects responding to the tsunami. But most of them will be shipping out this week (since they are all volunteers and have jobs back where they came from) and will be turning over their effort to the Surveyor General’s office, where I have been invited to a coordination meeting tomorrow.
After the meeting at EMSO, I went to get a reimbursement from Gulf Air for my travel expenses to and from the airport to pick up my delayed baggage. They were very helpful.
Immediately from there I headed over to the World Trade Center (WTC) where Microsoft has its local office, and out of which VolunteerSriLanka.org is based (VSL).
At VSL, I finally met Mark Ratnavira, a British Sri Lankan who is managing the day to day operations of VSL. He was the one Tod turned to, to give me an idea of where I might get a Cholera vaccination. Mark was a very successful IT head hunter in England and now is volunteering his services to effectively match up the incoming volunteers and their respective skills with the local organizations that need the manpower.
An important step was taken this afternoon with regards to the long-term sustainability of VSL: Tod finally was able to sit down with the CHA (The Consortium of Humanitarian Agencies, an umbrella organization that is supposed to coordinate the efforts of the supposed 13,000+ NGOs in Sri Lanka, and now with the tsunami really has its work cut out). He presented the idea of VSL and got them to come on board and support the idea.
posted by Jason A. Smith at 11:48 PM
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