The flight to Colombo was in two legs: the first one from Gatwick to Dubai was luxurious as the flight was almost empty. The food and service was excellent. Dubai airport was a shopping Mecca but we did have fun trying to change our UK pounds to Sri Lankan Rupees. In the end we couldn’t but managed to waste a fair bit of money by using the local ATMs to get Dirhams to change into US Dollars. All quite confusing to be honest but we spent the remainder of the time at a branch of Costa’s reviewing our Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

The second leg was on an Air Lanka flight and this was packed – all the Colombo bound travellers were loaded down with duty frees and they also managed to drain the entire plane of beer within 20 minutes. It was noisy and boisterous and we could not get any rest whatsoever. As we flew we had to change our watches and put it forward – a second time change in only a few hours. We were on schedule to arrive in Colombo international airport at five in the morning. On touch down – we all piled out of the plane and followed the signs for UN and volunteers. Since we were there so early, that queue was not available and we joined the tourist queue. I jammed the (in my view, useless fax) into the passport so that the immigration office could see the official looking paper and act accordingly.
We all got into the country on the standard 30 day tourist visa and collected our bags. All within ten minutes of touching down – fastest I have ever been through immigration. Feeling lucky, we headed out and hoped to see someone with a MapAction sign or something similar. The airport was already crowded and there were many aid workers milling around, a van with the Red Cross emblazoned on the side came along and picked up a handful of Red Cross volunteers while we waited. The temperature was around 20oC and rising. We are all tired, sweaty and getting thirsty. Then the mosquitoes, who were lying low until now, came out and made their way to us.

We were assaulted by a wall of sound as we entered into the Old Parliament building; the place was a mess of desks, papers, maps (with MapAction logos on them) and shouting people. It was bedlam and I thought to myself: ‘well Ming, you’re in it now’. David took us three to the back of the room, past the desk for social welfare and infrastructure and around the NGO liaison desk. My fellow volunteers were busy with the day’s task – some were on the telephones trying to make themselves heard, others were in front of some laptops wrestling with ArcMap as they tried to coax some more maps out. No-one appeared to be taking a break and some looked as if they had been working for the last day – I later found out that for many, that this was the case.

MapAction being an independent, self-contained unit with the equipment and skills to conduct their own work had brought into Sri Lanka all the necessary equipment. This included:

1. Two laptops with ArcMap installed.
2. Three printers (2x A4 and 1x A3) with consumables.
3. 6x GPS units.
4. iPacs with ArcPAd installed.
5. Satellite telephones and other communication equipment as required.

This equipment was obviously not enough so GIS staff from the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) were drafted in to help along with some of their own workstations and printers. These guys were brilliant and were made honorary members of MapAction. They worked long and hard alongside us and really helped to ease the almost unbearable load. MapAction and IWMI became the mapping section for the CNO throughout the initial phase of the relief effort.
After quickly establishing the current working procedures (there were none) – Crispin, Nicky and I pitched in. I quickly got up to speed with the task list used to track incoming requests for maps and data as well as managing the entire data processing and map production process. There were a number of ArcMap issues as well and we all got stuck in to help. This was also the first time I met up with Vicky and Mark – two MapAction volunteers who had been travelling the world the last couple of years.

Andy completed his early morning task, looking tired and worn and announced he was going back to sleep. He handed over some work to us and disappeared – looking shattered and like a man who had been working himself to the bone.

My first task was to help process the incoming data for day’s map output. For the last few days, there was a standing requirement for MapAction to produce a series of six maps that contained information on the number of dead, missing and displaced persons in each of the affected districts. This was to be produced in hardcopy and distributed to all the parties involved in the relief operation. Softcopy format was in JPG and PDF formats and these were either emailed or FTPed to anyone who required the maps for legitimate reasons. These six maps were in addition to all other requests so the work load could build up quickly.

Now I was impressed with the maps already produced and the consistency of quality and accuracy of them. Information in a spreadsheet looking dry and boring, certainly communicated the information better as a colour map.

The rest of the volunteers, when they had time all filled the newly arrived members (i.e. us) in the various roles required to allow the MapAction unit to function optimally. Many of the volunteers who had been here since 29th December needed a break. Two volunteers were out in the field collecting data and observing the relief effort.

The rest of the day was a blur as I sat in front of a PC and map requests came in thick and fast. Some were easy tasks such as reprints of existing maps while others included new maps with limited time. I quickly grasped that in the emergency situation, one had to handle the ‘clients’ sensibly but firmly.

The workload peaked around 6pm as this was a cut-off point for an important map update on the situation of dead, missing and injured for each of the affected districts. We gathered up the new data from the various desks and processed it as quickly as possible. Nearly every update had something different from the previous update: new fields, different field names and no-values. Sometimes the desk officers wanted to do last minute tweaks just as the final maps were being printed while other times, the figures supplied to us appeared to be very different from the last update – so different that we sometimes wondered where the figures were coming from.

MapAction finally called it a day around sometime the early morning and the first time in seven days no-one was tasked to stay for the night shift. I didn’t actually feel tired but exhilarated with the work we did and it was only the first day! Flagging down a ‘tuk-tuk’ (a motorised rickshaw) – we puttered back to the hotel. I think the tuk-tuk is worth a mention here before I continue.

The tuk-tuk.

For those who haven’t been to South and South-East Asia, a tuk-tuk is essentially a motorised rickshaw powered by what appears to be a lawn mower engine. They are fun to look at and the 15 minute ride into work one can say is ‘thrilling’. Other descriptions were also considered including, death-defying, life-threatening and downright dangerous. The tuk-tuks are the fastest mode of travel if traffic conditions are jammed, these things can go through gaps so narrow that a single person on foot would have problems; not these drivers –they are fearless ….tuk-tuk drivers can squeeze their rides into alarmingly narrow gaps. Also, for a bargain price of 15p per ride one can’t complain. The ride back to the hotel took around 10-15 minutes with the last kilometre usually an exercise in gesticulation and shouting as invariably the drivers would miss the turn off to the hotel