Waking up after only a few hours sleep I bolted down my breakfast and grabbed a tuk-tuk with N and C. We were told it was essential to bargain the price with tuk-tuks before getting in. If you only ask after the ride, it's likely to end in a request for a ridiculous fare which can obviously lead to an unpleasant situation. I bargained the driver down to 15p and was off. I decided I was a cheap bastard.

As tuk-tuks are open-ended, they expose passengers to the high pollution levels in the middle of Colombo’s roads and offer almost no protection in case of an accident. Oh well, God willing.

Arriving at the checkpoint I encountered my first problem: entry into the CNO. It appeared that I was not on the list…..therefore I couldn’t get in. Nor could N but confusingly, C was on the list and was allowed through. I couldn’t quite remember how I managed to get in last night but this time, I was stuck. N and I weren’t the only ones, there was a couple of UN guys loudly complaining that they actually ran the UN desk and knew the President – but this was met with blank stares, a quick scan on the entry list and the refusal of entry.

The heightened security was in place because Colin Powell was paying the CNO a visit. After about an hour of waiting, we finally had authorisation: C appeared with a piece of paper allowing us entry and we finally got through the checkpoint.

The CNO was busy already and for this day I was the watchkeeper – in MapAction the watchkeeper had a number of tasks that included:

1. Organise the information / mapping centre.
2. Maintaining contact with volunteers out in the field.
3. Maintaining the task table and ensuring that they are completed in a timely fashion.
4. Anything else that is required but in this case, to make sure that the GIS section was not disturbed by people continually coming over and peering over their shoulders as they worked. Also any contact with MapAction was to be through the watchkeeper initially who could field calls and filter out a lot of time wasting.

It was absolutely manic: due to the visit of Colin Powell people were more frantic than usual. MapAction had prepared a dossier for Colin Powell but we discovered that they were missing – it went ‘walkies’ sometime last night before the morning shift came in. Mark was quickly and efficiently reproducing all the missing maps but the pressure was on. We had two volunteers out in the field and I had to keep track of them. In addition, I was fielding telephone calls, emails and visits from everyone who wanted maps. Nothing too specific, just ‘maps’ – even my attempts at trying to get a more specific request usually ended up with the client scurrying off to get clarification. Typical of that day I had one client (who shall remain nameless) come up to me:

Me: How can I help? (Task list in hand and ready to write down a new task.)
Client: I want maps.
Me: Maps of what?
Client: Anything.
Me: (Inwardly sighs as this was the tenth request that was like this). You need to be a bit more specific than that – we have maps for the number of displaced, injured, dead, number of camps and others.
Client: That will do.
Me: Pardon? You mean all of them?
Client: Yes and as quickly as possible as my (insert name / position of high ranking minister or secretary or whoever) will be in a meeting in one hour and this will be used to brief them.
Me: (shaking his head) Sorry, we can’t do that. We are very, very busy and we have a backlog of at least two hours worth of work.
Client: My (insert name / position of high ranking minister or secretary or whoever) needs this information. It is very important.
Me: (Now feeling the pressure as the landline AND mobile starts to ring) I can only say that we can give you the six IDP updates in one hour in A3. Best we can do. Can you come back in one hour?
Client: (Not exactly happy – agrees).

CLIENT DID NOT COME BACK AT ALL TO COLLECT THE MAPS.

In any event, Colin Powell did not visit the CNO or if he did, he certainly didn’t get as far as the mapping department but funny thing was Mr. Powell text us at MapAction and thanked us all for the best dossier. I doubt very much whether Colin Powell actually put thumb to cell phone but there you go!

The director also tasked me with a number of jobs and one was how to get the softcopy maps we were producing to the CNO website. The current method of us FTP (via a satellite modem) to our FTP server in the UK and for CNO to FTP the stuff back down was solved by my simply walking over the web guys (all of ten metres away from me) and handing them a USB key with the day’s maps. One major problem solved and ten more to go!

The two new high-power PCs purchased to replace the Map Action’s over-used laptops significantly helped increase the speed of map processing as well uploading maps to the ftp site.

D flew by Air Force light aircraft to Trincomalee, in the north east. This trip required the authorization of the Defence Minister owing to the civil strife in that region. I visited the co-coordinator of the US government investment aid programme in the region and also had an interview with a most impressive Sri Lankan chief information officer for the region. She took me through how statistics are collected at local level as I was keen to gain an insight into this process because we map the final, nation-wide collation of all such results. She had initiated a sophisticated system and I was impressed by her grasp of issues both local and national. The US aid official had spent 3 years in the area and she gave me a master class in the complicated political, social and economic problems of the current situation. Another impressive and dedicated individual - there are plenty of good people out there striving to improve the lot of the people.

Early evening had a surprise call from a PR company in the UK. It appeared that BBC World News was interested in interviewing MapAction as we had already generated substantial interest in the UK and elsewhere on our work.

Two of the MapAction team visited several camp settlements and spoke to many survivors and heard many a sad and harrowing tale. They noticed that few children had toys and the camps in general were desperately short of pencils and notebooks for the children. D hoped that me and N would try mentioning this fact when we were tp be interviewed on BBC Breakfast TV in the Galle region tomorrow in the hope that viewers will respond to the need.

MapAction delivered the office tent to the intermediary, our helpful friend Channa, a local businessman who was so helpful to MapAction in the first two days. He will be giving the tent to the poor fisherman who has lost everything. To say thank you to the local charity which has been so generous, we sent Vickie White down to their executive meeting tomorrow to give a short presentation on our mapping using a computer projector. She will also offer to produce one map for the use of the charity that meets a particular need using ArcMap.

D had tomorrow’s task list up, N and I were due to travel down to Galle in the south to do some field work as well as observe some of the relief work down there. It would be advantageous for us to meet up with the BBC team down there. I was interested in the media, who wouldn’t be? After the Sky News interview it would be quite a hoot to get interviewed by the BBC. Phone calls were made and the interview was set – sounded quite exciting.

However, I had looked at the casualty lists for the Galle area that evening and it made grim reading: Over 4000 deaths, 28,000 displaced, 300 injured and 600 missing. Most of the coastal settlements destroyed and the situation got steadily worse as one worked their way eastward along the coast: Mtara: 2000 deaths, Hambanthota: 4500 deaths, Ampara: 10,000 deaths. Our director briefed me and Nicky (who was also going) on the area and cautioned us that it would be difficult though the majority of the bodies were not long since removed and that relief work was well underway.

The last two days had me and N processing data: number of dead, number of injured, percentage of hospitals destroyed, roads passable and bridges down. Tomorrow we would draw our equipment and see the area with our own eyes.