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Sunday 9 January 2011

Welcome to the UN - nothing works!

Today is the kick off of the actual referendum in South Sudan... and today was a morning of utter chaos on the Team Site, on a semi related issue.

Unsurprisingly, sector have told us to step up the patrols. Sundays are not slow days anymore... Today we had scheduled a Short Duration Patrol and an Air Patrol. Three days ago we got word that the later was canceled, and after getting confirmation from Sector, we went ahead and told everyone involved (Language Assistant, National Monitors, BanBat Force Protection, the people we were going to meet out in the field... the works) to forget about the whole thing.

This morning, guess what? Oh, the helicopter is on it's way - they called en route to get the latest update on the weather. Arms and legs and utter chaos ensues as we toss the patrol back together. Thankfully everyone did their best - the hastily assembled Force Protection team was lead by the local BanBat commander, the SLPA National Monitor left church in the middle of the mass and one of the UNMOs went straight from being Duy Officer to the helipad.

And we still had to get the SDP on the road as well - an hour late, and one National Monitor short.




 Helipad in utter chaos - but that's the way it is every time a helicopter comes.

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