the contacts challenge

so yesterday i eagerly went to meet a US army major who was supposed to be in charge of civil affairs. but when i finally caught up with him, i also ran into my first fieldwork snag (which i could envision recounting to a seminar of grad students one day...). turns out that the colonel who put me in touch with him mistook "dissertation" for "demobilization." (honestly.) and so i met with this recently-retired army dude who's a consultant to the Colombian gov't on their individual demobilization program -- paid for by the US embassy here. basically, he was in "psy-ops" (which sounds menacing but he told me basically means "marketing" -- no joke), and now he crafts campaigns to entice FARC and ELN members to desert (now that the paramilitaries have been collectively demobilized -- more or less -- they don't deal with them). the effort starts with focus groups (for which there is no term yet in spanish, so it sounds pretty funny) among current ex-FARC and ex-ELN, so they can more effectively target their "communication campaigns." this is all well and interesting, obviously, but he was under the impression that i study the DDR programs here, and introduced me as such to the lawyer and communications director in their little office before i realized what was happening. oops! i tried to roll with it, without misleading them or faking a dissertation on DDR. this involved some awkward moments in which these two women explained to me the differences between the paras and guerrillas and the history of the conflict. ouch. then they took me to lunch, and that was about it. since then i've written back to the actual civil affairs colonel, and now he says he'll be in touch. hmm. in any case, maybe the major can let me interview some ex-combatants someday.

colonel barry, though, is keeping up his support services -- he's already called me and put a care package in the mail with the atlantic and harper's, and bagels (!).

in stark contrast to the army contacts, the UN friends insist on only meeting at a bar called "bogota beer company" (seriously) and filling me with admittedly decent microbrews until wee hours of the morning. i get maybe one or two helpful tidbits in exchange for approx 5 hours of socializing. OCHA is the UN agency for coordinating humanitarian relief, and they're way into GIS, so it's worth increasing the tolerance level i guess. fieldwork can be rough. ;)