It was good to see the familiar face of one of the members of the guest house, that Vickie had stayed at on her previous visit, who quickly saw us through immigration and customs to what we felt was a well earned sleep.

In the afternoon we visited the British Embassy and on the 17th we met with our UN translators and drivers and visited the National mapping Agency who will be our first training task.  Mirzo Saidou, its head, introduced us to his team and we began to prepare the training room for the first session on Friday 18th August.  We installed the Russian version of ArcExplorer and GPSU on the Agencies computers ready for the start of the course the next day and went through our training programme with Mirzo to finalise the course content.  

Friday the 18th was a full day of instruction to 18 of Mirzo’s team.  We started with an introduction to MapAction showing our procedures and methods. 

This was followed by GPS theory and practical training some outside in the 40 degree heat and their enthusiasm was only interrupted by an earthquake registering 4 to 5 on the Richter scale.  It is quite common in this area. Rapping up the course for the day Mirzo said how impressed he was with our apparent calm throughout the earthquake.  Clearly we are good actors.