Rumble: An Old Friend

I met my Congolese friend Cyprien in 1996, on a corrugated rooftop in Kisangani (see picture: Cyp on the right, me on the left). He was working for Unicef, and together were installing an Email system working over HF radio, a revolution at that time (see this article).

I met Cyp several times in the months after, and in the end he joined FITTEST, our ICT emergency intervention team in Kosovo. He moved with us to our new base in Islamabad (Pakistan) in 2000 and we did the Afghanistan emergency together. Later on, he was reassigned to based in Mozambique, then Dakar, and since a few months works in Juba (South Sudan).

While I consider myself as a paper pusher at the moment, having only few occasions anymore to do real 'field work', he remained a true 'field person' all the time. I sometimes wished we could be working on a rooftop together again...

All this time, we kept in contact and he regularly sends me pictures, some of which I would like to share with you in the next postings.