The next few days..

... will involve a near-24 hour flight by civilian and possibly UN military into the southern Phillipines, which suffers from a decades old armed conflict, for my job. Regular readers will be used to my blogging about all things locally Bush from what are, every now and again, far off areas affected by armed conflict.

I do this blog voluntarily, it started out after an incident when I called an ambulance for a homeless guy one cold November morning in 2008, and is now a really nice distraction away from the day job which can get quite heavy. I work for an NGO (non governmental organisation) called International Alert. We're not like the traditional aid agency that builds wells and schools - we're a peacebuilding organisation that works in some of the most intractable conflicts in the world. So my posts on this ere blog have come from places as varied as Liberia, eastern Congo and Rwanda.

And before you think this is all irrelevant - consider how many refugee communities there are in this city and in our neighbourhood from those places alone.

So this is a plea for two things, dear readers. One - to keep the stories coming, they'll still get covered here daily. But secondly, the Philipinnes is 7 hours ahead so bear that in mind if I dont reply straight away! Send them to shepherdsbushblog@yahoo.co.uk

And here's a short film about where I'm going to: