Witching Event: 

    Function: public void witchingEvent(TBCoordinates mc)

Defines the witchingEvent method. [defined here: TBMIDlet 325]

Jason Najarro, an undergraduate researcher working on the project, introduced this central metaphor into the Transborder Immigrant Tool. The term refers to the folk practice of water witching, introducing a concept more tied to branch and earth than mobile phone and satellite. On a project poster he made, under "Design Inspiration," he quotes Wikipedia:

Dowsing, or water witching refers to practices which some people claim enables them to detect hidden water, metals, or other objects, usually obstructed by land.  The movement or vibrations of the apparatus, such as a y-shaped twig, are used in the practice.

Bringing in this term, Najarro frames the project not in the realm of high technology and geo-coordinates but instead of a belief in the super-natural -- that nature knows itself, that the dead branch knows where its plant could have found sustenance.  It is a metaphor of the knowledge of the what has been pruned even as it is also a metaphor that evokes deception and hucksterism -- and in the Transborder Immigrant Tool, what you see is not what you get. 

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