VSO celebrates 55 years
on Phnom Penh Pal (Cambodia), 18/Nov/2013 10:44, 34 days ago
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I found this blog in the draft section - I wrote it in May, just before I was heading home for the summer for three months…This week,VSOcelebrates its 55th birthday. In that time 43,000 volunteers have gone to 90 countries to help fight poverty. My mum and I are two of those 43,000 volunteers.As part of my placement as a communications adviser, I'm a member of the internal communications network for VSO International. The network aims to improve two way communications and basically get people talking throughout the (VSO) world. A month or so ago, network members from the UK, Ireland, Uganda, India and Malawi had one of our regular online, multi-country phone calls (which I think are exciting just by the sheer fact I'm chit chatting with people in so many countries all at once). We were asked to think of ways to celebrate these 55 years for VSO's staff intranet. I suggested that there must be volunteer'families', like my mum and I, where someone volunteered 55 years ago and someone else is volunteering now. A few weeks later I had an email asking if mum and I would mind being that'family'. I guess 40 years apart is enough of a time difference!We had to answer some questions for an article and they also asked if we had photos of me in my placement and mum in hers. Queue my parents raking through old slide photographs and dad having to do some kind of jiggery-pokery to get those slide photos email-able to me (how fortuitous that a few years ago sis and I gave dad a slide converter thing for his computer!) They were so good though that I had to share them here. Plus some of the chat from mum of course...I love these two pics. They're basically the same motorbike, 40 years apart. Mum's is a Honda 90 which, I was told when doing the moto training, is the predecessor to the Honda Dream that I'm riding.Mum went to Papua New Guinea in September 1971 to be a teacher in Orokolo Primary School. That's Orokolo marked on the map in red. It's seven seaplane stops from Port Moresby, the capital. That is one of the things I remember most about mum's VSO experience. Seaplanes!Seaplane - mum on the rightOne of the obvious questions I was asked was what made me decide to volunteer. Mum's experience must have had something to do with it although she's never spoken about it a lot. But considering that I've wanted to do VSO as long as I can remember, it must be down to her. Here's what she answered in response to the VSO questions:After a long flight to Sydney there was a flight to Port Moresby. There were six volunteers at this point. Some flew north to New Guinea and a few of us boarded a small plane. There were, I think, four or five ups and downs with volunteers getting off. Eventually there was just me. My stop was Ihu airstrip. I was met by a tractor to take me the remaining miles along the coast to Orokolo.The school was in the bush with buildings made from local materials. The classrooms were on stilts to keep snakes, pigs and various other creatures out - also it kept the water out in the rainy season.Mum's class and classroomI took over from an Australian teacher. I taught standard 3 till the year end and then standard 6 for the next academic year. It was disconcerting since the pupils did not necessarily know their age and if you had not completed a year at school, or had moved, you had to start that year again. As a result I had pupils whose ages ranged from 10 to 14. I was given the pupils who would sit the High School exam at the end of the year. Only a third went on to High School and if you were a girl you were only allowed to go if your father agreed. In my spare time I helped the other teachers with their correspondence courses in English and Maths.Initially I lived with an English minister and his wife and children in a rambling huge house on stilts. Underneath the house was where I did my laundry, bedding included, in buckets.the big houseAfter they returned home I spent one year living at a leprosy/general clinic. There were two European nurses who dealt with anything from a machete wound to toothache to breach births. Their only backup was a doctor at the end of a radio and a float plane if they were lucky. We had no mains electricity using kerosene both for our fridge and for lamps. The shower was a pulley system with a bucket which had a watering can rose for the shower.United Church HospitalLiving at the hospital was never dull. I was always keen to go on patrol in the float plane with them to visit villages up river. It was fascinating to help weigh babies in bags hanging from a scale. Living there and going on patrol gave you a feeling of what it is like to be the only white face. I am sure volunteers now still have that feeling in many parts of the world.weighing a baby on patrolThat's my mum in the middleThe biggest difference today in a volunteer's life is in communications. I can speak to Claire by the magic of Skype. I was an only daughter and my only contact with home was snail mail. I did not speak to or see anyone from home for 15 months. Think; no internet, no phone, no iPod to listen to music. I think I had a tape player but that needed batteries which were expensive and rats liked to munch on the tape. I also remember having to keep my camera and film in a plastic box because of the humidity. One of the nurses had a record player and she introduced me to The Emperor Concerto and many other pieces of music.I think the fact that you were on your own made you very resilient. However my source of encouragement if I felt low or that I was not perhaps being as good a teacher as I might have been were the unlikely Swiss priest and the two Australian nuns who looked after the neighbouring station school. Many a Sunday afternoon they would feed me and lighten my spirits.When I left it was with a heavy heart. The nurses at the hospital and my pupils had become my'family'. Returning home was strange since in some ways I had lost over a years worth of events. It was difficult trying to explain to people how I had been living because in some ways it sounded awful. No electricity, no running water, rats eating soap, collecting food from the freezer boat as a treat. The list goes on.I would not have missed my time as a volunteer for anything. It shaped lots of my ideas and beliefs of how we can work alongside countries who request assistance.Visiting Claire in Cambodia reminded me of my time in Papua particularly when we went Kampot - the basic showers, the huge spiders and the rats in the roof. Happy days!!