Page updated:
Friday, 7 September 2007

PEOPLE making a difference...

June Norman - teacher, aid worker, exemplar

Humanitarian volunteer, June Norman

“My biggest challenge in Timor was not with the Timorese people. It was other foreigners working there. Most people who go over there find that is where their difficulties are,” says June Norman, recently returned from East Timor.

“I felt I as though I was prepared to put up with any shit at all from the Timorese people… because this is their country and they had a right to act, to be how they are… but I wasn’t prepared to go over there and put up with that from others.

“There was only a couple times that it really affected me. One of those times I just extracted myself from the situation. The other one it wasn’t so easy to extract myself from but Palms (the Catholic volunteer agency which supported June) was fantastic in their support and I had a really good group of peers… fellow Australian volunteers over there who I was able to offload on.”

Motivation

“Very challenging. Very humbling” is how June describes working in a country so recently emerged from armed conflict. “People are so generous with their affection and their time and the few material things they have and want to share with you”.

To work in such a society, to subject yourself to adapting to a new climate, language and food, requires extraordinary motivation.

“I suppose it’s just a need in me to share my knowledge, to pass my knowledge and skills to people who have had a pretty rough time. I have had to lower my expectations of myself when I go into these places. I want to make everything right really quickly”.

Drafted into teaching

June might have retired from her job but she has not retired from work or life. Her work is her life. The difference is that, now, she devotes her energy to helping people in the world’s newest nation.

A quietly spoken, retired community worker in late-middle age, June exemplifies the qualities required of people who choose a life in development assistance – patience, insight, resolve,  understanding - and a genuine interest in and concern for others. She is mentally sharp, a practical kind of person with plenty of street savvy whose grey hair sets off her tanned appearance and suggests that here is a woman with plenty of experience in the world.

June has added to that experience through her work in East Timor.

“I went to East Timor in 2002 as a self-funded volunteer to stay for six months. I taught English in a prison. After five and a half months I decided that I really hadn’t done very much except start to fit into the culture.

June later moved to the hill town of Ballibo.

“I finished working at the prison and went to Balibo because I had spent time there and seen a great need. My work in the prison was being hampered. Palms is flexible if things aren’t working right so I could change half way through my two year commitment to them.

This allowed me to more or less create my own position up there, to help in the local parish and things like that, so they were very flexible in that way.

Up to Balibo

“In Balibo I was helping an Australian nun in rehabilitation work. She had applied to Palms in Australian to have a volunteer come over to help her and I had come back to Australia and applied to Palms to become one of their volunteers.

“I went to Balibo to run the boy’s boarding house but when I got there the priest decided that he didn’t want me to do that, so the nun - she was a teacher there - said ‘Good, she can come to the high school and teach year seven high school students English.’

“So I ended up teaching 44 in one class and 48 in another. Their ages ranged from 14 to 21 because many of them had missed out on education because of the war.

“The classrooms were very barren… no partitions between them and classes backing on to each other. Absolutely no… um… accessories for teaching. The children had a book and pencil and I had a blackboard and chalk… no facilities for photocopying or anything like that were left in Balibo, so it was a real challenge but it was one of my most enjoyable times there.

“A lot of people at that time would not go to Balibo because of the perception of threat, but I didn’t see it there. I wasn’t threatened at all… not even when working in the prison. I felt very, very safe. I felt that if there happened to be a riot or something I would have been so protected by the men it wouldn’t have been an issue.

Cultural confusion

Cultural confusion is inevitable when foreigners enter a different culture. It was no  different for June.

“I was invited to go to this quite a big Timorese wedding and I was asked to do the makeup and hair of the bride. It was a great honour for them to have a foreigner come and do this. I don’t wear makeup myself, I do very little with my hair and I kept trying to tell them these things. I didn’t have any, but they had bought new makeup.

“I did the girl’s hair and face although I had hardly any shared language with her. When I put the makeup on her skin it made her look white and I thought… oh! The only makeup I took with me was a kind of powder pack and lipstick that I sometimes use. So, I used my tannish makeup on her.

“The wedding went well and it was really lovely. Then there was a two hour wait before she got changed. She came out and she had white makeup on. All of a sudden I realised that I was supposed to make her look white. I had sent her off to get married not looking how she wanted to look.”

Despite cultural misunderstandings, for June the experience of aid work was positive.

“Um…,” she says, thinking. “… it was the acceptance of the Timorese people, accepting me as a person… their generosity. It was… learning the different cultural things, their spirituality, their family life… I could go on forever.

“Their food is a challenge… I wouldn’t say it is interesting food. The first time, I was in Ocoussi, isolated up in the mountains. We had cassava for breakfast and I found it very hard to digest, it was so dry… you had water with cassava. By the time I left there after six days, having that every morning and every lunchtime, I was really enjoying it. I really love my cassava and my sweet potato.”

Preparing for work in a new culture

Self-knowledge, says June, is a pre-requisite for aspiring aid workers. Gaining a good understanding of yourself and your sense of values is very important.

“I didn’t know it at the time, but I was running away. I applied to go and work overseas about 15 years ago at the very traumatic ending of a marriage. For a number of reasons it never eventuated.

“I just believe that these things happen for a reason or purpose. Of course, later on, I was able to realise that I was in no way ready to go overseas… I had too much baggage of my own.

“I have seen it with other volunteers over there where they can’t deal with the stress and the problems that happen because… there’s too much that they are trying to run away from.

“We’ve all got a little bit of baggage but I think you’ve got to be realistic about where you are in your life’s journey to be able to go over there and be even of a tiny little bit of assistance to people.”

As well as dealing with personal issues, there’s an attitudinal alteration required of potential aid workers.

“We have a different way of living in Australia and a different standard of rules. You go into these countries and need to push that as far away as possible”, June explains.

As aid work is about people. Gaining the interpersonal skills that help you communicate, understand and solve problems before you go is more than advantageous.

“Definitlely,” June responds. “Some organizations that you go over with as a volunteer put a lot of effort into trying to help you do these things. Palms is one of them. They have a ten-day live-in… and compulsory… preparation.

“I found that very, very helpful although I had already lived in the country for six months and it was frustrating for me to hang around here and wait to do it. But I did it and it was certainly well worth it. I got to know the Palms people, too, and when I did have problems I felt comfortable talking to them”.

“Those thinking about overseas aid work should get as much information - from books or the Internet - and read as much as they can about that country. If they have no country in mind, then read about a variety of countries. Try to know as much as possible about their backgrounds and what has happened there in the last twenty or thirty years or so.

“Then talk to people, a variety or people who have been working in those countries.”