I bought this book at the Book Fair Australia last year. This is an anthology of stories written by members of The Fellowship of Australian Writers NSW Inc. The stories within are a microcosm of the volunteers in the Port Macquarie-Hastings area. As with many communities it is made up of many volunteers and it’s a rather big challenge to fit all volunteers into one small book. They decided to look at specific volunteers, interview them and then write their findings into a short story. And there’s the challenge, how to reduce many years of a person’s volunteering into one short story. The writers have done a fabulous job of condensing each person’s life and I really enjoyed reading about everyone.
We start off with an introduction into the why and how of the development of the book. This is followed by a potted history of the area and the why of its name. The Preface includes the phrase ‘They are just the Volunteers…’ I think they’re using the word ‘just’ to mean that the volunteers are nothing really of merit. When I looked up the word ‘just’ to check that I was using it correctly I get some very different meanings such as ‘conforming to a standard of correctness’, or ‘acting or being in conformity with what is morally upright or good’. Both meanings fit the phrase ‘just the Volunteers’ much better as volunteers the world over are not simply volunteers, but generally the life blood of their community. Without volunteers setting the standard or doing the moral action to make things better. Thank you to the Merriam-Webster dictionary.
What this book does is to show that the area where this book is written may be small but it is connected to the world in ways we can’t comprehend. Well, until we read this book and see the stories play out before our mind’s eye. I won’t go through all the stories, but here’s a selection.
The first story talks to us about the life of Helen Duncan, Volunteer Missionary and Aid Worker. We are told of one of the customs of the Maasai in West Kenya. She is given the honour of attending Maasai feast with the Anglican Archbishop. They gave her the choicest piece of the animal they’d slaughtered for the feast, ‘a blob of liver fat’. She followed the Archbishop’s advice and selected an elderly lady to hand it to. Apparently she’d chosen the village chief’s aging mother, cheers accompanied her presentation. Helen also assisted in Hong Kong to translate the Holy Bible into indigenous languages, with more than fifty indigenous languages in China it’s a big job. This story doesn’t indicate how this translation went and how many languages she assisted with.
Dr Ray Hodgson, a volunteer for Women’s Health in Nepal. Having moved to Port Macquarie to start a obstetrics and gynaecology practice in 1999 he was then told about a thesis on the subject of genital prolapse in Nepal and decided this was how he wanted to give back to the community. Finding there was no organisation in Nepal to help he started his own ‘Prolapse Down Under’. This included sending teams of surgeons, nurses and other volunteers to Nepal. They put in a large teaching element to their volunteering so that when they left Nepal work could continue. Having introduced ultrasounds to Nepal they discovered they were inundated with patients. People wanted pictures of their babies, but once they finally arrived at the clinic (sometimes walking for days) they then had to wait as much as two hours for their ultrasound. They were happy to wait, but Ray showed them videos of breastfeeding, hygiene, and nutrition during pregnancy. The chance of dying in rural Nepal from a pregnancy related problem is almost 100 times greater than dying from the same problem in Sydney.
Margaret Oswald, a volunteer with the CWA (Country Women’s Assocation) reminded me that I am very fortunate to have had many feminists paving the way for equality. The local Port Macquarie members built the original Health Centre, this is huge as the local Health Centres provide a place for young people to understand their health, their babies health, and to find out that their babies are normal. In Melbourne they also start New Mum’s Groups in order to match people up with other new parents. I’m sure the health centres in regional and rural areas do more than just these things. Margaret and her team approached the local bank looking for a loan to build the health centre. The bank refused as they needed a male to sign as guarantor. Six husbands signed as guarantors and the money was paid back in good time. Such an old-fashioned law, I hope it’s not still out there somewhere.
Anyway, I’ve barely touched the surface of the book with these three people and their stories. Every other story is uplifing and well worth reading. I’m not sure if this book is available any more or if they sold out. If you want to do your own writing I firmly suggest you join a writers’ group near you, absolutely invaluable.