It's hard work, but enriching

Second of a two part series

Travelling as a couple to work for Volunteer Service Abroad has had its ups and downs for Kate Andrews and Dr Laurens Manning.

"We swing between ecstasy and despair on a three-week cycle, but we're not necessarily in sync," says Andrews frankly.

And, adds Manning, "If we're both down together, we just look for jobs on the internet and think: 'We can always leave'."

They're honest, these two, about the frustrations of working in a developing country, but can also see how the experience is enriching them and their careers.

Both are from Wellington. Andrews, aged 29, worked as a journalist and Manning, 31, as a hospital registrar. He has an interest in tropical medicine and previously studied in London for a diploma in that subject.

"We'd done a lot of backpacking," says Andrews, "and decided the next time we visited a country, we wanted to live and work there."

VSA was the first organisation that agreed to look for a job for Andrews as well as the more easily placed Manning.

In March last year they travelled to Port Moresby for her to start work as information officer for the PNG National Council of Women. Manning is supervisor of a clinic in the outlying shantytown settlements.

VSA recruits are paid a living allowance, have free accommodation and free travel insurance, but that's it. There are no wages: the idea is they go in with nothing and come out with nothing.

Andrews' wide-ranging job includes designing, implementing and seeking funding for projects to inform women about issues such as domestic violence and voter rights. About 75 per cent of PNG women suffer domestic violence.

Manning's clinic serves 40,000 people. The most common illnesses he sees are resistant malaria, TB, malnutrition and HIV/Aids.

But both have learned not to expect too much in the way of results.

"There's no way I'm going to be able to affect the infant mortality rate or the HIV epidemic," says Manning. "All I can hope for is to provide good-quality clinical care, and teach my colleagues a few things they don't know."

Adds Andrews: "The temptation is to do it all yourself and achieve your objectives, but if you do that, then nothing will carry on once you leave.

"And you have to make sure the local people want what you're trying to achieve in the first place, otherwise there's no point.

"It's better to just plump for small improvements. Set things up so that other people can take over, and divorce yourself from the results."

The pair have another seven months to go on this assignment, and are thinking of then heading to Australia to take up paid work. Manning has already started a masters degree in public health and tropical medicine through Townsville University in Queensland.

Andrews would like to get back to working in the media.

"The skills I've developed here are on the softer side, such as how to deal with a range of very different people, and how to delegate."

The couple have grown vigilant about personal safety in crime-racked Port Moresby, and advise people to consider how they feel about the degree of law and order at a posting before accepting.

For their relationship, they say it has only been good. They recently left a dingy flat to live on a boat in a marina, and love it.

Andrews says: "We've found we've become closer because we spend so much of our spare time together. There are not a lot of distractions."

When all hell broke loose in Afghanistan late last year, Margie Dennis still felt quite safe in her home in Peshawar on the Pakistan border, and felt no need to leave.

"Most expatriates did leave, but I was not at all concerned for my security," she says.

"Although I have no family with me, I feel very aware of God's love and the love of my home helper, colleagues and friends."

Dennis, aged 61, now regards Pakistan as home after six years living there with the International Assistance Mission, which provides medical care, runs hydro projects, aids community development and teaches English to people in Afghanistan.

Its team is drawn from 17 nations and is scattered throughout Afghanistan, with Dennis and a colleague manning a support facility in Pakistan. Dennis provides pastoral care, travelling twice a year to visit those stationed in Afghanistan.

Her work ranges from purchasing rabies vaccines to helping IAM workers to sort out differences, and overseeing a workers' guest house in Peshawar.

She also helps Afghani women to find markets for their intricate embroidery.

And she enjoys the life "and the wonderful Pakistani widow who cares for me. Two years ago she opened her heart and took in two little children whose parents were murdered, and they now live with us".

Dennis' love affair with Pakistan began as a young woman, when she spent seven years as a secretary at a women's college in Lahore. Back in New Zealand, she worked for 19 years in community care with her late husband.

After his death, in 1989, she provided volunteer help for new immigrants, then heard about IAM through friends.

"I wanted to use the last 10 years of my working life before retirement well," she says. "I knew I could thrive in this part of the world. I had no dependants, good health, and had enjoyed the voluntary work I did with immigrants.

"Few Pakistani and Afghani people get to know Christians, so I hope that through knowing me some will realise that the perception of the corrupt Christian west is not universally true."