Not for Granted: My Experience Working with International Organizations

By Maria Cruickshank

Maria Cruickshank has lived her life in the service of others. As a United Nations worker assigned to several peacekeeping missions, she has lived and worked in some of the most beautiful, interesting, and dangerous places on Earth. Now she shares her personal and professional memoirs of more than twenty years working to make the world a safer, more compassionate, and healthier place for allqualities of basic human dignity that should never be taken for granted.

She grew up in turbulent Guatemala, and some of her earliest memories involve visiting her father in a high-risk prison in her home country. Throughout her life, her work has taken her to Austria, Kosovo, Macedonia, Sierra Leone, Greece, India, and the killing fields of Cambodia. She has witnessed magical experiences and lived in environments that were by turns magnificent, turbulent, colorful, and delightful.

Through her eyes, you can get a glimpse of life in these exotic, mysterious, and often misunderstood placesas well as the people who call them home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Balboa Press AU
• Release date: Apr 29, 2014
• ISBN: 9781452513447

Maria Cruickshank

Maria Cruickshank worked with the United Nations and other international organizations for more than twenty years. Because of her UN peacekeeping assignments, she lived in countries in conflict, including Cambodia, Kosovo, Macedonia, and Sierra Leone. She speaks English, French, German, Russian, and Spanish. Originally from Guatemala, she now lives in Toowoomba, Australia.

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Copyright © 2014 Maria Cruickshank.

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ISBN: 978-1-4525-1345-4 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4525-1344-7 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 04/15/2014

Contents

List of Illustrations

Preface

Chapter 1: All about Guatemala

Chapter 2: Never Give Up

Chapter 3: Try Something New

Chapter 4: Allow the Unexpected to Happen

Chapter 5: Mysterious Places

Chapter 6: Painful Memories

Chapter 7: El Condor Pasa

Chapter 8: Crying Out for Help

Chapter 9: The Pink Lake

Chapter 10: The Killing Fields

Chapter 11: Sleepless Nights

Chapter 12: Make Your Own Choices

Chapter 13: Child Soldiers

Chapter 14: No Worries

Epilogue

Abbreviations

Glossary

References

Endnotes

To Mutti,

my dear mother

List of Illustrations

1.   Family Versluys, France, 1901

2.   My dad, Ana, Edgar, myself, and Mutti in Guatemala, 1964

3.   Versluys family in Guatemala, May 2013

4.   Chichicastenango market in Guatemala

5.   My first car, a Zastava 750L

6.   Arrival in Battambang, Cambodia, 1992

7.   Elephant ride, Phnom Penh, Cambodia

8.   After finishing English lessons in Battambang, Cambodia

9.   Prince Sihanouk of Cambodia and Yasushi Akashi, UN SRSG Cambodia, after peace negotiations

10.   Disarmament of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, 1992

11.   Jeff and I in Battambang

12.   Waiting to depart from Siem Reap

13.   At the ruins of Angkor Wat

14.   Khmer cooking dinner

15.   Our kitchen in Mondulkiri

16.   Kosovo protection checkpoint.

17.   KFOR in Kosovo

18.   Destroyed Pristina

19.   Destroyed Orthodox church

20.   Busy street in Freetown, Sierra Leone

21.   Mongolian battalion, medal presentation

22.   Children going to school in Moyamba, Sierra Leone

23.   Freetown, Lumley Beach, Freetown

24.   Dreaming girl in Sierra Leone

25.   UN convoy bringing Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia, to SCSL detention centre

26.   Pooch at the Toowoomba Showgrounds

27.   Origami thank-you note

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart.

—Helen Keller

Preface

I have been travelling all my life, and the world has become my home. I give you this book to share my personal experiences with people like you who want to immerse themselves in my adventurous life.

Thank you, Jeff Cruickshank, for your support and for your unconditional love. Thank you to all my friends who helped me edit parts of this book.

My mother inspired me to write my story. She opened the doors of opportunities for me to become what I am now.

This book will give you laughter and tears and will bring you to remote places and hopefully will teach you about historical events from the past fifty years.

CHAPTER 1

All about Guatemala

It took me 40 years to write my first book.

—Paulo Coelho

Toowoomba, September 26, 2013. Today, I’m sitting in my country house in Toowoomba on a beautiful acreage full of native flowers and plants just overlooking the Toowoomba showgrounds, with my dog Pooch sitting next to me. I sip a cup of green tea and think that just a few years ago while I was living in Sierra Leone, I was part of history in the making, as I am now attentively listening to the news and anticipating the appeal judgement on Charles Taylor, former president of Liberia. I’m also thinking that it was just three months ago that I visited my home country and left my beloved mutti in Guatemala. "Hasta la vista, my daughter," she said, her deep blue eyes full of tears. My brown eyes were also full of tears, as I didn’t know when we would see each other again. This was just like thirty years before, when I was in my early twenties and left her to study overseas.

The smell of white jasmine mixed with the smell of barbecues from the neighbourhood and the sound of kookaburras, birds native to Australia, embrace our garden. Kookaburras can be very loud as they call, Koo kaka kaka kaka burra … koo kaka kaka kaka burra!

In 2010, my husband, Jeff, and I decided to come and live in Toowoomba. Why Toowoomba? everyone asks. When we came here on our holiday, we knew that this is the perfect place to retire. It’s a picturesque mountain city in south-east Queensland just about one hundred kilometres west of Brisbane, Queensland’s capital. Toowoomba is known as the Garden City, and this is the site of the Carnival of Flowers every September, when the city’s parks and gardens become vibrant with colour and life. Toowoomba has four well-marked seasons, and winter is very mild compared to Europe, where I spent many years.

In addition, Toowoomba offers plenty of opportunities to connect with different people. After all, the University of Southern Queensland, which hosts thousands of students from all over the world, has its main campus here.

Guatemala, June 18, 1961. My mother and father lived in a three-bedroom house in Guatemala City. One Sunday night they decided to go to the movies, as The Comancheros had just arrived in Guatemalan cinemas and my mother had read the book attentively during her pregnancy. This was not a normal night—it was raining, and the thunder boomed. My mum was eight and a half months pregnant, ready to give birth. When she and my father left the theatre, they commented on the death of the actor Jeff Chandler and reminisced about going to the movies together to watch Broken Arrow. All of a sudden, it happened—my mum went into labour. My dad and mum didn’t have a car and were in a taxi, and, yes, I was born on the way home. When they arrived, my dad called the midwife as my mother held the baby, saw her becoming purple, and smacked her to keep her alive and crying. My parents called me Maria. This was the highlight of 1961 for me.

I had a brother and a sister, and I would eventually have another brother. My brother Edgar, with black eyes and straight hair, always had projects of his own. He was only seven years old when he decided one day that he would breed white rats. They multiplied, my mother screamed, and the rest of the family screamed and hated the rats because of their peculiar smell and how quickly they would reproduce. Edgar converted his fish tank into a terrarium for the rats, and then he painted a sign on some plywood and put it in front of the house. It read: "Se venden ratas blancas @ 25 centavos—For sale white rats, 25 cents each." He had started his own business at only seven! Children from the neighbourhood came by to buy his rats, and within a day, he had made two dollars, but that night, the kids came back, accompanied by their mothers, to return the rats and ask for their money back. Edgar was disappointed and, naturally, had already spent all his earnings on comics.

Edgar loved Superman stories and all that had to do with Flash Gordon. I loved comics too, but I preferred Little Lulu, who always saved the day with her best friend, Annie. I also liked to read The Adventures of Tintin, about Tintin and his dog, Snowy, travelling around the world and conversing in all languages with people in different countries.

My sister, Ana, got in trouble whenever she could. She was only one year older than me, but she behaved as if she had lived forever and presented herself full of confidence in unfamiliar places. She was very astute. Although she never put much effort into her studies, she would get excellent marks.

My little brother, Luis, didn’t come until I was eight years old. Luis, with long, curly black hair, was sweet, and his favourite outfit was jean shorts and no shoes. Vendors often passed our house selling goods, and