First voluntary service in Malawi, and now rebuilding war-torn East Timor with the UN, Helen Moore talks to Cathy Savage about her experience of working overseas

Working abroad in difficult conditions with unfamiliar rules and urgent public health needs isn't everyone's idea of fun, but Helen Moore had always been interested in swapping English local government for new horizons. "I always recognised that my skills could be applied somewhere else," she explains. While she was working at Barnet LBC, Helen took an MSc in Development Studies in her own time, and, as part of the course, did a thesis on low income housing in South Africa. It brought her into contact with those working overseas and one thing soon led to another. Voluntary Service Overseas seemed the most straightforward ticket to working abroad and in 1997, Helen set off for Malawi.
"My role was regional engineer and I was very apprehensive at first," she explains. "I was with a group responsible for hospital maintenance for a third of the country. When I saw the job description, I thought 'Oh my God - I'm going from working across two wards of Barnet, to this!'
"Then I got my head down, focused on the projects I could help with and began networking. I found out what people wanted, and if there was money to do it, I got people in to do the work."
Malawi is divided into three and Helen's responsibility was in the central region. "I had a massive amount of independence," she recalls. "It's hard to explain how laid back people were. There were a lot of projects going on though, so even if they moved slowly, there was always a lot to do."

One of the biggest achievements of Helen's stint in Malawi was the building of a new laboratory, partly funded by the Department for International Development and the British High Commission. "I did everything from drawing up the spec, to selecting contractors, to testing the concrete when the job started," she smiles.

At the end of the two years, Helen came back and worked at Camden for six months, but she was keen to go abroad again. At about this time, she began to get involved with RedR, an international organisation working to relieve suffering in disaster areas. RedR puts competent non-medical personnel in touch with humanitarian relief agencies worldwide. After attending a couple of their courses, Helen was interviewed and put on the RedR register.
"In February I got a phone call asking me if I wanted to go out and work in East Timor and within a week I had left England to join a United Nations team there," she says.
East Timor had been all but burned to the ground following a referendum which saw an end to Indonesian rule. The key task for the UN is to rebuild the infrastructure to allow the country to move forward again.
"The work is very rewarding," says Helen. "Unlike Malawi, things get done very quickly." Helen is currently managing building contracts for the reconstruction of public buildings from offices to a police academy and law courts.
"Usually a request comes in and I organise a schedule of works, work with architects, sometimes do a quick sketch myself," she explains. "A separate group puts the job out to tender but I do the technical assessment."
There is quite a bit of resentment in East Timor because things aren't happening quickly enough - there are still no court buildings, and at the moment all the prisoners are being housed in the tourist office.
"The UN is trying to do an enormous amount," says Helen. "It has 1,500 civilian staff and 5,000 military in East Timor. If you stand back and look, it's attempting to start a country off from scratch."

That said, the aim is not to stay too long, but to transfer skills to the locals, though that is a tough task. When East Timor was controlled by Indonesia, the middle class was made up of Indonesians, but after the referendum they left, leaving a skills gap behind them.
"I don't know how many EHOs realise just how transferable their skills are," says Helen. "The emphasis in this kind of work is on dealing with people and getting things done and I think those are EHO strengths."
Communications and leave are generous, so homesickness isn't a problem, and the work is enjoyable.
"I really like the work - mixing with people from more than 20 different nations, and getting to grips with the problems out here," she says. "I get a buzz out of it, though it can make you cynical - a lot of reports about developing countries aren't accurate and often the first world wants to dictate to the third world. Countries don't always stand up for themselves, and sometimes end up with useless equipment and crap computers that it couldn't use.
"You come away from this kind of work finding it more complicated than ever before, and that's the really interesting side of it."
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