An exclusive interview with Lynne Minion, author of Hello Missus: A Girl’s Own Guide to Foreign Affairs (HarperCollins), selected as The Australian Women’s Weekly Great Read for September. Q Congratulations on your book, Hello Missus, A Girl’s Guide To Foreign Affairs, which is about your adventures, including those of the heart, while living in East Timor – I loved it. A Thank you, I’m very excited about it. Q You became interested in the place while working as a journalist, was it a particular assignment that sparked your interest? A I met Jose Ramos Horta (Nobel Prize winning Foreign Affairs Minister of East Timor) at a small pro-Timorese protest here in Sydney’s Hyde Park in 1996. There were about 20 people there. I was working for SBS World News and I was one of the few media covering it. I was very much inspired by the protest. And I’ve met a lot of Australians who have said that if they could, they would really like to chuck everything in, and go teach English or contribute in some way to countries like Cambodia or Vietnam. They were interested in these post-conflict countries, to help in a humanitarian way. And I was given notice on my beautiful harbour view apartment and by then I was working freelance and I had to put all my possessions in the back of a removal truck anyway and I thought well … this probably is the only time in my life I’ll be able to pursue that dream. Q So the decision to go to East Timor was intellectual or emotional? A Both, remembering that my family had also suffered terrible repression and pain and poverty and were refugees. Q Where are they from? A Ukrainia Q Did they come out here after WWII? A Yes, my mother and her parents. And I grew up on my grandmother’s knee, listening to these remarkable stories of war and hatred but also of survival and humanitarianism. And here was this cause that was on Australia’s doorstep and I had had my eyes opened to it and I wanted to learn more about the issues I was reporting on. And getting to know the activists, the leadership, was all very inspiring, especially as international opinion was shifting and there was a great momentum towards emancipating the East Timorese. Q After interviewing Jose Ramos Horta at the protest, you stayed in contact with him? A Yes through the journalism. Because he visited Australia often and had a high media profile and was very approachable. I continued to interview him on and off for years up until I was at the ABC and at that point, very interested in the Timor Gap (agreement). And I wanted to be at the Independence celebrations. To me that was history being made and it was wonderful history. This was a chance for a nation to celebrate for the first time in its history. It had taken very many decades and very many lives for it to happen. It was a great big party being thrown in Dili and whoa, that was irresistible to me. Q How long were you at SBS TV? A Probably around two years. Q And after that? A I’ve also worked as media advisor for organizations like the Red Cross and Greenpeace, so I’ve been flitting back between journalism and social change and humanitarian organizations. Q What did you do with the ABC? A Stories for the news and for Lateline. Q How long were you in East Timor for, all up? A One year. Q I was surprised at the strict Catholicism in East Timor. A Many people assume, particularly because Indonesia is the largest Muslim country in the world, that East Timor is too. Or that the Timorese would not have been allowed to continue with the Catholicism that the Portugese introduced there. It’s fundamentalist Catholicism. Q At the beginning, the strictness of it even shocks you. For example, when you think that chaste outfit you wear to a party is appropriate and Horta says it’s too bare and not respectable? A I had put a great deal of thought into cultural sensitivities, too! I had borrowed that lilac dress, knowing I needed to dress conservatively and had to be quite chaste – no bosom, below the knee, no pants. But this was considered outrageous because it had tiny straps and was exposing the shoulder blades. When you think about it there is something very feminine and seductive about that part of a woman that is very distinctive from a man’s. And I’d never thought about it before. The first time I came back to Australia for R&R, I was on stop-over in Darwin and I found myself disapproving of the scantily clad women. How can they leave home looking like harlots, I thought to myself! To this day I find my dressing style is a little more conservative. The Fundamentalist Catholic attitudes though has engendered some profound social problems in East Timor. The treatment of women, the multiple births in a country that is profoundly poor, no contraception in a country where a HIV epidemic is a real potential. Q I imagine it’s the poverty and lack of education that makes the Timorese more vulnerable to fundamentalism? A Yes, people aren’t educated enough to challenge or question. I don’t think being able to question Catholicism makes you a bad Catholic. Q You had two jobs, helping set up a new TV station and then working for the Prime Minister, but nothing you did worked out? It was like a black comedy. A I would never have imagined that I would have so many experiences and achieve so little. I think that is a very common experience for people who go to these places, particularly those who work for the United Nations. It’s a very frustrating bureaucracy. Q It was incredible what you came up against – the cultural differences. I’m trying to think of some of the bizarre things that happened at the TV station. A Like the explosion of the homemade wine? Q Or like doing a story about a guy accused of murder and your colleague’s disinterest in giving any kind of balance or fairness in reporting. You were trying to establish professional standards but they couldn’t have been less interested. In fact they resented you, if anything. A They did resent us. But it is the case that neither of my bosses, not the head of the newsroom or the Prime Minister ever spoke to me once. The disdain with which our very genuine desire to assist is treated, was my first real shock of being over there. Like: What do you mean? I’ve left my family! I have made certain sacrifices to come here and you’re saying I should just go home or whatever … give us your beer ration and then we might like you? I thought for a start that’s just downright impolite. And it really shattered a lot my happy idealistic notions. I thought it was all going to be so very lovely and so nice of me and it was all just going to be fabulous. I didn’t realise it was going to be really hard slog and I wouldn’t be appreciated. Q And that you would be shown antipathy? A Yes, antipathy. It was quite a shock to me. Q It seems there is a big distance between reality and illusion, especially when it comes to western ideals and a developing country? A Therein lies the message in the book. It’s all very nice for us in our air-conditioned offices to have our opinions about the struggles in these poorer nations. To have our philosophies and ideologies. But it’s different when you go over there. It’s hard. It’s more complex. All of those stereotypes, whether left or right wing, are wrong. Every country is different. And things change. I’m sure that Timor is vastly different now in 2004 to the Timor I lived within in 2002. I think some of these ideologies and principles are not only close minded, but I think they can be harmful and damaging. And yet these are often the basis of decisions which influence whether people live or die. Where the aid is given, what it is given too. So I learned that. It’s all very different to what I imagined it would be. I thought I would go over there and give out flowers or something. Drink nice cups of tea with people who would say ‘oh thankyou for coming.’ Q The other surprise in the book was the antipathy generally shown to Australians – I had this idea that we were the benevolent big brother in the region and I thought we’d be at least liked? A The Timorese PM on Four Corners recently called Australians greedy. Now I find that offensive. Over 20,000 Australians left their homes and went over and not for a holiday or trip, but to do a tour of duty of some kind, civilian police and peacekeeper. There’s been 400 million dollars of aid given since 1999. We would like to think we would be liked at the very least. Aid shouldn’t be a transaction it should just be a benevolent gift. However our aid has been seen as serving Australia’s own interests and the attitude is that we have been seeking to have instant repayment via proceeds from the Timor Gap (oil and gas) Agreement. However the fact is Australians do care about Timor. Australians have gone over there in droves and made sacrifices and they have given money. And Australian children have had cake stalls and given Xmas presents. We do care. And we’re not greedy. Q Do you think many Timorese people resent the Australians there because they seem so rich compared to them? A That’s right, it was like we were rubbing it in their faces. They had nothing, they lived in such poor circumstances … educating their children was difficult, they had no filtered water, no or little electricity and we were drinking chardonnay at waterfront restaurants with almost a UN land-rover per head. Living this absolutely fine life. Certainly a life of luxury that they could never imagine. I came to understand what poverty was. I thought I was very clever and humanitarian and that I knew a lot about developing nations particularly because my family had spoken about these issues. I went over and saw poverty and I was shocked. Q What did you set out to achieve by writing the book? A It was really to try and teach people about poverty. To take them all on a journey, not hit them over the head with it, not alienating people but presenting it in a way a mainstream audience would come to know characters and come to learn about issues to do with poverty. And also to make people realise that from the first world we find it very difficult to be empathetic because people don’t know what poverty is like. So I wanted to dispel some falsehoods. I also wanted to present some complex international political issues and get rid of some of the stereotypes. I really wanted to bring international politics to a mainstream audience. It’s always been a great fascination of mine. I think people thought it was an unusual obsession I had, yet it desperately influenced my family and I thought we should all have a fascination with it – it’s not as boring as people think. It can be hilarious and intriguing and emotional and there are very real people like the Timorese characters in the book. Hopefully by getting to know them, people will have some empathy for their circumstances. Like the baby that dies. I don’t think that many people really know what it’s like in East Timor, beyond what we’ve seen on the news reports. I was so shocked and surprised. I thought it was worthwhile telling. That UN mission in East Timor is a metaphor for every UN mission in the world. The same issues occur however I hope that by the end of the book people can see that the UN is the still the very best thing in the world. Look at what’s happening in Iraq. If the UN had not been in East Timor it could well have been chaos on a par with Iraq. Irrespective of what you think about US politics, the thing is it did choose to go into Iraq and it is not rebuilding the nation in the way the UN would. If only the UN could get rid of those ridiculous wages. What one earth are they thinking? Who do they think they attract with those outlandish amounts of money. If they get rid of some of the policies and the bureaucracy and operate more like an aid organization, then they will be more responsive and more effective. They won’t be as wasteful of money. And I think more trusted. More useful in a world in which they are desperately needed. Especially when we see the alternative right now with the catastrophe unfolding in Iraq. Q Your description of the high ratio of men to women in Dili, might have thousands of single women swarming over there. A At first I thought ooh! This is working out very well indeed! But it ended up being one of the reasons I left. I couldn’t stand the continual attention, scrutiny, harassment. It was continual, unrelenting. Women had to black their windows as soon as they moved in. We couldn’t walk down the street. We had to be extremely careful of our movements. Q Because of the ration of men to women and because of the reaction of locals to foreign women? A Both. The peacekeepers were terribly harassing. The wolf whistling the cat calling, the constant “beautiful green eyes.” That’s why I had the T-shirt made up in Portugese, “Yes I know I have green eyes.” Q It sounds like every woman’s dream but I imagine it would drive you mad after a while? A Imagine it after a year? It was debilitating. And demeaning. It’s not a compliment to me, although it depends on your perspective. Q In your book, East Timor sounds like quite a dangerous place for women? A Ramos Horta is going to disagree with that when the book comes out, but it is. Ramos Horta says that the crime rate over there is less than it is in Sydney, but that’s because people don’t report crime. Many Timorese people don’t respect the police, they don’t realise that they can be good. And we saw that in the book when the guy tried to attack me on the veranda – people were like “are you nuts, going to the police?” Q And then there was your affair with Viktor who was…? A The head of the Portugese special police unit. Q And what a disappointment he turned out to be. A Yes but as you can see in the end it was all a part of the story and the experience. Q It was a pretty big betrayal? A Yes, there’s that scene in the book when I’m naked and sitting on the tiled floor and he’s just told me the truth. I think a lot of women will identify with that, when the pain is physical and it just doubles you over. I was shocked and horrified because I had asked him so many times to be straight with me. Q You asked a lot because your instinct was telling you something was wrong? A Yeah, but what a horrible man. I told him that he had a duty of care, that I hadn’t loved since 1998 . He still chose to lie and then turned his back on me and said that my baggage would ruin the relationship. I was sobbing. I remember thinking “he’s right, he’s right, I’ll never be able to love unless I can trust.” Q That’s right, you’d had that disappointing relationship several years earlier? A It was actually a marriage. So for him to have chosen to be duplicitous when he knew that I would inevitably find out, was un-gentlemanly, unchivalrous, cowardly. So that made it worse because he did it knowing the pain it would inevitably cause me. Just for a little romp for a little while in East Timor. It’s true that if he had told me the truth I would never have been with him. But I would hope that any man of calibre could put aside his carnal desires to save a girl’s heart. But he wasn’t decent enough to do that. I was one of many. There are thousands of Australian women over there who have had their hearts broken by the Portugese. They were renowned for it. Remember Ann in the book saying the number of normally intelligent women who fall for that line, over and over again. They said what we wanted to hear. They’d gone to a mission that was a tropical island, where most or a lot of the women who worked there were from a sexually emancipated country. Where we don’t get married until really late. We were therefore available. And they were like, woohoo! It’s not like that in Portugal. I would like to think that most Australian men don’t lie in that way. Q Do you have regrets? A Viktor? No. It was great fun. Once I healed I was able to see it as an exciting relationship – it was a little bit of sunshine in my life. One of my friends in East Timor called Portugese men, sobremesas, which are desserts – good to look at but bad for you. Q Do you think your book will be controversial? A Umm yeah. I think people like the PM are not going to be very happy about it. The way I explained it to Ramos Horta was to compare it to John Howard maybe not always liking the cartoons they do about him in the Australian newspapers, but it’s a democratic society and he has to be available for parody and satire. He certainly has to allow himself to be scrutinised and held accountable. Whether John Howard likes what’s said about him or not, that’s what he accepted when he took on public office. His conduct was something he is responsible for and it wasn’t the messenger who was shot. As I write in the book, I really came to see how essential a free media is. And I think that many Australians don’t like journalists. The like to criticise the media and I think a lot of politicians and public figures feed that misconception. So one of my intentions of the book was to say I think people should respect the media a little more because there are a lot of journalists out there who are doing their very best. Q You’re 36? A Yes but my mum’s asked that I never say my age. Q You got very close to some Timorese, especially to some of the women like the maid, Elsie – are you optimistic that one day their life will be better. A She is such a hard worker and so trustworthy and just so kind. So poor. But maybe her kids will have a different life? It does take time. Q Do you have siblings? A A young brother called Brett. Q Star sign? A Capricorn – what a great question! I’m very Capricorn although I might be a bit too impulsive as we’re supposed to be serious, sensible workers probably more than lovers, which is probably why I haven’t been very successful in that regard. Q Lynne Minion likes? A Shoes. Q Dislikes? A Ignorance Q Believes? A In humanitarianism. Q Last film you saw? A Spiderman II and it was great! Q Where were you born? A In Wodonga, Victorian border town. Q is it a big country town? A Yep. Q Educated at? A Wodonga Primary School then Wodonga West High. Q First Job? A Researcher at Channel Ten, Sydney. In news and would you believe, on Alan Jones Live. That was in1993. Q Marital status? A Single at the moment. The book became my single focus for a year. It’s a lonely existence. Q How did you support yourself while writing the book? A It went to auction. There was a bidding war. Q Wow, fantastic for a first time author. I was shocked! A It was on the basis of a synopsis and the first 3 chapters. Q You had an agent? A Yes a friend of mine in ABC Drama sent it off to the agent. It was actually a synopsis with some re-worked emails. In Timor whenever I could get email access I would write a group email. And it became popular. People would say “oh you’ve got a book in you.” So that’s how it all started. Q You’ve unveiled East Timor in your book in a way no-one else has – what will Ramos Horta think of it? A He has been aware of the book since its inception. I’ve told him about certain passages and been very blunt and told him that the PM is not going to like it and that he may receive some criticism for it. But yes I do worry about it a lot. I compared the whole thing to Bill Bryson’s book on Australia – he didn’t paint a fabulously positive picture of Australia and Downer didn’t object to it. I believe it is a realistic portrait of East Timor and it’s come about from experience. I’m not someone who just blew in for five days and spent my time in a luxury hotel with a suitcase of smoked salmon. And I wrote about it, I thought, with affection. Q Do you believe East Timor will finally find it’s feet? A Absolutely. Look at the UN contribution and the billions of dollars that have gone into the place. But you can’t deny there are some terrible problems there, such as the summary abuse of women. The terribly high child mortality rate. Enormous numbers of illiteracy. Basic utilities they don’t have that Australians can’t imagine going without.
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