Acceptance of the Local People

Heroes Remember

Acceptance of the Local People

Transcript

The locals could care less what we were doing there. All they knew that we were bringing in money to their immediate economy. There were twelve of us in my contingent and we had a house staff hired by the UN. I had a few vehicles, three vehicles so I had three drivers. We had a couple of cooks. One of them turned out to be a mechanic who couldn’t get a job as a mechanic so he claimed to be a cook and we ended up with him. We had a gardener who didn’t garden. His job was to sort of beat the bushes in the compound where our house was to make sure that the scorpions and snakes and centipedes and stuff didn’t get too close to the house and he’d make a little path through the house every once in a while and get those things out of the house and he was more afraid of them than we were. So I’m not sure he did any much good. We had two guards that they called Chowkidars. One of them was by Pakistani standards, was an older man. He was in his sixties, and he was big for a Pakistan guy and his name was Baba, and Baba certainly ruled the roost. Everybody did what he told them, all the locals that were hired. They were virtually useless, all of them, the drivers included. One guy, who I would say would probably be the only Pakistani national that I trusted the entire time was my driver. Guy name was Zarif Khan. Any of the others, I wouldn’t trust them for a split second with a can of beans. They would steal whatever they could. They would lie to you. They would promise you the world and you’d never see them again or you know, whatever they felt like doing wasn’t what they said they were going to do. So those sort of things you have to understand and just accept, because there’s nothing you can do about it. You can waste energy on that kind of stuff forever, it’s not going to change so as long as you understand where you fit into their world, not where they fit into yours.

Description

Mr. Deveau provides an understanding of the disconcern the local people had for their presence.

Jerry Deveau

Mr. Jerry Deveau was born in Middleton, Nova Scotia on November 20, 1950. Looking for excitement, Mr. Deveau believed he was up for a reasonable challenge in life and decided to join the Canadian Forces. Mr. Deveau joined the Army and after going through a personnel selection unit held occupation of Combat Engineer. In 1990, Mr. Deveau participated in his first operational tour to Pakistan and in 1994 accepted another tour to Rwanda as Chief Warrant Officer. At the end of his military career, Mr. Deveau held rank of Major. Mr. Deveau became employed as a Peer Support Coordinator with the OSISS (Occupational Stress Injury Social Support) program, a federal government network that provides support for military personnel returning to civilian life. Mr. Deveau resides in Fredericton, New Brunswick with his family.

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