H for History

‘It was madness; in one weekend we rescued over 1000 people.’

In a recent talk to RAS students on a Thursday lunchtime, Dr Stef Pender (Class of 2006) revealed to the fortunate assembled three things she would like to tell her high-school self if she could travel back in time.

Her sage advice included: to explore, enjoy and realise how beautiful the world is, as well as realising your own considerable opportunities and privileges within it; to try and do something altruistic and positive with that opportunity; and, lastly, to try to leave this word a tiny bit more beautiful for others.

Stef is a human being who definitely leaves places the better for her passing through them, although she would be loath to draw attention to her footsteps. She constantly deflects from her considerable achievements stating, ‘You are capable of so much more than you think are. Everyone is capable of great acts of humanity’. Yet looking through her impressive CV, it is hard to initially understand why she has had periods of feeling ‘crippled by doubt’.

While at Radford, Stef took part in visits to Cranleigh School: ‘That really opened my eyes to disability and to the joy, strength and resilience that comes from within the Cranleigh community. It was something I looked forward to every week in Year 10’. As her brother Lucas (Class of 2009 and School Captain) shared with us in a collegians news article last year, Stef went on to study medicine at Monash University in Melbourne after graduating from Radford.

From there she began to search for ways to promote and build strength and resilience in others. ‘She worked as a doctor in Indigenous health in Darwin Hospital and in remote communities’. Stef is quick to point out that ‘the narrative of white people helping is boring’ to her and that greater focus needs to be placed on the positive achievements, stories and contributions made by Indigenous people in this country. She sees this as more helpful and certainly less limiting than labouring over gloomy statistics.

‘You can be exposed to images and statistics and newspaper articles about things like the life expectancy or education gaps, but it didn’t really hit home until I was sitting there reading with 16-year old girls who couldn’t read three- or four-letter words. Those images and statistics don’t translate to the inequity that exists within Australia until you’re in it.’

Lucas continued to outline that Stef’s ‘latest move has seen her working as the on-board doctor on the Sea-Watch rescue boat in the Mediterranean. Sea-Watch is a not-for-profit NGO based on donations from volunteers. They operate a rescue boat off the Libyan coast. Their mission is “saving lives where states fail to act.” In 2016, Sea-Watch rescued over 20,000 migrants and refugees. In the same year, more than 5000 drowned or remained missing. This year, the numbers are only escalating’.

Serving as a doctor on rescue boats, Stef found herself directly caught in the adrenaline of ‘survival mode’ and witnessing the ‘deepest displays of bravery and humanity’ she had ever seen.

Stef goes on to explain: ‘I have experienced terrifying moments; overcrowded sinking boats, people drowning, CPR in speedboats, multiple patients strewn across the deck, armed coast guards targeting the ship, traumatised children that no longer cried, faces of the deceased in my hands. Desperation, panic and grief … but also relief and a lot of joy. Far above all, I am deeply touched and inspired by the beautiful people I met – their stories, strength, perseverance and remarkable ability against their horror to manage a smile and keep hope’.

Stef tells of an Eritrean refugee who, after 48 hours cold and crammed amongst 500 others on the boat started ‘singing to the moon’ about how beautiful the world was – despite the desperate nature of his plight. It is a memory and song that have never left her. Students at that RAS meeting will also remember photographs of a Libyan family Stef befriended on the rescue boats and who she movingly reunited with after they settled in France.

I asked Stef how she has actually processed these intense life and death experiences at such a young age. She responds by gratefully acknowledging the support of family and friends. She has also explored and read extensively about activist issues and looked into philosophies and organisations concerned with humanitarian assistance.

She has had periods of dedicated reflection on how to more authentically represent the people and issues of concern to her, and also questioned whether she should in fact speak about them at all. During this reflective period, she wrote a deeply moving letter to a seven-hour-old baby rescued on one of the most tragic days in the Mediterranean. Her mother died giving birth on the Libyan beach and the baby was left there – as the newborn, ‘Destiny’. It went as follows:

Little bundle still pinked from the womb, coddled in a blanket, passed to me from a boat. A boat – a rubber boat, crammed with a hundred terrified souls, standing on a few centimetres of wood, floating on hundreds of metres of water, in which thousands just like them have drowned. A thousand, will not be found, today. Your eyes calmly shut, innocent to the terror around you, unaware of your own story, your own name – Destiny. You were born only ten hours ago, on a beach in Libya, to a beautiful Mama, who was also born in an unfair place of this world. Who dreamed of a better life for you, her daughter, than she had for herself. 

I never met your Mama and neither will you but please live knowing that she loved you. Her blood gave you life and your kicks gave her joy. You gave her hope in her months of suffering. Your life is a testament to her survival – through poverty, through desert, as a slave, as a prisoner, as she was starved, as she was beaten. Please do not be beaten by this world. You carry her strength and she carries your memory. I wonder; Did she know you were coming? Did she know she was leaving? Did she know she would be left? Did she know she was dying?

But what matters; Did she live to look into your eyes? To cry with your first cries? To hold you to her breast? To kiss you, just once – goodbye? What every mother in this world deserves, and with what every child in this world needs – love and safety. You have her love, and now you are safe, on a big boat and going to Italy.

I wonder; What will your life be like… Destiny?

My own memories of Stef revolve around the soccer field – I coached her team in her senior years – and also when I cast her as a singing and dancing cob of corn (‘in bubble-wrap’) in the Scarecrow’s field for an admittedly wacky version of ‘The Wizard of Oz’ (2005).

‘I specialised in inanimate kind of roles. I was a tree and a piece of corn. It’s a complex part to play. It’s a lot harder than those main roles,’ she jokes.

It certainly has been a long journey from the P&F Oval and TB Millar Hall to a rescue boat in the Mediterranean. But perhaps a connection can still be uncovered here. As we unpacked the advice given to those RAS students at lunchtime, Stef observed that the school’s motto of ‘Truth, Compassion, Wisdom’ underpins her own advice: ‘The first thing is truth. How privileged are you? You are among the top 1%. Compassion is in extending that privilege to other people. And then wisdom – I don’t know how wise my last point is – but it is about journeying through the world and trying to leave a trail of beauty behind you, rather than a trail of consumption and destruction’.

Our Founding Principal, Jock Mackinnon – who shaped the school motto – would have been proud of this unassuming yet deeply affecting young woman who weaves a trail of inspiration in her wake, as well as a sometimes-uncomfortable challenge to get off the couch and act against inequity, injustice and powerlessness. To conclude with Stef’s own words, ‘knowing about inequity, and also knowing the privilege that I have, it would be inexcusable not to work or try and do something for people where the need is greatest’.

Further viewing and reading

A video of Stef’s first day of her first Sea-Watch mission:
https://www.facebook.com/seawatchprojekt/videos/1865247923693280/

A link to a fundraiser her family organised. The video shows the boat she was on and the situation:
https://chuffed.org/project/seawatch

A clip from French Eurovision, a similar story to the newborn Stef wrote about:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wy4Fr6fXO0c

This is a very long but very thorough piece of journalism on the Central Mediterranean:
http://issues.newsdeeply.com/central-mediterranean-european-priorities-libyan-realities

This came out last week and is the perspective of some of the crew:
https://www.newsdeeply.com/refugees/articles/2018/05/24/before-and-after-a-mediterranean-volunteer-voyage