Sadia Abdullah is a civil engineer from Sydney. She always wanted a job that would take her somewhere. She thought she knew what engineering meant. Then she spent a year in Vanuatu.
The first day: Sadia landed in Port Vila in August 2022. The first thing she noticed was the heat. The second was how friendly everyone was. Months earlier, she had been at home in Sydney, locked down, desperate to get further than her living room. Now she was on a small Pacific country she knew almost nothing about, “a dot in the Pacific”, as she put it.
Vanuatu is a country of 83 islands. Around 300,000 people live there. Some communities are a long boat ride from the nearest road. Some islands do not have power.
Sadia’s job was to help build water supply systems in those places. Engineering in Sydney is one thing. Engineering on a remote island, with whatever materials you can carry in, in a language you are still learning, that is something else. Sadia went back to first principles. She listened more than she designed. She asked the team what had worked before, and what had not.
She started taking lessons in Bislama, the language spoken across most of Vanuatu. “I might as well make a fool of myself,” she said, “than make everyone uncomfortable speaking English.” The team relaxed. They started teaching her. They started trusting her.
When the cyclones came
In March 2023, two tropical cyclones hit Vanuatu back to back. Cyclone Judy first, then Cyclone Kevin a few days later. Water systems across the country were destroyed. Sadia and her team were sent to Tanna Island for six weeks of emergency work. They walked the villages. They assessed the damage.
The community led the rebuild. The team supported them. When the water finally came back on, the village threw a party. That party stayed with Sadia. She had spent years designing systems in Sydney. She had never seen one celebrated like that.
What she brought home
Sadia’s father grew up in a small village in rural Bangladesh. The water came from a hand pump in the ground. She had not thought about that pump in a long time.
The year in Vanuatu changed something for her. The skills she had been using on Sydney projects suddenly had another use. The villages her father knew were not so far from the villages she had just left. She came home different. Back in Sydney, she is thinking about her father’s village now. She is thinking about the next volunteer who will follow her to Vanuatu, and what she wants to pass on to them. Her advice for anyone considering it is short. “Just do it.”
Sadia came home to Sydney. The team she worked with is still in Vanuatu. They are still mending pipes after the storms. They are still teaching new volunteers Bislama. They are still listening to villages about what is needed next. That work; the long, patient work of staying in a place year after year, is what gifts like yours keep going. Thank you for keeping it going.