My name is Mary Patience and I graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 1972 with an Honours degree in Sociology. I think my year was one of the first to come through the sociology programme.
Since 1992, I have been involved in international development work. I have worked in the UK and in East Timor with Oxfam GB, Oxfam Hong Kong, and Oxfam Australia; I have also worked with Care Australia in Laos and with Save the Children UK in Indonesia. After retiring from paid work, I continued in this area of work as a volunteer and am currently employed as an EU Humanitarian Volunteer based in Yangon for a year with the Women’s Rights team for Actionaid Myanmar. I have been here since November.
I’m sure you have often heard people exclaim ‘What a small place the world is!’ You’re travelling somewhere and meet someone who knows someone you know, or there’s a place where you have both lived, or some other common bond that draws you together, if only for that brief moment of meeting. It seems to happen all the time to some people, but hardly ever to me; however, in March it did occur. I was in our office when the consultant for the urban safety programme, the Founder and Chief Executive of the Myanmar Institute of Gender Studies (MIGS), Khin Ma Ma Myo, appeared for her briefing.
Now let’s be honest, a lot of people outside the UK think Scotland is just a province of England, and they refer to us all as English. [Note Spanish Inglaterra, Indonesian Ingris] As such, when Ma Myo, on hearing my accent, asked where I was from, I did not expect her to say much in response. When I said Scotland, she asked which part. When I said the Black Isle, near Inverness, I was astonished when she replied that she had visited the area during her eleven years in Aberdeen! It transpired that she was a fellow graduate of the University where she gained a BA (Hons) International Studies, MA Economics (Political Economy), MSc Strategic Studies and a Master of Research (Political Research) specializing in peace and conflict studies.
She told me that for some of her time she had stayed in Hillhead Halls of Residence where I had also lived in the first semester of my first year. In fact, the Halls opened that very year - 1968. We shared stories of Old Aberdeen, Seaton Park and of the freezing cold weather!
If this coincidence had not occurred then I would not have followed up on Ma Myo’s biography, thinking of her instead as just another of the consultants and visitors who come in and out of this office. However, after meeting her I was so happy. Reading her biography made me think how proud the University should be of this most extraordinary woman.
I knew she was a well-known activist who, along with many of her fellow citizens, had spent years fighting against the military dictatorship which took power in the former British colony in 1988. I did not realise she had done so much; a Coordinator for the Burmese Democratic Movement Association (2003-04); a Media and Campaigns Director for the Democratic Federation of Burma (2004-08); and an elected Joint-General Secretary of the Free Burma Federation (2008-12). She is the founder and Executive Director of the Myanmar Institute of Peace and Security Studies (MIPSS), which she created in 2013 to help facilitate peace and the reconciliation process in Myanmar. She is facilitating the Myanmar Peace Process as a Technical Advisor to the Joint Monitoring Committee (JMC-EAOs), and she is also an advisor to the security sector working group of the Union Peace Dialogue Joint Committee (UPDJC-EAOs) and a technical support person for the Alliance for Gender Inclusion in Peace Process (AGIPP); the list goes on. I have only mentioned the degrees from Aberdeen - she also has quite a few others [check LinkedIn!].
She has done so many amazing and brave things in her life that I am in awe of her and proud to call her a friend.
