Confidentiality, stolen stories and the ethics of truth-telling

I couldn’t write like this in Australia. I like it, this outsider’s vantage – it lends itself to lyricism and expansive gems of whitewashed wisdom – but it has its dangers, too. Cameras are just one way to snatch a soul, and I am conscious that I am writing about a place that has no voice(s) in Australia. Beware, dear Reader, and note that pronoun – the endless I – if you need a reminder. You are reading the flimsy impressions of someone who has just notched her first month in PNG. Be careful.

Not everybody that I write about in this blog knows that I am keeping a public record of my time here. I am generally unfussed about this – I would never commit someone else’s secrets to print – but I have also been fooling myself that this is just a digital, somewhat one-sided version of the boozy debriefs that are the pivots of my life at home. Which is not quite the case, it turns out. According to a helpfully shaded map of the world, there are a hell of a lot of you reading, in places as far-flung as Russia and Malaysia and Iran. Which is very exciting to me (HELLO! THANK YOU FOR JOINING US!) but also a little daunting and complicated. Particularly when it comes to writing about the work that I do here.

I am a volunteer in juvenile justice and non-custodial corrective services. My work throws me into contact with some of the most vulnerable and the most stigmatised members of this small community. And the stories they tell me are high-risk in a number of ways – matters before court, for example, or the chance of reprisal.

Back in Australia, my silence would be mandated by organisational policies, or by my affirmation before the Supreme Court of NSW. Which is not to say that there are no acceptable ways to discuss my working preoccupations, but there is always a process of editing that goes on. We have it polished, my friends and I, rinsing our anecdotes of detail and identifying features. That is not how I write.

I can’t tell you, but I can’t not tell you, either: that would be a half-a-truth that missed the point altogether. These stories are the reason I am here, and the most compelling corners of everything I want to share with you. So I have decided to take some liberties.

Not often, but occasionally, you may read something here which will be less true. Not untrue, but maybe many truths, patched, layered, unrecognisable. If you want to know which bits I saw, which bits I read, which bits someone told me, which bits happened in another province or another village or three years ago or to somebody else – ask away. You can email me, or buy me beer, try your luck. I would venture to suggest, though, dear Reader, that this would be what they call Missing The Point.