Bernie Redisky leans on his porch railing and gazes towards Kimberley’s southern valley. The sky is surly. Heavy. Gothic. God rays pierce a distant green hill. He speaks in a graveled, slow cadence while staring at the familiar landscape: “Reminds me of Somalia,” Bernie says, then shakes his head.  “Ahhh….the rolling thunder.”

I only knew Bernie through what I’d seen and heard: How he’d been a UN Field Officer. How he spends half the year in Kenya with his wife and child, the other half in Kimberley where he was born. How, perhaps, he’s seen too much of the world’s sadness, how desperate people act when they’ve got nothing to lose. I’ve seen Bernie wandering through town: sinewy, a white tank top, khaki shorts, slicked-back hair, an old-world tan etched into his skin, something foreign to the Kootenay’s 21st century. Often, when I drove by Bernie’s apartment, I was struck by how meticulously he tended his lawn, hunched over on his knees, hand shears clipping errant grass, keeping what wants to grow wild, tame.  

I’m curious. “You travelled Somalia?” I ask.

He chuckles. “I’ve travelled a bit,” he says.

The following week, I’m having morning coffee on Bernie’s back deck. The sun’s rising over the Rocky Mountains. We flip through his expired passport pages: Macedonia, Kosovo, Kenya, Papua New Guinea, The Sudan, and Rwanda. He lights a cigarette, squints into the sun and taps his finger on an Afghanistan visa stamp. “This one here,” he says, then pauses. “Issued by the Taliban. Not many of those around.” With each page, Bernie shares a memory of a time and place, often with an overlying contrast between a physical landscape and its inhabitants: “Each country is beautiful,” he says. “Yet sadly, when its people have nothing, they have nothing to lose. They can do horrible things.”

I discover how, amidst chaos, Bernie sought solace in a country’s landscape: “Afghanistan’s irrigation systems are thousands of years old,” he says. “You drive through dusty, baked hills, then turn a corner, and suddenly everything’s lush. Vibrant. Green. Alive.”  He looks towards a ravine below his apartment. “On Somalia’s Juba River, I’d sit on the deck at night,” he says. “Once the generators were turned off, everything became still. In the moonlight, fifty meters below, I’d watch the faint images of hippos and crocodiles splashing in the water. It was like going back a thousand years.”

At times, Bernie hesitates to talk about various memories, like his post in Kigali, Rwanda. “The destruction happened so quickly,” he says. “When I arrived, the only thing wandering the streets were packs of dogs eating unburied bodies. Let’s just say, I saw a lot of death.”

How does a boy raised in Kimberley in the mid-50’s find himself travelling the world, working as a UN Field Officer, helping to rebuild lives devastated by strife and war?  

Bernie believes it all began in Wasa where he spent summers as a child. “Living with propane, oil lamps, and coal, you learn to figure things out. You’re fishing on the lake with your dad and the engine breaks down. You fix it. What else are you going to do?”

After graduation, Bernie travelled the world taking odd jobs, washing dishes and picking apples. “One night, I was eating noodles in a Hong Kong restaurant,” he says. “I heard a young Englishman speaking fluent Chinese. I said to myself, “Wow, that’s something I need to learn.’” When Bernie returned to Canada, he enrolled in UBC’s Modern Chinese History & Politics program. Four years later, his degree completed, he was off to roam the world again.

“I went to Vienna to see its history,” he says. “I stayed for six months, then it was time for another adventure. I went to the travel agency and asked, ‘Where’s the closest place in Africa that speaks English?’ The agent said, ‘Kenya,’ so I bought a ticket.”

Rwanda:

Bernie’s next post was in Kigali, Rwanda, managing a camp for International aid workers following the Tutsi genocide. “I was having a difficult time finding equipment and furniture,” Bernie says. “Everything had been looted. Walls were torn apart by people searching for money. Every mattress that wasn’t hidden had been stolen. I said to the colonel, ‘Your boys have taken everything. We need fridges, beds, washing machines.’ I was told if I could find alcohol, I could get everything we needed. The next week I walked along a convoy of trucks. I passed bottles to the drivers and soldiers in the back, and said, ‘We need that, that, and that.’”

While posted in Africa, Bernie witnessed unspeakable atrocities. I wonder how he emotionally coped with it. “You learn to adjust,” he tells me. “I saw a lot of death, churches full of bodies, and children who lost their fathers, but I was there to work. To get a job done. To help improve people’s lives. You don’t mix emotion with fact. I worked 12-14 hour days for 90 day stretches. I was too exhausted to worry.”

Afghanistan (September 11, 2001)

While most of us watched 9/11 on television, Bernie experienced it from the fields of Afghanistan. “On my way to Uzbekistan to pick up UN vehicles,” he says, “I got a radio message: ‘Don’t move. Stay where you are. You’re coming out.  It’s an emergency.’  At 4 a.m. they instructed us to return to Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan.  A plane was waiting to take us to Islamabad, Pakistan.”

The next day, in Islamabad, Bernie learned of the terrorist attack, of the thousands of deaths due to hijacked airplanes crashing into The World Trade Centre. “We were overwhelmed,” he says. “This is the most protected country in the world. It felt like Vegas, and Osama Bin Laden was holding four aces. No one knew what to do and what would happen next.”

Later that year, Bernie was posted in Afghanistan to survey displaced Afghans and assess their needs so UNICEF and international NGO’s could obtain information to provide support. “I had to navigate my way around interviewing Taliban militants,” Bernie says. “I had to mind my manners. Keep my nose to the grindstone and not interfere with their culture. They were very concerned about the promotion of Christianity. We weren’t allowed crucifixes nor association with women. I respected that. You don’t want to step out of line with the Taliban.”

For fifteen years, Bernie Redisky travelled the world with the UN, providing aid and development for citizens of countries impacted by strife: in Skenderaj, Kosovo, following the Kosovo War massacres, he assisted with the UN rehabilitation and reintegration of the military back into society; in Papua New Guinea, he ran a camp for displaced Iranians, Iraqis, and Afghans praying to relocate in Australia and New Zealand; in Somalia, where starvation was rampant, he organized food and medical supply trucks--highly-valued prey for hijackers--to be delivered to sick and starving villages; on The Sudan’s Blue Nile, he worked with the South African military to remove land mines and he conducted a study on how to repatriate Sudanese who fled North.  

The Most Valuable Lessons

In 2005, after fifteen years of working with the UN, Bernie retired. I ask him how he survived. What made his tenure with the UN so successful? “It was too tough for a lot of people,” he says.“ Interesting work? Yes. Dangerous? You bet. Some colleagues didn’t make it out.”

“Kenya. Rwanda. Somalia. Kosovo. Afghanistan. The Sudan. After each country and job for the UN, I learned more and more. I became more dependable. I learned patience and the humility to ask the most valuable question: ‘Can you help me out.’ Learn who the people are that know things. They’ll tell you what you need. In life, you just have to cross your fingers, hope lady luck is in the right place at the right time. Sometimes, in the end, everything just works out.”

Nowadays, Bernie spends half the year relaxing with his wife and daughter in Kenya. He studies Mandarin and keeps in touch with a few ex-colleagues. He spends the other half, typically late spring to fall, in Kimberley, often alone. “Sometimes, in all the confusion, you just have to be by yourself for a while. Get your thoughts together,” he says. “I saw a lot of sad things. Now, I garden to relax. Some people enjoy camping, reading, or go to the Sully for a beer. I take care of my garden.”