In September 2009, while Carleton students were waking up to alarms and a pots of coffee, Janice Laws was waking up to mosquitoes, lizards and spiders, depending on the day.  

That’s because Janice Laws spent 12 months acting as a gender, child and vulnerable persons protections officer for the United Nations in Southern Sudan.

Normally, Laws says she works as a police detective sergeant in Montreal.

“Part of the UN mission’s mandate is to provide police officers either to do police work or to do training,” Laws says.

She explains how the RCMP recruits officers from police forces throughout the country.

Laws had previously been on a mission with the UN in Haiti and decided to apply again for the mission in Sudan.

“Some other friends of mine were going and I said well maybe I’m not too old to go,” Laws says.

At 45, Laws is older than most of the police officers she was competing with to get the job. “I’m quite proud of how old I am, because I passed the physical test,” Laws says.

Between September 2009 and September 2010, a day in Law’s life was very different from a typical Carleton student.

After greeting the various critters in her container, she would boil some water to make it drinkable.

“There’s so many things that can make you sick, between food, diseases, bugs and parasites.” Laws comments.

She would then prepare breakfast, equipped with food that her family had sent to her in care packages.

“You don’t know what they do with these boxes, but they look like they’ve been dropkicked from great heights.” Laws says.

Chocolate rarely survived the trip from Canada, which involved sitting in steaming warehouses and being dropped from UN helicopters.

To start her day, Laws says she would go visit her friends in their separate containers to make sure none of them were ill with malaria, typhoid, sleeping sickness or any other of the fatal diseases that they were all at risk for.

Laws worked with people from India, Zambia, Samoa, Philippines, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and the Netherlands, among other countries.

“The people you work with are really like your family, because you depend on them for your survival,” Laws says.

Some days, Laws would be busy training police officers.

She would often teach classes on gender-based violence and other subjects relating to her post, but she could be assigned to teach anything. Once she was sent to teach a SWAT training course, even though she had no SWAT training herself.

“They just said read the powerpoint, follow the other guy you can at least help with demonstrations . . . I ended up being the suspect in the bush that they had to arrest half the time,” Laws laughs.

One of the main issues Laws faced was helping the police officers understand the laws. Many of them were illiterate or didn’t speak English or Arabic.

All of the work coupled with the sun left Laws exhausted at the end of the day.

“You spent so long in the sun, you could smell your skin cooking,” Laws says.

Ultimately, Laws’ day started and ended with bugs as she would make the trek to the container late at night.

“You just saw apocalyptic bugs. Bugs the size of your hand,” Laws says.

A new respect for insects set aside, one of the main things that Laws says she took away from her mission was a sense of universal human connection.

“I believe that love is love. A smile is a smile. A hug is a hug. If you go in there with love in your heart and a desire to help people, you’re going to meet some, you’re going to help some.” Laws says.