20 Years in War Zones: Timor, Syria, Haiti, Sudan — He Tells It All

From a small New Zealand village with no traffic lights to the most dangerous war zones on Earth — this is the incredible story of John (JC). For over 20 years, he served in the New Zealand military and later with the UN, deployed to some of the most extreme places on the planet : 🌍 East Timor — living in a tent, sleeping with snakes 🏜️ Syria & Lebanon — during the height of suicide bombings ❄️ Antarctica — 6 months at -40°C 🇭🇹 Haiti — during the 2010 earthquake 🇸🇩 South Sudan — running humanitarian aviation during COVID 🇯🇴 Jordan — raising a family between missions He was in Sudan the exact day President Bashir was overthrown. He saw a country with possibly just one incubator during the pandemic. He survived, traveled the world, and built a family through it all. Today, he lives in Cambodia with his wife (who also works for the UN) and their two daughters. In this interview, he tells EVERYTHING: what UN missions are really like behind the scenes, what it takes to raise kids in unstable regions, the limits of humanitarian aid, and why he keeps doing it. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱️ CHAPTERS Chapters 00:00:00 Introduction 00:02:30 Growing up in a village with no traffic lights 00:08:00 Joining the Air Force at 17 00:15:00 First deployment: East Timor 00:17:30 Syria 2003: his first day in Damascus 00:22:00 6 months in Antarctica at -40°C 00:35:00 Haiti during the earthquake 00:42:00 Why the Haiti/DR border is visible from the sky 00:48:00 South Sudan: handling COVID with no resources 00:54:00 Living under sanctions with a family 00:56:00 The day President Bashir fell 01:05:00 Raising kids on UN missions 01:20:00 Why Cambodia now 01:27:00 Identity, roots, and what we pass on ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 🎙️ If you enjoyed this, subscribe for more stories of extraordinary lives. 💬 Let me know in the comments which part hit you the most. 👍 A like really helps the channel grow. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ #UN #Military #WarZones #Cambodia #ExpatLife