'A once-in-a-lifetime challenge.' (Diane and Jim Lubin, assigned to United Nations Transition Assistance Group in Namibia)

This year, UN statters Diane and Jim Lubin will not hear the mating calls of frogs in the stream outside their log cabin overlooking New York State's Hudson Valley. Instead, they are in a remote corner of Namibia, helping in the birth of the new southern African nation. "It's a once-in-a-lifetime challenge", Jim said before his departure in mid-April.

He and his wife, Diane, are among the hundreds of UN employees heading for Namibia as members of the civilian component of the United Nations Transition Assistance Group (UNTAG) The Lubins have been assigned to the Otjiwarongo district, in the central plateau region some 200 miles north of Windhoek. There they will help in the four-month electoral process and elections that are the centrepiece of Namibia's transition to independence.

Jim Lubin, 53, is from Burtonupon-Trent in the United Kingdom, where more beer is brewed than anywhere else in England. Diane, 43, was born in the quiet college town of Onconta, New York, in the United States. Theirs was a UN romance-he is Chief Editor of the UN Yearbook, she a copy preparer and proof-reader. They married in 1981, just after Jim returned from a stint in southern Lebanon as Chief Personnel Officer for the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL).

"When you're in the field, you can see that everything you do has an immediate impact on the life of the people around you", he said. "The everyday acts of kindness make such a difference."

He recalled: the Fijian soldier in UNIFIL who "adopted" a small boy orphaned in southern Lebanon; the staff and troops collecting $1,000 for a holiday party for the children of the area, with gifts distributed to Muslim and Christian alike by a soldierly Father Christmas"; and consoling the farmer whose house had been destroyed during some fighting, with no answer as to why the UN was unable to prevent such an act.

"The trouble is that the local people in a conflict area served by the UN often believe that the UN should function as a kind of protective government for them-and they can't understand why it cannot", he said.

Having built their log cabin and brought a Greek windmill into the twentieth century, the Lubins know they are "not afraid to rough it", as Diane puts it. They have constructed walls and shingled roofs, living sometimes in primitive conditions, with no running water, electricity or nearby stores.

After a gruelling two-day briefing on Namibia-covering all aspects of UNTAG duties, including discussions on ways to ensure courteous and impartial treatment for all Namibian citizens during the election process -Jim said he was impressed by the standards set for the UNTAG staff.

"They've gone to great pains to select people who seem to represent all that's best in the UN-fairness, freedom, the ability to stress the Organization's objectivity without putting across their personal beliefs", he said.

After a year in Namibia, Jim and Diane expect to return to their jobs in New York. But, as Jim notes, a lot of other things could happen in the meantime, in places like Western Sahara or Kampuchea, for example.

"If the UN proves in Namibia that it can handle these situations", Jim says,

many more horizons could open up to people like Diane and myself".