Department of Health Harmony Week Profile features PathWest staff - Sandra Rodgers

This week, Sandra Rodgers from the Department of Microbiology is featured in Department of Health's Harmony Week Profile.

As the daughter of Burmese-born parents, PathWest Administrative Assistant Sandra Rodgers recalls standing out at school.

‘I grew up in Kwinana, where there were a lot of market gardens and families of Italian and eastern European heritage,’ she says.

‘But in the early years I was the only brown kid at school and so I did get picked on a bit.’

While the irony of other girls rolling up their skirts in a bid to tan their legs was not lost on Sandra, she says it was not until the arrival of a new cultural group –– refugees from Vietnam – that she began to be regarded as less of an outlier.

She says that the cultural diversity of the Microbiology Department where she has now worked for 37 years – the first 25 of those as a laboratory technician – the environment is far more welcoming.

‘We have staff from a broad spectrum of backgrounds including people of Chinese, South East Asian and Ethiopian descent and who are Buddhists, Hindus, Christians and Taoists,’ she reveals.

‘In spite of all our differences, we all get on extremely well.’

Sandra says that perhaps due to her personal experiences growing up and being the ‘go to’ person in the department, when somebody new looks out of place or uncomfortable, she’ll make an effort to welcome them into the fold.

‘I let them know that we’ve all been the new staff member in the department, and that if they are not sure of anything they should not hesitate to ask,’ she says.

While her department doesn’t put on a specific Harmony Day event, members of the department do mark occasions of cultural significance, with Chinese New Year one such occasion, where staff of Chinese heritage celebrate by putting on a special spread.

Of her own heritage, Sandra says that although she was born and bred in Perth, she has always had an interest in Burmese culture and twice visited her parent’s country of birth – now known as Myanmar – the first time as a teenager to visit her ailing grandmother.

Sandra’s grandmother, who had been a school teacher, died during the family’s visit and Sandra says she experienced some of the Burmese traditions around death.

One such tradition was that all her grandmother’s former students would visit to pay their respects.

Sandra reveals that back home in Australia, cultural traditions were necessarily modified.

Though rice and curry was a family staple in the Rodgers household, authentic ingredients were not as easy to source as they are today, so spaghetti was often substituted for egg noodles in a favourite coconut curry soup.

‘Now, even though we can get egg noodles, I never consider it the proper dish without spaghetti!’ Sandra says.