Mary, John the Baptist and Chris

Ok, I am struggling to find time to write on this blog thing.  I am getting a little exhausted.  I’ve got to find a better way to approach life.  There’s just so many cool things to do in Timor Leste.  One of the highlights was having some great friends visit us from Australia.  We got to climb the highest mountain in Timor – Mt Ramelau.

Driving up I saw some strange hollow logs on farms.  The lid on this one is made from an old wheel barrow.  What is it?  Its a Timorese version of a grain silo, painstakingly hollowed in a special way for storing corn.  The idea is to stop rats eating the corn. 

The town of Hatobuilico – base camp at the foot of the mountain.

On the way up – great views of rugged country although a photo doesn’t do it justice.

This is what hiking up a mountain with a family really looks like.  “Do we have to go any further?”

Lunch on top with Mary and Mary’s keeper (centre back) and his little girl (far right).   They live on this desolate mountain top.  He’s not quite your Ghandi with pearls of wisdom but he’s a lot of fun for a chat.  Mary has a metal strap around her so she doesn’t fall over which is a good thing because it gets very windy up there.  Funny how a mountain top makes you feel a little bit closer to God.

 

Keeping with the mountain top theme, my mate Rob decided to take a group on motor bikes up into the mountains.  The track got very narrow and the mountains got very steep.  Unfortunately, Chris went off the track.  Due to the steepness, he travelled downwards about 10m before making contact with the ground again, or rather with a log which caught him on his downward flight (one of those classic cartoon scenes might help you to picture it, although nothing about it was very funny).  It also happened that the motorbike got caught on the same log which was helpful.  Due to the remoteness, God sent along a horse owned by a man named John the Baptist which was very helpful.
It took a couple of hours on horse back to get to where we could pick him up with a car.  I’ll try to put in a little video in memory of the occasion.

Chris is a great bloke who has done a lot of cool things during his 5 years or so in Timor Leste like improving the rocket stove, making our pizza oven and teaching Serenity how to play the song “Hallelujah” on the guitar.  Thanks Chris, I hope you come good and find your way back to Timor one day.

Salvo Friends

We are very thankful for a visit from 3 new friends from The Salvation Army: Commissioner Gillian from England, Major Kelvin from Australia and Captain Alberth from Indonesia.  We were able to go around and visit many people and organisations.  The plan was to get an overview of Timor-Leste and try to identify some needs.  It was a good opportunity to get to see places myself that I wouldn’t normally have reason to see.

The new church at Sidara is looking awesome – the previous version was burnt down by a disgruntled local.

The new me, attending meetings and sipping cups of coffee – urgh!  A necessary evil I suppose, made sweeter by nice folks including Bucko from Yooralla who tossed around some pearls of wisdom.

The Australian Ambassador was also kind enough to see us after we were stripped of dangerous items like cameras and phones.

Local grocery store.

A morning visit to Christo Rei – God even provided the lamb.

…which we happily consumed for breakfast (just kidding, heh heh)  Here we are with Sr Carlos from the Presbyterian Church.

Hera School is humming along.

The Great Wall in the river going up to Sidara – its the dry season now, very dry.

With sweet Branca and the loo I built behind the clinic 9 years ago with a Salvo donation from Grafton Corps.  They still use it!

The gardens at HIAM Health malnutrition centre where they not only restore kids lives but teach parents how to grow nutritious food.  Timor-Leste currently has the highest rate of stunting in the world.

By some miracle we got to see the Bishop of Dili who gave us a warm welcome.

One of the perks was a flight to see Pastor Samuel at Los Palos.  Thanks to MAF for their assistance with this.

Lining up the landing strip.

 

The very deep well dug by hand by Lino’s family in Los Palos – they still haven’t hit water.

Kelvin’s mature looks belie a rascal at heart.  Checking out the 3 wheeler used by the Nazarene Church at Los Palos.

Pastor Samuel hopes to be able to sell the white corn from the youth farm.  Stored in drums donated by MAF.

Checking instruments as I fly home – look mum, no hands!

Training Centre for Liquidoe

 

We’ve had a great visit from Rob and Chris a carpenter and builder from the  Gold Coast, Australia.  Rob has come a few times to Timor already and blesses us with his practical experience and caring heart.  Another plus is that he speaks Indonesia so they can operate fairly independently.  We just help to coordinate the next job, line up a few materials and they take it from there.  This time they built a training centre for the Serving Our World school at Liquidoe.  The function of this building is to provide a training room with either sewing machines or computers or both in a clean and secure environment.  A recent advance for the school was getting electricity which has made a facility like this possible. There is also a space for a school office, storeroom and cooking in the verandah out the back.  After trying to get mudbricks made up for a year by locals without success we resigned to using a stud frame plywood construction (eating up more Indonesian rainforest – o dear…)  The building went up pretty quick – within a few days. 

Rob and Chris employed around 15 locals who got an opportunity to learn a few new building skills.  I will go a one or two more times to finish electricity and lining the inside where needed.  Then we think it may be enough building for a little while in Liquidoe – its time to concentrate implementing more lessons and using the facility that they have more effectively.  A big thanks to these guys who have the courage to hop on the back of a truck and travel up into the bush with a few supplies and live rough in order to help the locals.

Our family is going great after some recent sickness.  Xakira is now crawling and cute as ever.  Her arms are bandaged with splints 24/7 now to stop her scratching an itch we think is fungal based.  Without this she would scratch until she bleeds.  So, like I said, going great.

Some other cool news:

A Tetun Terik translation of the whole New Testament was launched in West Timor.  Some people in East Timor speak this language and will benefit.

Jesus Comics are finally on there way to Timor after an 18 month campaign to get them.

Water filters have just arrived from America and more are on their way from Oz to provide clean drinking water for Timorese.

The Youth House is moving forward with the roof getting done.

We’re coming into a tight time for the small farm business in Los Palos where the group has a very short window to get registered into a new seed system before being allowed to sell their 1.7t of corn seed. 

More cook stoves are going out to villagers.

We built a pizza oven the other day so next time you come we can have some yummy pizza.

A corn sheller for Timor Leste

A while back now my sister brought a corn sheller from America for me to take to Timor Leste.  Its a cast iron machine that takes kernels off the cob.  These things were invented about 100 years ago or more by some Aussie guy (I dont really know actually but figured we Aussies should take the glory because its such a fine invention – and we dont mind stealing things).  In Australia, we stopped using machines like this about 50 years ago.  The technology is forgotten by most people and it was never passed on to people in developing countries who are left doing the job with their bare hands.  There are actually a bunch of ideas like this that can help bring practices out of the middle ages and into the 20th century.

I’ve finally had the chance to take it out to Lino to give it a run with some of his corn.  If you check out the video you might notice it was pretty hard to take the smile off his face while he was cranking this machine.  It took him about 20 labour days to shell nearly 2 tonnes of corn last season.  We reckon with this machine he could cut it down to 5 days.  Sturdy technology like this helps to make Timorese famers more efficient in their work and hopefully makes the whole farming business more viable.
We’d like to get this machine out to a heap of farmers across the country which will likely happen through connections with NGOs.

Now that I’ve wow’ed you with yet another cool idea… lets get a little D & M.  Is this actually a good idea?  What does it mean for a human to have more stuff?  Should the farmer buy it or get it for free?  Will this mean he gets hooked on our developed country’s vicious treadmill of always looking for the most efficient way of doing things?  What does production of this machine mean in terms of a carbon footprint and more mining to make all that steel?  Shelling corn can be a very communal activity where a bunch of family members sit around together for a number of days and all help to shell the corn while telling stories.  What will mechanisation do to that cultural activity if one guy is sitting there trying to rip through the cobs as quick as possible?  And before we jump to condemning me as a culture destroyer, what if I thought it was a nice cultural activity but they saw it as a tedious task struggling to get it done while it belts down rain knowing that the other family members will want to take more than their fair share of his corn in return for having shelled it? 
It would be pretty hard to get to the bottom of all these questions.  In the mean time, Lino looks pretty happy.

Keeping Busy

If this spot doesn’t get updated its probably because I’m too busy.  It also means my office is super messy because in the list of things to do, this comes before that.
Its been very busy and I dont have time to tell you cool stories so lets let the picture tell the story…

The cool great wall finally came and is getting put to hard work – here its carrying palm leaves for a little cubby-come-guest accommodation.

 
Some holey sheet (dont say it too fast) 100 of them, finally came from China to make more seed screens.  At $10 a pop it saves Tobias a lot of drilling.  My mate Tobias will attach timber frames before they go to farmers to prepare seed – part of Seeds of Life.

Cynth taking art classes – shes very good at what she does.

25000 Scriptures finally arrived for Wycliffe.  We’ve got about 6000 now so we’ve got plenty to do in getting them out to the people. Plus it keeps the great wall busy.

Polenta (ground corn) is another food product being done by a group in Los Palos to develop small business.  Looks great in the packaging but has subsequently grown weevils. whoops.

Piloting a pizza oven for another brain wave of ours together with Chris Hollonds and the Ahisaun group.


We had a great group of folks from Brisbane area come to tour the country and be our friends – thanks guys. They took Serenity for a hike up Mt Ramelau, over 3000m high (Kozzie is around 2200m). Pretty cold up there. Serenity did it a lot barfeoot.

The top of Ramelau with a nice statue of Mary.

Back home, Jack tries in vain to work out how to open a coconut.  Eventually Emmy sets him straight.
Hopefully next time I can write you a better story, sooner.