End of the Dry

We are coming to the end of the dry season in Timor-Leste. That is a busy time for people working in the field of agriculture. Seed for distribution needs to be packaged up, new seed needs to get into the hands of the right farmers, and new plans are made to improve productivity. I’ve recently looked back over the last three years of working with my friend Lino on improving his corn yield. The good news is that every year his yield has gone up. We estimate that in the 2010/11 season he harvested around 0.8 t/ha (tonnes per hectare). Then in 2011/12 he harvested 1 t/ha. In 2012/13 this went up by 30% to 1.3 t/ha. Last year, he was very happy with his harvest of 2 t/ha. He’s been trying a number of new things on his farm such as improved seed from Seeds of Life, increasing organic matter with a bean vine, planting the corn closer and using a little urea. Its hard to say which technique has led to the most increases in yield and also how much the weather has had an impact. We hope the improvements we’ve introduced have made a real difference but in the end I am thankful to God – it is God who makes things grow. As well as increasing the yield we are working on decreasing his labour. A great story from this is the corn shellers which take the kernels off the corn. I’ve recently been asked to order a 40ft container of these and some corn grinders to distribute to farmers (funded by IFAD). This brings the total to almost 6000 shellers – which means 6000 households that can shell the corn more easily! If you’ve tried to do this job you’d understand how excited we are.
This season Lino is ready to make some big changes. Two of his big challenges are all the weeds and the white grubs that seem to be eating the roots of his corn. Unfortunately, I am turning to chemicals to try to resolve this problem – roundup and furadan. I’ll be working with him to limit the impact of these chemicals to just the weeds and those who want to eat the corn but I can’t help feeling that my clean, green soul is slowly ebbing away. My rational head says that using roundup may result in less ploughing which means you trade diesel fuel for roundup. The careful use of the toxic furadan might offset the heavy use of chemicals on imported foods since there is higher local production. I think your head can go round and round on this stuff. In the end we’ll just try to be as careful as possible and hope that the chemicals are a temporary arrangement. We’ll also have a crack at a fancy seed planter and increasing the plant density which is still quite low at 2.2 plants per square metre. He’ll be trying about 1 quarter of his field with this new technique and we’ll get the results by around April next year.
A very cool little story: my neighbour Anen has finally repaid his home loan for his three units. This is a great achievement after 4 years of work to build then rent and manage three units for foreigners. Like a previous neighbour, Amena, Anen also got the opportunity to build a fourth investment house during this time as a spin-off from the first 3. He has demonstrated a beautiful principal that a poor person, given the opportunity of finances and guidance, can completely change his future prospects. He has been very faithful in making his repayments. During this time he’s also invested his earnings (he always collected half the rent) in renovating and expanding his own house, taking on teenage student borders, putting his children into good schools, improving his neighbour’s house who is a widow and helping his extended family in the mountains. The ripple effects from this one family can only be known by the good Lord. We’ll be discussing a new project for him next year.
Personally, I’m feeling a little dry so I hope that soon the dry season will end for me too.

Happy fish.


Nervous fish.

Trip to Ulmera

Sometimes we find it hard to know what to do on a weekend.  Its not like we’re stuck for things to do but sometimes we look for an opportunity just to take a break.  This weekend we settled on a little drive to the mountains to a place called Ulmera.  You head west from Dili along the usual scenic coast road, then head up into the mountains.  At some seemingly random point hang a right and you’re off into the bush with a little 4WD touring – in the dry that is.  In the wet it would be more serious.  We come to a sweet little cluster of houses related to our neighbours.  We sat and chatted and exchanged the usual cup of Timor coffee for a bunch of goodies from our standard kit:  clothes & things donated from Oz, a couple of cook stoves, a few Bibles.  We also checked out the water source which is the usual hard luck story of a little spring way down in a gully with an arduous hike to carry it up to the house.  For entertainment, I ask why the heck is the water downhill and the houses uphill?  Why not build the houses below the spring – it would be a whole lot easier to sort out their water.  At least two NGOs have looked at it and walked away.  We might have crack at it.  I haven’t done a water system in so long I’m beginning to go through withdrawals.

Xakira surveys the scene at Ulmera, climbing the ladder to a mango tree.

Folks sit at the spiritual house on the left, the small chapel on the right and the spirit post front centre surrounded by rocks:  gotta keep all bases covered.

An unfortunate possum with an uncertain future tied up around his hips at a local house
Some other pics…

MAF continues to save lives in more ways than one – 44 gallon drums will save many tonnes of farmer’s corn.  How many can you fit on one ute?

Cynthia and Emmy packing 100 hygiene packs for women – made by Bele Kria, funded by Rotary for Bairo Pite Clinic.

Joseph gets 4 laptops for training uni students.  Thanks to the kind folks from the Clarence for arranging this.

A mind like mine

Still plugging away out here in Timor-Leste.  Things seem a bit frantic in my mind as we get ready for the wet season.  Farmers depend on the rainy season to grow their staple crops.  The general plan is to grow as much food as you need for the year in one crop.  So they dig up an acre or so of land and plant their corn.  Or the flood a field for rice a bit later on.  Many farmers only get one shot at this.  And we only get one shot at helping them to improve techniques and try new ideas.  In Seeds of Life, I’ve been organising 100,000 Maringa tree seeds for seed packs that will go out to the groups that Seeds of Life work with.  Its just  a small part of our work this year but it ticks a nice greeny box inside of me.  There’s also all the velvet bean seed to prepare for growing mulch on the fields, a 40ft container of corn shellers and grinders to order and the weather stations need to be calibrated before the rain comes.
Cynthia has found the inspiration (from Lord knows where?!) to plan a serious expansion of Bele Kria.  The last few months have seen the girls employ extra women to fill women’s sanitary pad orders for distribution through NGOs.
The water filter thing is gaining momentum.  But since yours truly is so stupidly busy I’ve palmed this little baby off to Serenity as a small business.  So she’s busting out her wallet to pay for buckets, filters, taps and the labour to make them and then managing sales and distribution.  She manages this with an excel spread sheet to show income, expenditure and wot-not.  She’s also communicating with China to negotiate the import of supplies.  So it seems it did not take long for her dad to corrupt her innocent childhood existence and thrust her into the adult struggle for survival.  But I think she’ll learn from it, turn a profit and deliver affordable drinking water into Timorese households.  Not bad a for a cute 14yo.
Thinking of a little forestry venture in my lack of spare time.
Bought a bunch more new testaments which are going out like hot cakes (including another order to Ireland).
Got 10 laptops sent out to us from Graham and Lynelle.
Lots of cool folks have visited us recently – we love all you visitors (more or less).

Took a sweet little group of Campus Crusaders out to Atauro.  They saw dolphins and whales for the first time in real life and mainly had a rest from their hard work of telling others about Jesus at the unis around Dili.  While bumming along the ocean surface for the few hours there and back I began to dream up a bigger boat – imagine a lightweight double hull structure with props mounted on drop-down hydrofoils and powered by air-pressure from air tanks filled using solar power. 
Yes, the salt spray does things to a mind like mine.  You should try it one day.

In the ruts of life

So it appears we might be in a rut of doing the same old, same old.  You know the usual hoohaa of life here in Timor Leste – bumpy roads, getting sick, giving a bit, lots of chocolate coloured skin and so forth.  The good news is that things are relatively quiet here.  Bele Kria has undergone an amazing business turn-around.  Just when Cynthia is about to give up, the women hold on and want to keep working.  There’s a re-shuffle in operation and for some strange reason some big orders come in for making sanitary pads which was Cynthia’s original driving passion for starting the group.  Red Cross have ordered 1800 pads and 400 bags.  CARE has also ordered 500 pads.  This has resulted in doubling staff numbers over the last couple of months.  There just seems to be increased awareness of this issue in general in Timor Leste.  We hope that this continues, not just for the sake of the small business but, perhaps more importantly, the women who benefit from this product.

Another cool outcome has been the arrival of 1600 maize shellers and 600 corn grinders.  This has been the result of 2 years of research and work on resolving issues around labour for farming families.  It started with getting my mate in Los Palos to write down every day about labour related to corn production.  We identified the area of getting the kernels off the cob as the next big issue (after improved seed, soil fertility, storage and fencing).  Thanks to support from Seeds of Life, we could order in a full container load of these hand cranked little beauties.  This little project really got absorbed into SoL and another project involved in supplying drums for corn storage (IFAD).  I’m toying with the idea of importing barbed wire and chicken wire along with more grinders buts its a tiring process.
I’ve finished a short course with 5-6 students teaching the Old Testament.  Some work has started on informally translating portions of the Old Testament.  Exodus 20, Numbers 13 and Jonah have been translated and are at various stages of draft checking.  The usual dribble of donated goods, clothes, laptops, scriptures and money leak out of our house. 
I got to go to Malaysia on a surprise invite to discuss historical weather data in Timor-Leste.  This was important to strengthen links between meteorology in TL with Met Services in other Sth East Asian countries.  Unfortunately, a country boy from Oz does not fit so well in the shopping mecca of Kuala Lumpur.

Inside Petronis Tower, KL.  Didn’t buy any make-up here but did manage a little conversation with security about taking video footage.
Malaysia is strongly Muslim which was an eye-opener for me, here’s a scene at Mc Donald’s.
On the subject of shopping, the kids were delighted to find a new brand of ice-cream in Dili – choc mint flavoured “Dung-Dung” ice cream.

We’ve been blessed with the visit of Samuel’s mum who came to stay with us.  We took her on a journey up into the mountains to check on a couple of weather stations and replace a data logger in one.  The road got a little rough with very deep ruts and the usual mud flinging. 
Serenity’s pretty keen to learn to drive.  Unfortunately, a recent sortie took us into un-tracked river.  Being the man, I got back in the driver’s seat to get the car back on track.  Instead, I got the Great Wall fully stuck in silty mud – after 5 hours of effort a mate pulled us out with a winch (only after pulling out a land cruiser that also got stuck trying to rescue us) …ooops

When Tim Came to TL

We’ve just had the priveledge of meeting Tim.  He cam to visit some friends but made the fatal mistake of asking if there was anything he could do to help.  “What are your skills?” I ask. “Carpenter,” he says.  Beaudy, I think to myself.  “Know any languages?” I ask. “Indonesian,” he says.  Double beaudy. This guy’s not going to get off lightly.
Suddenly, Samuel goes into turbo mode – why the heck did this guy not give me forewarning?! 
Ok, to the story at hand.  We’ve been wanting for a carpenter to come over for a week and move the youth centre forward and so I sent Tim off with my tool box and the ute with a couple of friends to Los Palos.  He was able to give them a boost with electrical, hand railing, doors and windows.  I am very thankful.  Hopefully a few mates from Darwin will be here soon to almost knock the job off.

Tim and a collection of friends from Kenya and TL – try to figure out who’s who.
 
Tim got to show the guys in Los Palos how to do a variety of jobs.  Great job, mate!
 


Uli and the girls holding the fort at Los Palos while Pastor Samuel is in Dili.


Its harvest time now.  Here one of the young guys at Los Palos is checking out a new device for getting all the corn kernels off the cob ready for drying and storage in drums.  More on this job later.
As a reward, I took Tim out to my favourite destination in Atauro – you have to have a little courage to hop in a small boat and cross the sea.  But the rewards were awesome.  We got to see the usual pod of dolphins – I’ll have to name them soon (except there’s so many – you can be Bob & Bob & Bod, and you guys could be Duncan & Duncan & Duncan – sorry, back to the story)  Also got to swim with some pygmy whales I think.  It was some first filming with my new GoPro birthday pressy – thats right folks, you all get to see what I see now.  Enjoy the movie.

Ok, so life’s not entirely without its mishaps.  Perhaps we should have checked our motor before embarking on the voyage.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.
There’s heaps of mammals in this sea.

We walked from Maker to Atekru.  Tim inspects a goat coral.  The flower hedges in Atekru touched our hearts.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.
 
Local girls preparing beans from their harvest ready to store for the dry season.

Emmy’s very cool hut where we stayed.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.

2013 Annual Report

We are doing well after a round of illnesses.  Cynthia is back from her medivac and working on a new diet to improve her health. 

Xakira is just starting to walk and getting very adventurous. We also recently bought a lovely gas oven, which we are all excited by. Israel has just got glasses and devours any books that get close to him.  What’s left of the books is often chewed up by Fudge the dog (Israel has a habit of leaving books everywhere). Samuel signed up on a new contract with Seeds of Life for 2 years with a new title as Cropping Systems Advisor.  This commits us to Timor Leste until January, 2016, at which time, Serenity would be 16 and staring down the barrel of senior high school!  Serenity is also the family fashionista and somehow convinced her dad to allow her to dye her hair weird colours. 

Samuel finally finished the annual report of our activities in 2013.  This is a great summary of some of our achievements in 2013.  Well, God’s achievements?  Depends if it was a good thing or not.  Anyway, check it out if you like.
Despite my great claims, I have not started building a training centre for Christian leaders.  Instead, together with WEC and others we have begun teaching a course for Christian youth leaders – which at present amounts to 5 students.  We hope it grows over time.

Christmas in Timor

We decided to have Christmas here in Timor Leste this year.  We hope to go to Oz in June to see the snow and catch up with rellies.  Unfortunately, this seems to have worked against us.  A bad case of diarrhoea went around.  We all got it but Cynthia fared the worst.  She struggles to keep weight on and is breast feeding Xakira as well.  She bravely fought the diarrhoea for about 6 weeks.  At 38.6kg and no sign of improvement we decided it was time to get serious.  A doctor confirmed this and ordered her out of the country on the same day.  Samuel, Cynthia and Xakira went to Royal Darwin Hospital where she stayed for 3 days – long enough to stabilise and diagnose it as cyclospora.  There’s still no culturing facility for microbes in Dili so its tough to diagnose unless you leave the country.  Thanks to Nick and his family in Darwin for caring for Xakira and her bewildered dad and the ADRA family in Dili for looking after Serenity and Israel.  Cynthia and Xakira are still recovering in NSW with her folks while Serenity and Israel are caring for their dad in Timor.
Samuel’s mum, Deborah, came over for Christmas in our hut by the beach.  We appreciated this and all the goodies she brought – thanks ma.  The more nobler gift was a corn grinding machine sourced in Byron Bay and donated by the Lismore CLC (oops … is this your latest name?).  Thanks so much.  We are hoping to use this to grind corn into flour to improve business opportunities for corn growers in Los Palos and supply flour to a malnutrition centre in Dili.  We hope to experiment with Moringa leaves which will be dried on the island and ground in with the corn.

Samuel drags mum out to a little water project – here the farmer has built a holding tank near the top of his garden.  Poly pipe flows from a mountain spring to fill it up.

The farmer’s wife gets a tap by the house for all her washing and water needs.  Mum suggests she shift the hut so the tap is inside.  The farmer’s wife just laughs.  Why would you do that?  Then your floor would get muddy.
Mum casting a technical eye over the farmer’s coffee mill.  Coffee cherries go into the hopper at left of machine.  He cranks the handle (in his hand), the beans come through the shoot and have their skins rasped off by a metal disc made from a 44 gallon drum.  The process requires water so its likely this will get shifted up closer to the house near the new tap.  Next time you have a cup of coffee, think of these mountain farmers – its just a tiny part of a very long process.

Mum shows a group in Liquica, Fini Transformation, how to fold paper cranes.

Sese makes a brief appearance at Fini Transformation’s graduation/Christmas party before heading back to England.
Pastor Samuel’s wife, Uli, has just given birth to a 3.3kg baby girl named Elsy just yesterday.  In this country they have some unfortunate practices such as pressing down on the mother’s belly to force out the baby and if that doesn’t work, cutting her opening.  This is sor of a standard practice.  I warned Pastor Samuel to not let them do this yesterday before the birth but they did both to Uli.  Pray for her recovery.
So I hope you all had a great Christmas and look forward to a challenging new year.  Set yourself a goal which stretches you – something that brings you closer to the person you aspire to be.
I shall keep promising to send you our annual report for 2013 shortly so you can see what we’ve been up to and where we are going.  Lets make this another sensational year full of weird and extraordinary activities.
The following is a few pics from Christmas in Timor

A manger set up for Christmas, Timor style, complete with …
buffalo…

camel…

and an angel.

Christmas shopping along main street of Dili – perhaps they should put caps on the reo sticking up?  This is a failed attempt to make a storm water drain (second time around).
Serenity and dad couldn’t pull off a roast chicken so we fried it instead – another failed attempt.  But Christmas is all about smiles and bon-bons isn’t it?