Lest We Forget

We attended the ANZAC Day dawn service here in Dili on Saturday.  This was a special occasion of the 100th anniversary of Australian and New Zealand troops landing at Gallipoli, Turkey, in World War 1.  We were invading Turkey at the command of Britain and after 9 months and 140,000 deaths we pulled out.  Dismal failure really.  But we Aussies look back on it as a defining moment in our national identity.  If we think too deeply about the politics of it all we start to get a bit prickly.  Strange really, on the face of it.  Its like our other “national anthem”, Waltzing Matilda – a shearer steals a sheep and when the cops come down to get him he drowns himself by jumping in a nearby water hole.  Yep, that would be our most famous song.  If you look beyond the surface of these events though, you’ll find courage in the face of insurmountable odds.  You’ll hear statements like, “She’ll be right, mate!” and “I’ll have a crack at it!”.  You’ll see a spirit that is prepared to fight for a fair go for everyone.  That’s what we Aussies like to celebrate even if we don’t really understand it ourselves. 

So why ANZAC Day in Dili?   Because their are Aussies and Kiwis here, still serving and assisting the security forces.  And even better, we have some folks from Turkey still here, left over from the UN connection.  Its a time to look back and remember the involvement that Australia and NZ has played in TL from World War 2, 1999 and 2006.  The Timorese are grateful for the most part and the beach and steep hills around Dili are not unlike the beach of Gallipoli – or so they tell me.

Lest we forget.

Salvo Delegation

I got to go to Australia again a couple of weeks ago – that place of unlimited fresh vegies and balmy weather.  I took Israel and Serenity for a little sortie out on the beautiful Lake Woolooweyah, Yamba, NSW.

Thanks to our good friend, Philippa, who lent us her stylish rainbow canoe.

Thanks to Mr Goanna who posed along the lake’s edge for some internet fame.

No thanks to those un-sympathetic fish who simply refused to nibble our bait.

 

Our makeshift camp with tarp and canoe – the mosquitos were very thankful for our humble offerings.

 

We returned to Timor-Leste with Cynthia and all the kids to have another round in the ring.  Cynthia is so brave.

 

This week I had the pleasure of receiving delegation from The Salvation Army to consider future involvement in Timor-Leste.

The crew with Mr Peter Doyle, Australian Ambassador in Timor-Leste (centre)

 

The team consisted of Major Barry Casey (from IHQ South Pacific East Asia region, London), Lieutenant Colonel Made Petrus (Secretary for Program, Indonesia), Lieutenant Colonel Graeme Rigley (Southern Territory, Australia) and Cadet Supriyono Da Lopes (Indonesia, originally from Timor-Leste) and myself.

Emmy explains the work of Bele Kria to Graeme and Barry

They stayed for a week and got to look around Dili, meet with some fancy folks and do a trip out to Maubisse where Cadet Supriyono (Sipri) comes from. 

Sipri’s spiritual home high in the mountains of Timor.  The large spirit house on the left is where traditional ceremonies take place.  There is a cob of corn for every male in the village hung from its rafters.

Traditional homes in Sipri’s village.

I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take some Bibles.  These were given to the school director to use for class readings.

Supriyono is a great young man who left Timor-Leste during the 1999 crisis as a 12 year old.  Through a very difficult journey he was eventually picked up and cared for by The Salvation Army.  He is now studying to become an Officer (Pastor/Minister) and one day dreams of beginning the work of the Salvos in Timor-Leste.  For me this is an incredible miracle – I had some hazy dream of finding someone like this but as the good book says, God “is able to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think, … to him be glory.” Eph 3:20

Ofcourse, I ought not to get my hopes up as the future is unknown, but it is fun to wallow in the possibilities for a day or two. 

Sipri, me and Timor-Leste

While this was happening, we were also starting on the foundations of the Beto Training Centre (finally!).  The boys have most of the trenches dug and are keen to get started on laying the rock foundations. 

Digging the trenches for the training centre.

Emmy and the girls are also keen to move out of their present work space so we’ll focus on getting that section built.  I wish we’d started it last year since we could really use it now.  Its a bit like planting a fruit tree.  You should have done it 5 years ago, but you’ll think the same in 5 years if you don’t plant it now.

Rojina, a neighbour, who cooks for the boys digging the trenches. She works very hard, is usually smiling and always friendly.  She is one of those rare & great souls who walk this planet.

The Road Less Travelled

Yes, I admit, “The Road Less Travelled” by Robert Frost (apologies if title and author incorrect) is a classic poem for me and I love the words and lines in it.  But yesterday I really got to take the goat track less travelled even by the Timorese.  But lets start at the start:  my mission was to deliver over 100 back packs to a senior high school on the island of Atauro.  But of course, who wants to go to all that effort for just one thing?  So I threw in some steel posts for the island soccer field (seeing as FIFA’s started again) and took 15 or so water filter sets, and also checked a weather station, scouted a ‘new’ path to Atekru and inspected Emmy’s Eco.

Cheeky grin from skipper belies a leaky boat.

Trick is getting over the ocean first to make it to the island.  Unknown to me, our boat had a hole in the “sealed” buoyancy tank.  The extra weight of water made the going very slow.  Seas were very calm though and we made it with no trouble.

 

Cargo loaded and off to Atauro in the distance.

First stop along the coast was the weather station at the police station – completely unkempt and over grown with trees and vines so it was rendered dysfunctional.  These trees grow up in just a few months in the tropics. 

Now where is that weather station?!

The poor single policeman was occupied with a young girl reporting sexual abuse.  It was enough to break your heart so I said a little prayer for her.  And gave him a water filter set so at least they could drink clean water.

Police headquarters where he has to deal with the tough business of the island.

Next stop down the coast was the school.  We off loaded here and set up the goal posts.

 

The school was very happy to see the foreigner so a school assembly was called together and they were VERY excited.  For a comedian it was a very easy crowd.  Timorese like to know a bit about you so when I got to the part that my wife was pregnant there was a big uproar of excitement.  So I took the opportunity to preach a few morals about how doing the wrong thing is like putting rocks in your back pack – life just gets heavier.  This works for them as many need to work 3-5 hours to get home from school (one way!) so you dont want a heavy pack. 

Presentation of the packs in return for million dollar smiles.

I was supposed to get to the part where Jesus frees you from your burden but I am not really sure if I got that far(oops).  So we had a symbolical presentation to one boy and one girl representative and a photo shoot.  Being a stirrer and given the crowd, I thought I’d put my arm around them both for the photo, and as expected, got a big uproar from the crowd again (oops).  Thanks to Lucas, Angela and the kind folks who sent us those bags.

I left the teachers with a water filter set also so at least in their staff room they could have a drink of water.  (teachers in Oz, spare a thought for your Timorese neighbours).  My demonstration on how to use the filter system was adeptly taken over from an amazingly bright young girl, Gracella, who immediately offered to go and fetch 10L of water to pour into the system.  She had been using the same type of system in her home which was received from a previous delivery. 

Gracella demonstrates the water filter system to her teachers.

Then I asked for a volunteer to go with me to find a path straight over the mountains to Atekru on the west coast.  Most people take a long round-a-bout path along a road through a number of villages. But I had a map and compass and thought there’d be a short cut.  I got one brave volunteer, Azer, who turned out to be an awesome young man. 

After a meal of fish, rice and coconut, we set off up a river, turned up some cliff country, climbed up grassy slopes, through forest and got up to the top of the mountains in 2 hours.  Awesome views.  Azer said that in Portuguese times, his ancestors would walk this path to avoid getting captured by the foreigners.  Now it is rarely used. 

Azer leads me up the top of the mountain, where you can see his home village in the bay of Atekru off in the distance.

From the top we headed down through rocky gullies closed in with trees and vines, limestone rock slopes and then into corn fields perched on limestone terraces and finally came to the last cliff over Atekru for sunset.

I stumbled into Emmy’s place in the dark where we feasted on freshly picked corn, beans, moringa leaves, fish and coconut.  I was very tired and dehydrated from the walk.  For a grand finale to the day I went down to the beach to wash before bed and found the most amazing phosphorescence.  Stepping on the waters edge sent out a spray of a thousand little stars twinkling in the water.  It was like a scene out of Avatar where he first walks through the forest at night.  There was no moon, and the stars in the sky were amazing so I just wasn’t sure which way to look. 

I woke up in the grass hut, had some corn and coffee and then headed off down to the beach to the boat.  You have to get wet to get to the boat so I did a quick snorkel only to be amazed once again by an incredible array of jelly fish.  The only thing jelly fishy about them is they’re made of jelly and they sting a little.  They come in all sorts of shapes and sizes and generally have some electrically colourful bits to them.  Some of them have something like neon stripes with strobe lights of fluorescent green and red cruising up and down their … o heck how do I describe the indescribable?! 

You’ll just have to come with me one day on this road less travelled.  That will make all the difference.

Apart

Things have not gone so well with Cynthia’s health at the start of the pregnancy.  I’ve had to take her back to Australia to try to figure out what is wrong.  Its a luxury we have of being able to hop on a plane and be back in the fancy world within 24hrs. Amazing.  After doing time in a couple of hospitals and all the associated tests, the doctors cant really figure it out.  I think its a combination of a weak heart, the pregnancy, wet season humidity and a thatched roof.  While it seems romantic, living under thatch can be quite stuffy with a lot of things floating around (and climbing around).  I stayed a week with Cynthia attending a very sad funeral and getting a rough fever for 5 days (its a Timorese thing).  Now I am back in Timor and Cynthia and the family are in Australia.  And frankly, I’m feeling a bit down and lonely.  I get to do some navel gazing too and at the end of the day I am here because of God, to serve Him, to love Him and to show others His love.  There’s plenty of opportunity for that and I am thankful to God for this.  But I am still sad to be apart from my family.  Cynthia is showing signs of improvement and maybe by Easter she can return but that would make me nervous because the wet season would not be finished.

On another note, that little “uprising” is still bubbling away in the east.  A grenade was lobbed at the car of the president of the parliament the other night in Baguia injuring some of his assistants.  Some houses were burnt and other things.  Apart from that though things are well and the corn is growing well and we all look forward to the harvest.

We are clearing the land for the training centre and putting in an electricity pole before digging the trenches for the foundations.

The other night we got to have a little “Graduation Ceremony” for the 5 students who completed our first Leadership Bible Course.  It was a great night of testimony and very encouraging.

 

Although there were only 5 who completed it, some of them have great influence to many people as they lead home group meetings.  And during the course, one of the students (no. 6)was promoted to lay pastor out in Los Palos.  We are now gearing up to run the course again this year.  Pray that we can double our success rate.

Me, all alone, a lone, lonely, loner.

Changing Times for the Family

The biggest thing on my mind right now is my sweet younger sister who is going through a very tough time.

The second biggest thing on my mind is my sweet wife, Cynthia, who cannot remain in Timor-Leste in her current condition.  It is time to pack her and the kids up and take them back to Oz.  The hole in her heart valve appears to be getting worse.  She’s had it all her life but has managed to get by until now.  The last two weeks have been spent mostly in bed.  So this Wednesday we return to Oz and put the kids into school for a couple of months and I will come back to Timor and we’ll just see how things go.  Of course, there are a bunch of things going on for us here which makes it hard to suddenly just leave.  We are not sure how things will go in the future but like all of creation its a step-by-step journey.  In some sense though, it feels as though my world is falling apart.

Meanwhile, things keep happening.  Anen, my friend and neighbour proudly owns his beachfront units with his loan completely paid off after 5 years. 

He’s just doing some painting with a change of tenants and the place is looking great.

I got to go out and shift a weather station to a new, more permanent location at Remexio, up the mountain from Dili.  The Government staff I work with, Florindo, is here spraying the station against ants which is the biggest killer of electronics.

The guy with the machete is collecting posts to construct a temporary fence around the station.

We usually have an audience, and here some local kids return home from school.  They also get our usual speech, “We’re measuring rainfall, so please don’t shoot this thing with your slingshot.” Time will tell.  For the adults, they get our other speech, “That thing measures wind speed, when the wind blows, it spins, and not the other way around – it does not bring a big wind here.”  Even in high mountain locations like this our stations have been accused of drawing big winds into the area by the little whirly-gig that sits on top and spins.  Although the kids don't really get it, this station will contribute to a raft of improvements that will hopefully mean a brighter future for them, albeit a decade or more down the track.

A side effect of sourcing rubber tubing for the corn husker was buying an extra tube for playing at the beach.

The other cool thing that happened was the first container load of farm products got delivered for a group I’m working with called the Nazareth Foundation.  We got barbed wire, star pickets, buckets and filters, corn shellers and grinders.  Its an exciting time of developing a group that I hope will be able to see problems in the field, research solutions on the internet and import necessary items to deliver innovative and affordable products to a Timorese market.  A second container coming will have some chicken wire which we hope will save the lives of a lot of chickens from unnecessary carnage.

Unfortunately, the quality of the barbed wire is not as good as I’d like but its a work in progress.

These and other things will go on hold though, while I take my sweet fam back to Australia for some serious medical attention. 

Good rains need a good corn husker

A spirit house called an “uma lulik” looks over a field of corn in the mountains of Luro, Timor-Leste.

Right now we are in the middle of the wet season.  It still doesn’t rain all that much where we live – the north coast of Timor-Leste is a comparatively dry location.  But up in the mountains and on the south and east it can rain heavy every day for an hour or two.  By now, all the corn is in and rice planting is under way.

 

How old is this rusty barbed wire?  About 3 years. I put it in with my mates from Oz.  The quality of the steel is so poor it has snapped in some places. Just one of a long list of reasons that keep these guys so poor.  The barbed wire was twice the cost of barb in Oz which will last 50 years before it looks like this (note that the fence was never burnt which destroys the gal). 

Last week I got the opportunity to visit Lino, my corn farming friend, and our test crop of corn. 

This crop is the first one that I was able to be on the farm on planting day to help out. Probably the single biggest issue he faces is getting plant density right – that is, the number of plants in every square metre.  Research shows that the best density is around 4-6 plants/m2.  When I first met Lino he was planting at around 1 plant/m2.  Its not just a matter of rocking up and saying, “Plant them closer!”  You’ve got to be persuasive and convince not only one farmer but the whole community since they make decisions at a community level.  In fact, after 3 years of working with Lino I’ve only managed to get him to raise the plant density to 2 plants/m2.  I guess I’m not very persuasive.  This year, I decided it was time to be on site on the day and work alongside Lino targeting 5-6 plants/m2.  The corn is looking great after 6weeks in the ground but its still early days.  They’ll still need to battle it out with white grubs eating the roots and the possibility of strong winds flattening the corn.

Some green grubs attacking the young flower at the top of the corn plant destroys the pollen needed for the cob. 

The good news is that there are plenty of corn shellers now out in the country just itching to shell corn. 

Yours truly with a bunch of corn shellers ready to roll. Anyone working with corn in a developing country should grab one of these!

Next challenge?  Make a corn husker!  Now why didn’t you think of that?!  If you don’t know what it is, just google “corn husker” and it’ll bring up a bunch of images of either very cute, blonde cheer leaders for some footy team in the US or a small hook thing that straps onto your hand.  Honestly, I’m more interested in the hook that straps onto your hand. 

Apparently those yanks have been using this thing for a century or two and keeping it all to themselves.  Since the corn shelling job has been reduced, corn husking is now the big task.  We don’t have good quality leather here so I’m going to try to fashion one out of an old car tube and some scrap metal.  While working on my new invention, Israel says, “Why do you want to make that? pulling the husk off a corn cob doesn’t take long!”  So we did the maths, say 15 seconds to pick up, de-husk and bucket a cob.  Say Lino has 1.4 ha at 2 cobs/m2.  Thats 28000 cobs.  At 4 cobs a minute, 240 cobs/hr, say 2000 cobs per 8 hr shift.  At that rate, it would take 14 days.  Increase your plant density and you’ll be husking corn for a month.  So its time to get inventing and reduce the work load.  Stay tuned…

First though, I had to get back home to Cynthia.  While we wait for a fast flowing river to go down, a bus makes a daring attempt to cross the causeway coming dangerously close to the edge.  You’ll be pleased to know we waited longer before crossing.

Unfortunately, things haven’t been going well for Cynthia and the pregnancy.  She’s been finding it hard to breathe with tight pains in her chest.  We ended up visiting two doctors.  We are banking on it being muscle strain creating chest pain and resulting in oxygen deficiency.  A bit of paracetamol and “tiger balm” appears to be helping.

Pray for stability, there are multiple road blocks trying to catch a “revolutionary”.  The Prime Minister is “reshuffling” his government, and just for your entertainment, I mention a grenade lobbed into a US compound, I mean, why?  The yanks are nice aren’t they?  They just let us steel the secret of the corn husker.