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.

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

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?

Time flies when you’re having fun

Heck, its a week before Christmas and I’ve barely thought about that tinsley event.  I must confess that my little-uns managed a successful winging and whining campaign that led to their noble anti-plastic father buying a plastic christmas tree! (once again, shame on me).  But here we are with a plastic Christmas tree lovingly decorated in purple tinsel and silver baubles flying in the face of every eco, moral and spiritual fibre of my body.
 
Serenity doing time at an old prison for whinging so much about not having a Christmas tree.
Back to less shameful topics…

I had a visit from an old friend, Marty, who came to drive the whole water filter thing forward.  He roped in his Timorese friend, Gaspar, to be involved in testing and hopefully developing a strategy for getting water filters successfully into people’s houses. 

Strangely, many Timorese in Dili have enough money and persuasion to buy filtered water for their houses.  They can actually filter their own drinking water using one of these ceramic filters.  Gaspar hopes to go to Luro to see how villagers have been using systems similar to these and what they think about it.  We think that Timorese will consider buying this product.  Gaspar may be able to set up a small business assembling filter systems and selling them.
Cynth has been working very hard helping the girls in the sewing room meet various orders before Chrissy.  One highlight was making a croc for the opening of new facilities at the Xanana Reading Room.  Xanana (TL Prime Minister) read us a crocodile story while a bunch of Timorese kids sat on cushions made by Belle Kria.  We also had the job of stretching a couple of his canvas paintings onto frames. 

Cynth and her confidence in stretching canvas
These were painted during his time in Cipinang prison in Indonesia.  (He was imprisoned for around 10 years?)  I was very nervously firing staples into Xanana’s canvas, but Cynthia was taking it all in her stride.

Back of painting:  ‘Cruel ? and life’ Xanana

Xanana, Cip(inang Prison), August, ‘94
One cool seed delivery was to Atauro.  Tobias got a job to distribute over a tonne of seed to 6 villages along the west coast of the island.  The little boat was a tad overloaded but the seas were calm. 

Loading seed into our boat in Dili.

Tobias gets the good seed to farmers on a rocky coast on the island just as the rains arrive.  (its packed in recycled water bottles).
They have very small cobs of corn and low yields.  In some villages they build a small house to store the corn with tin sheet wrapped around the posts to stop rats getting up and into the corn.  This becomes the family shed and stores grain, seed, fruit, legumes, timber and tools.




Corn cobs still in their husk, stored in the shed.

Seed and Jesus Comics to the island.

Going out with the kids in the late afternoon to catch dinner with a very long home made spear gun.
Timor Leste was once a Portuguese colony.  At Maubara there still remains an old prison that stopped operating in 1939.  Prisoners were sent here for crimes such as not paying taxes.  If you had no money (like most Timorese) you could kindly opt for doing forced labour which, if you disagreed could also land you in a place like this.

The cells were in the foundations, note the lower window, while the prison staff lived on top I suppose.

Soldiers barracks next to the prison.
  In 1925, a political prisoner, Manual Carrascalao was deported here from Portugal and tortured at the age of 24.  He ended up getting out, finding a wife, and became the manager of a successful farm up in the mountains behind this prison.  He did all sorts of cool things at this farm including coffee and vegetables and there is a fascinating round solid granite stone up there which I assume was for a flour mill.  This farm, called Fazenda Algarve, is hidden at the end of a rough road.  I found it in my search for old Portuguese weather stations because we have some old weather data from this site that is more complete than many other sites.  The farm still operates very well, is still owned by the Carrascalao family and is a testament to the skills of this entrepreneurial young man.

The old granite mill stone lying on the ground at Fazenda Algarve – fair chance Manuel had something to do with this time-less piece of rock.

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.

The Corn Mill

I have been working with Lino and Atina in Los Palos to build up a small agriculture business.  This is mainly centred around the growing, storing and selling of corn.  On the side, Lino asked about getting a corn mill.  Its a grinding machine that breaks up the corn into crumbs (not flour) for the villagers to make a soupy, porridge type meal.  He says that people will pay about $1 to have 10kg of corn milled.  The mill itself costs $680.  I didn’t do much on the business analysis side except to ask how many people would come each day to get corn milled and I think we had it worked out.  Lino was pretty keen to get the machine and somehow I just went with it – probably because he was brave enough to try my idea of buying a silo for the corn.  Thanks to the boys in Darwin for some of the start up funds for the mill.  Its a Chinese machine with a crank handle to get it going.  The motor (blue part) is a diesel and the guy in the shop couldn’t get it going for the first hour because the pump mechanism was stuck.  He drained the oil and pulled off a side plate to make some adjustments so when the video shows the motor going we were all actually pretty relieved.  The motor drives a flat belt which drives the mill (yellow part).
As I couldn’t take it to Los Palos, Lino arranged to come into Dili to put it onto the back of a bus.  For Atina, it was only the third time in her life to come down into the “big smoke” of Dili.  The second time for her was at the start of this year when they came to our place for a church conference.  Although she got very sick on the bus (vomitted a few times) she really wanted to make the 8 hour journey to see Dili.  She is a few months pregnant now so this may be her last chance for a year or two.  The machine is not exceedingly heavy but there was a fork lift nearby so we made use of it.  They tied it up well and Lino says he got it home ok.  We also bought a set of scales – very archaic (think ancient Egypt), a shovel and a scythe for their business.  He brought us a sack of corn from the first crop for our chickens. 


Seeds of Life have researched a new white corn for the Ministry of Agriculture to release to the people.  It is about to be launched so I decided to buy some early and hope to get it to Lino to plant soon.  It will be harvested in 4 months and be ready to sell as seed for the next wet season (begins November) so we hope to get a good price for it as it will be the first season that most farmers get to plant it.  This is all part of the game of trying to guess the future market.  We’ll see how it goes.  
 
Some other pics…
WEC wanted to film their dance class on the beach, so they asked if they could run an extension lead from Sonrei to power the music and some spotlights.  Cynthia and the kids enjoyed watching the free concert, so did a number of young guys on their way home along the beachfront.

 
Cynthia Hosted the most recent homeschooling afternoon.  She had a new family come along making 10 kids all up.  Here they are creating a marble race track using found materials! What fun!
 
Some sea activity…  A large army “boat” zoomed along the coast…

 And on Wed Anen, one of our neighbours ran to ask me if “they” could borrow our boat to go and fetch another neighbour, Gomez.  He had gone fishing way out at the horizon in a larger dugout with his small motor.  Apparently the motor broke down, so he had been attempting to paddle back but it was getting dark and they were worried about him.  He made it back fine.

Another load of boxes arrived through Rotary (From our home town -the Lower Clarence area of northern NSW.  The girls had fun opening all the fabric boxes and going through each and every piece to appoint its future use.  The boxes also contained a huge number of fabric inserts lovingly made by some sweet women in Oz.  Most went straight into packaging ready to be distributed.

HIAM Health invited us to attend an important ceremony.  Ramos Horta agreed to become their patron.  It was great to see Laura and Nathalia who were both vollunteering back in 2004 when we first met HIAM Health.
    
Samuel attended a Grand opening ceremony of a new Ag centre.  He took the opportunity to grab a few pics of a traditonal dance.

Samuel also met up with a Gideons group.