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.

Independence Day

The 20th of May was the 10 year anniversary of independence for East Timor, or as they say here, “the restoration of independence.”  That’s because way back in 1975 when the Portuguese pulled out, the Timorese declared themselves as a country and even appointed a president.  Unfortunately, it only lasted a few months before the Indonesians invaded.  So 2012 is ten years on from 2002 when East Timor received official recognition from the world that they were an independent country.  East Timor was actually governed by a United Nations transitional administration from 1999 (independence vote) until 2002.  The 19th of May is actually the big day which leads up to midnight.  This is how our day went…
5.00am I get up to prepare for our boat to go to Atauro with Rahel (a Swiss girl in WEC) who is taking a group of Timorese to the island.  It was a first time for them to do an activity like this and it was actually Rahel’s final adventure before leaving the country.  (Thanks Rahel for all you did here in TL!)


9.30am I leave to pick up Mateus to try to get to Liquidoe in the mountains behind Dili.  To do this we had to weave our way through a myriad of tiny back streets dodging police blockades put in place to clear the roads for all the dignitaries arriving from overseas for the big night.  Timorese love a party and they love blocking roads to make their party look more prestigious.  By some miracle we made it through and up the mountain and after a couple of hours driving through the usual hair raising landslides we came to Liquidoe.  (Ok, this time I was genuinely a little concerned about one particular landslide.)

11.30am Inspect the building works that Mateus is doing on his school extension program. Its progressing, albeit slow and basic.  He’s all heart and making a good effort.  The bush poles which constitute his school building are now clothed in Indonesian corrugated iron and the roof is completed.  The next step is doors and mesh for windows and a simple concrete floor.  Then a simple kitchen and toilet and hopefully the place will be ready for the first students.

   
12pm Lunch with Pastor Delphin to discuss a building project by Castle Hill Church.  They’d contacted me to see if I could shed some light on the situation about if the pastor was happy for them to prepare to build a school building for a preschool program he is involved in.  Unfortunately, it didn’t go so positive but I gave it my best shot.  (Castle Hill – report is coming your way soon) On the upside, Pastor Delphin was building something using mud bricks made by locals.  This inspired Mateus and he is very interested in using mud bricks for his building.
OPPORTUNITY FOR ADVENTURE:  Mud brick building in East Timor
Do you have some building skills with mud bricks or know anyone who has?  We could really do with someone coming over for a few weeks to show Timorese a few skills in mud brick building.  The mud bricks could be prepared before you come and we can assist in accommodating you.  Only for the adventurous in heart (serious request!)
1.30 pm Then I helped Mateus and his staff of “Serving Our World” to hand out school packs for his students who seemed to pour out of the mountains in a continual stream.  Each pack included: a school bag (mostly pink but the boys didn’t seem worried), a box of coloured pencils, a lead pencil and an exercise book.  The kids were pretty happy.  There’s a bit of very noticeable malnutrition and stunted growth among the students which reflects the tough, dry mountain environment in which they are trying to survive.

After this, we zoomed back down the mountain to pick our way back through road blocks and finally make it home.
5.30pm We then received the tired adventurers back from Atauro and pushed the boat back up the beach.
9.30pm After dinner we launched the boat again with a small crew from Seeds of Life to cruise around to Tasi Tolu (the beach where they held the Independence Day celebrations)  We picked our way through East Timor’s small naval fleet of half a dozen boats hoping that we didn’t look like invaders and skilfully missed the reef (almost) to land on the beach.  Here we found a stack of dignitaries including the President of Indonesia and Australia’s governor general among many others. 


VIPs galore gather at midnight.                       The people enjoy live music.
The Timorese president serves five years.  Hence, after 10 years, right on midnight, they raise the Timorese flag and appoint the new president – Taur Matan Ruak. 

Flag raising ceremony               Tau Matan Ruak hugs Horta         

I think its an historic moment for East Timor with a sense that they are really moving forward and at least beginning to see a brighter future emerge out of their difficult past.  It was marked with a great display of fireworks – probably the longest lasting that I’ve ever seen.

     Martin, Rob, John and I

1.00am We headed back home on the boat (avoiding all the traffic jams which was the point of going in a boat), pushed it up on shore and flopped into bed.  Thank you, Lord!

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.

Returning to Oz

This is our final week in East Timor for 2011. It was a pretty rough journey at the start. We thank God for looking after us and for building the house we now live and work in. We have had great opportunities to help people here in East Timor and have done lots of fun things.  Its been great to have a number of visitors and teams come over to help their neighbours. 
I included a random little video for your entertainment.  Dont get too excited though...

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The kids are REALLY looking forward to getting back to oz.  We have a few tropical diseases we’d like to knock off while we’re there.  We’ve been having a bit of a chess craze here and Israel is giving his dad a run for his money.  Serenity is growing up into a fine young lady and will be a bit sad to leave Taffy the cat and Buddy the dog behind.  
 
 
 
 
Some updates:
The sewing room Belle Kria has done its last run to the market.  Our truck wanted to put on its best performance for its final run – almost empty of fuel, no oil so the engine tried seizing up, and a main fuse broke a needed a bit of dodgey adjustment to get home.  I have decided to sell the old girl for $2500 (apologies to Tweed Salvos).  The market night was quiet but the girls made a few sales.
 

 
 
The building team is a substantial way through building the block wall for the Nazarene Church in Dili. 
 
A final report was made to Wycliffe Bible Translators regarding Bible distribution.  We will have distributed about 1200 of their scriptures by the end of the year and about 1200 New Testaments translated by the Catholic Church.  We also hope to coordinate a big Bible distribution trip with Mateus while we are away. He will take approximately 300 or so scriptures to deliver to churches in the Viqueque area. It will be about a 2 week journey.
Tobias is off on another trade run.  He made about $150 profit on his 2nd run (an improvement on the $40 profit from his 1st run).  He swapped a goat for some rice to the value of $50 and I sold it for $75 to some guys in our village planning to buy a wife.  They were hoping for a price of $600 but it turns out she’s a bit more exxy at $6000 plus 6 cows.  You gotta be careful who you date around here.  The value of a girl depends a lot on where she comes from.  Anyway, back to Tobias, we hope he returns safely this Wednesday with another load and we’ll talk about how he might continue while we are gone.
Mateus continues to build his school at Liquidoe.  The big news is that he finally took the school shirts up that were   donated from South Grafton Public School.  This was very exciting for them.  Instead of going to school in rags they wear a new shirt and really feel like its a proper program.  Thanks heaps to South Grafton Public School and the Grafton Community Church for this donation.
 
Sese is using funds we supplied to him (ultimately from nice folks in oz) to continue building his training centre.  He bought concrete blocks and is working hard with local volunteers to raise the walls.  This will be for a discipleship training centre for the new organisation he is heading up called “Fini Transformasaun”  or “Seeds of Change”.
 
We’ll supply funds for the water tank and corn seed silo tomorrow and arrange their transport to Los Palos while we’re in oz.  Thanks to donations from the Palmerston Crossroads Church in NT. 
 
Other stuff will be wound down while we are away.  We hope to return next January but have some serious issues with the Lismore housing project.  We need a miracle.  Anyone know a miracle worker?