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.

The Burden of the Funeral Ceremony

  
Last night was the big funeral ceremony amongst our Timorese family called “Kore Metan”.  This means “cutting the black” or taking off the black mourning clothes.  It was this time last year that my closest Timorese friend suddenly passed away.  It was a very difficult time for us.  The widow was left with 6 children to raise and many young people that they were supporting through school and university.  She has been living mainly off the proceeds generated through a house investment that I started with this man, Maun Je, in 2008.  One year after a person dies they have a special ceremony.  This ceremony is bigger than the actual burial ceremony and preparations for it have been going on over the whole year.  The grave itself has become a monument to local Timorese art.  I know of at least 24 families that are involved in this and each have specially agreed obligations for what they must give and receive around the time of the ceremony.  Lots of cows, pigs, goats, chickens, rice and alcohol have exchanged hands.  This requires substantial logistics to transport all the gear including various cars, trucks and even our boat going to the island (for cheaper pigs).  I have taken this opportunity to start my veggie patch as there is so much cow poo around and I know the animals will all be dead soon.  Extra kitchens and sleeping huts are built to accommodate the families coming for the festival.  Lots of sitting around, gambling, smoking and drinking (bingo for the kids) occurs in the days leading up to the festival as a sort of social activity.  At the time of the ‘festival’ itself, a large, 4-tier cake was prepared, 300 chairs hired, massive speaker stacks  and a huge feast was laid out on long tables.  A ceremony is performed where flowers are placed, prayers are recited and a ribbon is cut.  Traditional weaving is exchanged between the two main divisions of family groups.  The last of the mourning takes place and the black clothes are removed.  After formal speeches, we ate dinner at 10 o’clock.  (If you’ve ever read Asterix and Obelix comics as a kid then you’ve got some idea of what the feast may have looked like.)  After dinner, the music is cranked up and the party really starts.  All the young boppers dressed in full night club gear come out and boogie.  If you thought you were a party animal staying out dancing ‘till 1 or 2am then these guys will give you a run for your money – they dance all through the night until the sun gets up (6.30am) and then some.  Its not a real party unless you dance ‘till sunrise.  Don’t bother calling the police at 10pm for noise issues.  As far as parties go, it went fairly well.
Ok, thats what I call a fairly objective take on the whole deal.  But we, from the developed countries, are prone to making judgements so I will let a little out.  I think it was a bit over the top really – all this effort and expense (more than a year’s wages) being poured into a one year anniversary of a person’s death.  That’s trying to describe my thoughts mildly.  During the preparation a few days ago one of the three main ladies involved who was 7 months pregnant started to bleed and was taken to hospital (working too hard).  Her husband, the last remaining man of the three main families we live with went to visit her, taking Cynthia’s main sewing lady, Sinta, and had a motorbike accident on the way. 
We will support the two widows over the next month or so with money for basic food to survive as they have no money left and have even gone into debt to put this party on.  Sometimes people look down on Christians who go to other countries as ‘missionaries’ and try to change culture.  I’m not claiming to be a missionary but I am saying that, in the name of Jesus, if I could somehow influence these people just to take it back a peg or two and put a bit more effort into the living and a little less effort into the dead then I will.  Before you ram cultural tolerance down my throat I’d suggest you come and put your life on the line alongside these guys and see just what grips them.  On the theme of cultural judgements, I think we in the developed world could learn something from the Timorese and give a bit more attention to the dead.  Tucking away our rellie’s ashes into a neat box in a brick wall seems a bit too efficient and tidy for my liking.  I’m speaking about general things and not individual situations so I apologise if I’ve offended you.  I’ve probably just succeeded in offending the whole world… oops.  It has been quite painful watching our Timorese friends around us carry this burden so we are glad in a sense that it is over.  I too will try to move on from losing my good friend so suddenly last year which was who this ceremony was for.
This picture shows the detail on top of the grave – Jesus carrying the burden so we dont have to.  Thanks God.

Our Wedding and our new baby

We had the privilege of hosting a beautiful beach wedding at our house – “Sonrei House” (sunray).

We met Delinda, a lovely American lass, last year while she was working with the youth in the Nazarene Church. She was young, very sweet, intelligent, beautiful and single.  She was also assigned a similarly handsome young man to transport her around for her various duties – on the back of a motorbike.  It all seems very obvious to me even though I am quite a naive country bloke but it seems the Church itself was not so readily approving of what developed.  But that’s all history now and we had a great wedding on the beach in front of our house.  The bride was prepared in one of the rooms and came down the staircase to meet her man with two little Timorese bridesmaids, to be married off in a beautiful sunset ceremony.
 
Oh, and the new baby – we purchased him from a man down the road in our village for $20.  The locals thought that was expensive but we wanted to give this little guy an opportunity at a life that he might not get in another household.  He is very sweet, has brown puppy dog eyes, soft skin and a cute button nose…..

  
  

Finishing touches

Kids and Cynth are sick again.  Today Serenity had a temperature of 39.4 deg C.  She’s seems pretty happy considering.  I have been just working on the new house – painting, tiling and installing windows.  It feels very selfish of me to work on something that my family will use.  I tried doing one wall with plasterboard for the first time ever in East Timor.  The shops are always changing and getting new supplies (things we may have had for 40 years in Australia are just arriving here in Timor).  The idea was to give the Timorese experience at a new building technique.  For them, building a wall is about using flattened bamboo if you are poor in the mountains or building in concrete blocks if you’re a little richer.  The idea of making a frame out of timber and lining it with some flat, flimsy product seems very weird.  They said the plasterboard looked great but wouldn’t last long in a Timorese house because as soon as someone got angry there’d be holes in the walls.  The wall was looking great to me until it came time to plaster the joins and I found that the quality of plaster was not quite up to speed and it seems almost impossible to get a standard smooth wall finish – basically it dries too fast, within 2-3 minutes its unworkable in the bucket and dries within 5 – 10 seconds on the wall.  Needless to say my Timorese friends had all sorts of professional opinions about how I could improve my technique. 
The whole design of this house is quite strange to the Timorese, and its probably quite different from something in a developed country. I suppose it came out of a strange head.  But its great to see them get experience at new things and improve their building techniques.  They are realising that if a wall is not built straight (plumb) then its hard to fit a door to it and the square tiles don’t quite look right.  They are learning to bring their tolerances down from a few centimetres to a few millimetres.
The picture on the right here shows Apeu varnishing some timber – it actually takes a little coaxing to get them to do their natural smile long enough to catch on camera, but its worth it!
On the left here, Apoli is using a grinder to cut security bars for the louvre windows – notice that I’ve given him Australian standard safety glasses nicely placed above the eyes.  You may laugh but I am very impressed by this guy’s safety – he has boots on, earplugs in, the guard on the grinder is roughly right and his technique is good.  In East Timor, you’ve got to look at how much they’ve progressed rather than pick on a snapshot in time.
We hope to move in to the new house next week, maybe Thursday as we have visitors arriving early Friday morning, and then another lot the following week and so on.    


Preparations are also in full swing for the 1 year anniversary of the death of my good friend, Maun Je.  Cows and pigs are being brought in.  The firewood to cook the feast has been stacked and drying for the last month.  The new temporary kitchen has been built.  The grave is receiving its finishing touches.  The boys are talking about how they need to finish the house very soon to give time for the final cultural preparations for this ceremony.  Its still about 6 weeks away.  I would like to spend time with Anen to learn just what its all about in terms of how much rice, money, cows and pigs goes from which family to which family.  It took a day for them to work out themselves and involves 24 families.  This culture is so important to them that one of our workers a few weeks ago started dating someone from the wrong family and was severely beaten because of it.  If he ended up marrying her – it would send this whole transfer of goods system into unworkable chaos.  He didn’t show for work for at least a week.  I really need to work this thing out as I think its fundamental to their economic poverty.