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?

Closer to home

Hi, its Cynthia here.  Samuel is away again, but just for a few days, and I thought it may be a good time to catch you up on the Bacon family.  Samuel hasn't blogged much lately and his last one was about the election.  I’m guessing/hoping that some one may actually want to know how Israel and Serenity are going!  Not to mention a few other small details.
Soo… we had 2 weeks here  without Samuel earlier this month - which was a first for us.  Thankfully Buddy was around to guard us from any danger (although only in the day, as each night he would wriggle out the fence and go and run wild, fighting with the competition and chasing the girls around – boys!) So really he wasn't much use cause he would arrive back home around breakfast time and sleep the rest of the day….hmmm.     Maybe Israel was our protector after all.
Our health has been pretty good, thank God!  Serenity and I have each had a 3 day flu which is nothing compared to the dengue running riot over here.  Lots of foreigners have been sick with dengue and we heard that something like 60 Timorese kids have died from it so far this season.  Pretty sad.
While Samuel was away we met a visitor who had just arrived in Timor.  His name is Bevan and he is a wheat farmer from SA.  Last Sunday we invited him along to the home church we hosted and he will be arriving tomorrow to stay with us for a while.  Speaking of home church, Paul came.  He works for MAF and has come for a week to replace John who is  with his family in Australia.  Earlier in the morning we had heard him fly out (a perk of living next to the airport) and we had rightly assumed he was doing a medi vac.  He explained later how he had picked up a teenage girl had been very badly burnt in a house fire.  Very sad.  I guess its good that she is alive though.  Her family are with her in the hospital.  She came from Suai, which is where Sinta comes from (Sinta works at Bellekria).  So in the evening I shared the news with her and later this week we may try and visit the family and assist in some way.
When we first arrived back in Jan, an expat here asked me to find or recommend a suitable young woman to train up as a housekeeper.  I asked Sinta, who seems to know about people.  She recommended 2 girls.  One lives locally and has finished school and was keen to work hard.  So we arranged for her to start a month ago and it has been going really well for them.   The other girl lives in Suai and and is a kind of orphan with another sad story – her father (Sintas relative) brought her back to Timor from Indonesia when she was a tiny baby.  She never knew her birth mother.  Then when she was still little her father was killed in 1998.  So she was “adopted” by her dads sister.  But recently this aunt also died.  So she now lives with her aunts husband.  And he is likely to find another wife which may fare badly for this girl as generally step mums are nasty to step kids here.  Just like the stories I suppose.  Anyway so we have arranged for an expat here to pay this girls school fees, and Sinta is keen to bring her down to Dili  live with her.  Its just a matter of finding the means for Sinta to go there or send a message somehow.
Also a  couple of expats have been bringing their unwanted items to us to distribute, and I'm starting to wonder if we should actually open an opshop of sorts somewhere, like this one in Thailand.  Its an interesting idea.  But instead I sent a lot of it off with Samuel to Los Palos for Pastor Samuel & Uli to distribute there.
What else….
Homeschooling has generally been chugging along well this year,  although I've had a particularly trying few days and feel ready to throw in the sack and let them run wild. But I hear that's just a normal part of teaching, and I’m sure I’ll recover and keep on going. Besides, I have to do something with them to stop them bickering all day :)
I hosted the Tuesday afternoon “homeschool” group, and after some brain games i got them to try and build a tower.  Yes Serenity had her hair in tiny plaits for a few weeks.  I do it as a treat about once a year.
Serenity is obsessed with Buddy and Taffy and rarely speaks about anything else… Is that normal?  I guess its better than some other obsessions.  Taffy is looking a little plump – more than halfway through her 2 month pregnancy. (well its 20 days to go apparently…) Both Serenity and Israel (ok and me) are very excited and cant wait till she gives birth to some cute little kittens.  They have made box kitten houses and play gyms and are currently making a birthing bed.  It keeps them occupied.   We had a sweet sunset a while ago and then Serenity took a photo showing two planets.  Israel enjoyed the rope swing.
Now that our house is more of a home I’ve noticed that they spend less time playing with the neighbours which is a bit of a shame I suppose.  The benefit is that they come home in tears less often. They still go and play a few afternoons each week and occasionally they bring a group of them down to our front verandah and play hopscotch or draw with chalk on the concrete floor.  We haven't been swimming so much this year.  Its too cold for me.  But it has also been pretty overcast and windy, and the current “current” often seems to bring the brown water from the river.  Most of the year the current flows it away from our beach, but this time of year it switches.  Haven't seen any crocodiles or dolphins lately.
Well thats about everything I can think to write about at the moment.
Oh and heres a giant caterpillar! If only it made a  giant butterfly.
I am sure Samuel will have some more stories to tell later in the week when he gets back.
Thats all folks

On the Run

I went on a big 3 day trip to the south side of the island to inspect some corn fields.  This is part of the work I do for an agricultural NGO called Seeds of Life.  My job was to look at their problem of drying corn.  The southerners like to get in 2 crops of corn in the wet season so the first crop has the problem of how to get it dry before it goes rotten.  Basically drying corn is about spreading it out on the ground or on tarps for a few days until its dry enough for shelling (taking the kernels off).  What happens if it rains during those days?  Your crop could be stuffed.  Its sort of important to avoid this.  A farmer can usually cope with this problem with the normal meagre yield but since East Timor is progressing we have the pleasant problem of how to dry several tonnes of corn in one go.  For most farmers groups visited, SoL will provide new large tarps (plastic sheets) for drying.  One group of seed producers is looking at a yield of around 4 tonnes so the plan is to assist them to build a simple thatched shelter of 6m x 20m for undercover drying.  The exciting thing about this particular task is that SoL is not just paying for it but loaning them the finances (aprrox. $1200).  Then they will buy the seed and pay them the price minus the loan.  SoL is happy to pay a good price, $1.50/kg as opposed to their normal 80c/kg, so the locals seem pretty happy (4 tonnes would yield $6000).  The reason I like it is that its not just another donated gift.   Being a loan, the Timorese need to weigh up the benefits of the drying facility against the cost that ultimately comes from them.  The ultimate question will be, “Will I lose more than $1200 worth of corn if I didn’t have this drying facility?”  Given that a couple of years ago they lost almost the whole crop due to this problem then  I think it’d be a good investment.  We got to stay in a very well appointed Nun’s accommodation facility while there.  They were also already well stocked with Bibles which made me happy.  The guy in the hat is Budi, an agriculture advisor from Nepal that I work with.
Straight after this I was off again on a two day journey with some jovial Japanese to Venilale in the mountains behind Baucau.  Bit of a bummer as it meant 5 days away from the family.  We drove passed a site in the mountains where 60 years ago, the Japanese forced Timorese to dig caves into the mountains to store artillery to fight the Aussies.  Strange isn’t it – driving happily in a car with a Timorese, 2 Japanese and me the Aussie where 60 years ago our grandfathers fought each other.  Hmmm… anyway, back to the story of doing penance for our sins … This was to inspect a site and meet a group for a small biogas digester.  I had a rushed meeting friday night with a Japanese expert and subsequently changed my neatly thought out design for a digester :(  .  Its a cool mountain location which is concerning as biogas (methane from poo) is best produced at around 33 deg. C.  They put on a very nice big feed on Saturday and since we got no where near finished I’m pretty sure they served it up again on Saturday night (no fridges mind, and no guarantee the beast was killed that day either) and since we still didn’t finish Saturday night, I’m pretty sure they served it up again on Sunday morning – reason being, I’ve been suffering terribly bad diarrhea and have been on the run ever since, so to speak.

The rain-is-a-coming, Oh, Yeah!

Samuel is out of town, and has asked me to do a bit of a blog update for him.  He plans to return tomorrow night and will try to add a new update over the weekend.  So here are a few highlights of the last week or so.
We have had 2 heavy downpours suggesting that the rainy season is beginning.  Our garden is full of bok choy. ( this means we eat lots of green leafy veges much to Israel and serenity’s disappointment :) )  We also have a number of tomato plants in various sizes, a few coming out in flowers, and some watermelon and cucumber seedlings.  We have been able to share some veges already, which is a lovely feeling isn’t it?
Our boat went on its first camping adventure.  Some friends hired it for 4 days planning a trip east along the coast.  The night before they left one of the friends pulled out ill, and Samuel asked if he could join them, so off they went.Serenity Israel and I stayed home (read “not exactly excited by the thought of seasickness and sleeping on sand”).  Mind you, we ended up joining them all for one night at the end of the trip.  We survived.
 
They found some lovely camping spots tucked away, some great snorkelling and beautiful views of the island!They saw dolphins, a whale, and later a group of wild monkeys playing on a hill.
Back home, the sewing room is plodding along.  We had Ange turn up again after 8 months maternity leave.  She finds her way from the other side of town each day – dedication.  She is the eldest daughter of one of our neighbours and has some great creativity.
Samuel also whipped up a set of lockers for motorbike helmets.  This is to be installed at the Seeds of Life office.  Building the frame wasn’t too stressful, but fitting 15 doors took some perseverance.               
Other things – Israel just finished a course of antibiotics, and serenity is battling a re-occurring earache.  We seem to get it under control with regular drops of a water/vinegar mix but then she goes swimming again and….anyway she is attempting not to swim for 2 weeks starting today.  Wish her luck…the water is perfect – flat, warm, shallow.
Oh and how can i forget?  We have been spoilt with some lovely whale watching – me and the kids have seen about 5 in 3 days from our dining room.  Yesterday a huge one was cruising west about 200m out.  We studied some identification details and are pretty convinced it was a blue whale, although it may have been a fin whale (similar to the blue whale but a bit smaller.)  Just awesome!

My Monotony

This week seems to have been the same monotonous run of work, keeping Timorese employed, supplying Bibles, fielding new requests, fixing things that have broken and managing sickness and injuries. Seems a bit boring but I’ll try to pull out some interesting stories.
The girls discovered straw hats.
One story is a Nigerian Doctor who called me a bit out of the blue to ask for help to build a shed for his plastic bottle recycling plant so he can earn money to support his Epilepsy treatment and advocacy organisation. Make sense? He’s a big man with a big heart. I’ll see if I can find time to see him this week. He has 40 tonnes of bottles stacked up – mountains! Did you know that they sell for 50c a kilo? While meeting me at home, he got to check out Cynthia who was suffering a fever and tonsillitis. Also, he’s part of a small local church and was very happy to receive a box of scriptures giving me the same expression I’ve heard so often, “Wow we’ve been wanting to find scriptures in Tetun for so long but didn’t know where to get them. This is amazing!”
I was also helping folks to buy all their gear for a good solar system for their library in the mountains – a bit of an art to assemble a workable system in this country. At the end of the day we dropped off their gear at Ahisaun (a disability centre) and I just happened to be introduced as the man who distributes Bibles to a Catholic priest there who works in Hata-bulico (quite remote mountain town). He is from an Indonesian island called Flores. He was very keen to get some Bibles so he followed me home and I gave him 50 New Testaments and some other scriptures for his Bible study groups including one of the precious last remaining copies of Genesis (the only OT scripture available). It turns out that his name is in the epilogue of the New Testament as one of the Priests who checked the translation. This is an important connection for me to ensure I can continue buying Bibles from the Catholic distributor without getting too hassled.
Padre Adriano from Flores, working in the mountains of Hata-bulico
The following night, at the markets, I met a girl working with PALMS (Catholic volunteer agency) who seemed rather desperate to build a fence in ... Hatabulico! Small world. The problem they face is that animals are getting to the village spring and they want to protect it as well as their vegetable gardens. I’m hoping I can help them with a bamboo fence. I am so wrapped in bamboo! There are three things you need here to grow a garden, three things to secure food for your family – 1. A good water supply, 2. A good fence, and 3. A willing heart to work. If you can help the Timorese with these three fundamental things then they can grow good gardens. We packed up from the markets to come home to find the truck had died yet again. After a couple of hours I called my mate, Anen, who came and wobbled a piece of wire in the engine bay where a fuse should have been and had the truck started in 2 minutes flat. I rumbled into home after 1 am. The vehicles are a bit of a drama – three flat tyres this week and the accelerator cable snapped on the Suzuki. Last week, the brakes on the truck started smoking and I had to reset one side including pulling apart the slave cylinder. Still struggling with it.
Started building the chook pen this week as a demonstration concept on how to keep chooks more in a more viable way. 6ft fence made from ... bamboo! I have taught boys who have taught other boys who now work for me making fences.
Finalised drawings for submission to government for the new conference centre for the Nazarene Church. We hope to get them water this week and then start on their land drainage problem because the rains have just started. (Our ‘you-beaut’ all-natural thatched roof leaks, doh!)

The family has been sick and its been difficult for Cynthia. She’s a brave lass. The kids are also pining for the sweet delicacies of the mother country.Israel working hard in our new veggie patch. 

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.

Measles

The World Health Organisation says that 700,000 children die anually of measles.  Many suffer eye complications and become blind due to poor nutrition and the compounding affects of diarrhoea often associated with measles.  Vitamin A drops can be given to help repair the eyes if given in time as well as a dose of tetracycline.  I thought measles was just one of those uncomfortable sicknesses you didn’t want to get.  You got spots and took a few days off school.  Apparently though its a big killer and its why in Australia they try to immunise babies and children from the disease.  Cynthia didn’t get immunised.  NSW Health issued a warning in March about the risk of measles especially from those who’ve recently returned from an overseas trip.  It seems as though this disease is ripping through south-east Asia at least.  For us, in Beto Tasi, it means many children and young people brought down with a terrible suffering sickness – high fever in the hot tropics, vomiting, diarrhoea, intense coughing, increased heart rate for extended periods and very sore eyes.  Basically, its something you just don’t want to get.  We thought we were safe as we watched people dropping down around us.  But 10 days ago it hit Cynthia.  She doesn’t have the biggest sort of body so she doesn’t have a lot of reserves.  In our family, she seems to get by with not too much sickness but this time she was hit hard.  She also has a hole in one of the valves in her heart.  For these reasons sometimes I feel bad about bringing her into a world like this.  We took a couple of the sick to a clinic in town but there was not much to be done.  Some of them made an arduous journey way up into the mountains to seek medicine from what you might call a witch doctor.  For Cynthia, it was a case of taking panadol and laying in a dark room with the fan on (while the electricity works).  Unfortunately the electricity was bad enough during this time that the villagers resurrected the old hand pump to get water.  The usual way of getting water here is from a bore with an electric pump.  We have an inverter and some car batteries for back up power for times like this to drive a fan. But of course, it was during this time that I was lending our inverter to a local micro-finance organisation to test as a battery backup to drive a computer to manage small loans for the poor.  Ooops.  Needless to say we are desperately looking forward to moving down to the new house.  We plan to install solar panels and batteries and an inverter (which I wont lend, I promise).  It also catches sea breezes, which you might think is a luxury, we see it more along the lines of an asset especially valuable in times of sickness.  Cynthia is recovering but her main complaint is very sore eyes.  The room must be almost completely blacked out and she is going a little crazy in the mind with nothing to do as she can’t use her eyes for reading or using the computer and she certainly cant go out of the house.  She’s a bit scared but I think she’s going to be ok.  I have issues with positive thinking which I am also trying to deal with. 
On a lighter note, I took the kids to a party with the theme of wheels.  All the kids had bikes to ride and last night we were oiling chains and pumping tyres in preparation for the big day.  Serenity made a cape in the sewing room from scraps as a present for the birthday boy.  Israel loved the challenge of riding around a big concrete circle with about thirty other little kids all teetering on the edge of having a mass pile up.  Dad on the sidelines was pretty worried but they did him proud and came away unscathed. 

Darwin Team

Last week we had a small team from Darwin visiting the Nazarene Church in Los Palos.  There are a lot of benefits to to having people over from Darwin.  They know about living in the tropics, they are used of long trips on rough roads and they have seen buffalo before (thats gotta count for something).  Samuel went with them to Los Palos after having a bit of difficulty getting a suitable car.  Its great to see Pastor Samuel and Uli using the new training and accommodation building.  The team got a bit of a reality check I think with how poor the local pastors are when we found that they didn’t have the $40 to finish tiling in the meeting area.  But the place looks great and they even have a gas stove to cook on!  This means a lot to Pastor Samuel who suffered terribly from TB and constantly coughed with the smoke from the fire going through the old house.   We got involved in  English lessons  where we presented them with Bibles.  On Saturday night we went to a bible study where Samuel shared a message in Tetun and got to hand out more Bibles and then on Sunday morning we shared in the church service where Pastor Bruce was able to preach.  The road back is getting pretty washed out now and unknown to the team, but very soon after they got back to Dili the road was washed out and has been rendered impassible.  Now the road to the west and east are both washed out and it looks like the road over the mountains is about to go as well.  Add to this, the only ferry service to Oecussi being out of service its getting pretty hard to get around to large parts of the country.  Once roads are down this has a big impact on the economy and other services such as medical runs and aid and development work. 
We are getting enough work to get by on, hallelujah, and Samuel will be away all next week trying to fix a roof for an agricultural research station.  The mission base down by the beach is still getting built.  Hopefully this week they will have walls finished and ready for the roof.
I’m pretty sure this is an Indonesian style roof but I wonder if it has  a Portuguese influence?  In any case, I am really not sure why the roofing iron doesn’t go over the wall.  This leads to lots of leaking where the old iron meets the wall.  Then the roof timbers rot.  Mix in a heap of white ants, rat chewed electrical work and alfoil thin roofing iron and there’s only one white fella stupid enough to get up on it …. yours truly.

Return to Oz

In the last few days in Timor we had to finalise a number of jobs in order to keep projects running while we were away.  Cynthia has been working on a women's project which is looking great and she has begun a trial with a number of Timorese ladies.  Its a woman's thing so she doesn't want to go into detail here.  Two days before leaving we got to meet an American named Lon.  He flew in especially to take the Los Palos project from its foundations up to the walls completed.  He seems like a great guy with a calm composure.  He's had experience in Guatamala with building techniques in poor countries.  I think he's got what it takes to do the job.  We do not have time to inspect it together due to the remote location of the project.  So we sit down and I go through drawings and photos of the site.  There's one catch - he works in imperial (feet and inches) and I've done all the drawings in metric.  He assures me he'll work it out because he has a tape measure in with both measurements.  I believe him.  If he pulls it off in three weeks, I will return with a team of 8 Salvation Army soldiers an have a crack at putting on the roof.  But as the Bible says, its the Lord that builds the house - if not, we work in vain. 
Ofcourse, in true Samuel style, I inspect a new project possibility - the water situation in Beraka -  on the last day in Timor.  The aim is to see if we can improve the water collection point and also the water quality possibly as a side job with the team.  There are some issues in this village with many of the people wanting to give more alliegance to the water spirit in the mountain than to God whom they also profess to believe.  This has some interesting implications for how we approach any work in water here.
So we leave these things in Gods hand and return to Oz to do what we gotta do there. 

A Death in the Family

A death in the family


Over the last 2 months, our neighbour has deteriorated from being able to walk around in his garden to lying in his bed unable to speak. He has destroyed his liver through drinking alcohol. He is only about 50 years old. Last week it looked as though he would not recover. I spent some time with him in prayer and read, as best as I could in Tetun, Psalm 23. I talked with him about how he needed to prepare himself to meet God. Early this morning he died. Cynthia heard the mourning and woke me up. It was a sad time. He leaves behind a poor wife, two sons and four daughters. The three younger daughters are 15, 9 and 6. They are very upset. People started streaming in from the villages around and before the sun really had a chance to get up men were bringing in tarps, ropes and bamboo poles – a place had to be set up for people to mourn. Next came cartloads of timber, large buckets full of pots, pans, bowls and knives – to cook and prepare meals for all the people. Tables and chairs were carried in and set level. Without asking, money was given to by sacks of rice, sugar, betel-nut and other necessities. A pig squeals – there will be meat for lunch.

Over the next two days more pigs, goats and a cow are killed. The body is buried with wailing, prayers, flowers and candles. It’s a very hands on experience. A few of the young men dig out a previous grave. Out comes the old coffin, grave clothes etc and the cement lining is repaired. As the coffin is brought to the cemetery the men begin mixing cement to make the cover slab. They place the coffin beside the grave and have a bit of a discussion as to how to lower it down. Some argue for the “just sort of lower it down with your hands” approach while others argue that it might fall and it would be a good idea to let it down with rope. The rope idea wins and rope soon materialises through the crowd. They need to spin the coffin so the feet point to the east, loop the ropes and lower the coffin. There is a crowd of about 200 people. As men mix concrete and set crude formwork for a slab to cover the grave the women begin the prayers. Soon the concreting is completed, flowers are added and candles are burned. For the next 4-5 days the vigil continues. People go about their daily business and return in the evening to sit with the family through the night – until the sunrises. Night after night. Various explanations are given for this vigil: to look after the grave, to chase away evil spirits or to help the family not to think about their loss. You may start to think what a fascinating and wonderfully supportive culture. That is true, but there is a sinister side that starts to make me angry. You see, so many people come and they all want to eat meat (its usually vegetarian around here) that they start killing the poor widows pigs and goats. Not only is she poor, with three young girls to feed, she has lost her husband, and now they eat her animals. Money is collected for the widow and then gets passed on to an older brother (possibly to pay for a cow he bought to be killed an eaten by the crowd.) The night vigil turns into more or less a gambling party with multiple groups sitting around playing cards, bingo, gambling, smoking, shouting out their wins and generally having a great time. As the nights wear on the money gets bigger. The young girls in the family seem to be forgotten in the midst of the festivities. This is happening all around our house. I walk around in dismay and disbelief knowing that these people will eat her out of house and home and then leave. I am assured that they have no big intention of helping this widow in the future. They ask me if this is different to Australian culture.

We have quietly hatched a plan that will provide for this poor widow and her family. We want to offer an investement opportunity in a beach villa that will rent out to repay the loan and provide for her. If you are inspired to help this lady and have money to invest then please contact us.

Sick, sick, sick

Rosina - a girl who lives with Anen's family preparing a meal next door

The video here shows our neighbours laying the foundation to build a beach villa to rent for income - its an investment project that we hope will provide income for this poor family.  We haven't got the money to complete this but we do have some interest in someone investing in it.

This week most of us were sick most of the time. The sickness seems to be some sort of fever that leads to a cough and lung congestion. We all seemed to get this to varying degrees. Israel also got a bad eye infection (the mucus drying on his eyelids and gluing them shut while he slept) as well as a heat rash. Cynthia found this week very hard as she was weak with her sickness and also worried about caring for the kids. On top of this, the blinkers on the truck died (ants got into the flasher unit) and Samuel spent ages going around town looking for the simple replacement part. After 2 days he came home with something that would “make-do” but unfortunately rewired it incorrectly, fried it, melted the battery terminals in the process and spent another couple of days going through the wiring. (God please send a mechanic!) He checked one last dingey spare parts shop and found another “close-enough” part, wired it in and hey presto, it worked! I get pretty frustrated when a 15 minute job takes 4 days but our life and times are in God’s hands. Glory to Him.

a tonne of timber for Los Palos roof

In these times its hard to find the good bits that make you think its worth while but then we think of the projects going on around us - the Los Palos training centre is moving forward and the builder was able to lay most of the foundation; Anen our poor neighbour has started laying the foundation for his beach villa rental project and Maun Je has started a new villa as well with another Aussie investor who has seen our work (very exciting that past work is growing!) plus lots of other stuff - this gives us encouragement to keep going.  In the end though, we give thanks to Jesus for his love.

Our first villa project with Maun Je - back in 2008

Anen in his family begin a new beachside villa

First a holiday!

Well, Samuel really tried hard to do nothing much, and spend lots of time together as a family.  The heat is very oppressive, so we spent the first 2-3 days sleeping, swimming, eating.
We have been swimming at least once a day, often twice.  Its so lovely in the water - I wish we could conduct all our life while floating there! :)  Also our lovely neighbours have been cooking lunch and dinner for us, and sometimes buying us some of the small loaves of bread for breakfast (a child walks around the village selling them in the morning.)  So it has been a pretty decent holiday for us.

The other kids have been a little shy, but gradually they are warming up again, and they love the fact that they can go swimming with us!

Israel was very excited to help the kids cut up the Tali for pig food.  Its a palm tree trunk.  (Dont worry, those large knifes are blunter than butter knives.)

Like I said Samuel really has been relaxing and enjoying himself, but we have had lots of friends to catch up with and each of them have put in requests already!
On our first day, we had a few first aid issues to assist with.  At least 3 members of our family group have had an eye infection.  So Samuel fixed up a bike and rode to a chemist to get some antibiotic eye drops.  While he was out and about, he visited Esperance (Hope in Portuguese) - The christian mission WEC.   He was able to speak a young nurse (who happened to be there), about another neighbour who is suffering from a swollen stomach and feet.  Most likely a damaged liver, as he is an alcoholic. There is not much to be done for him, although increasing his protein intake will assist balance the fluid.
While at Esoerance, Samuel also gave some technical support as they were having trouble with their data projector which they use for their children's program.

He also checked out a few trucks and was happy to find some available for $5000- $9000.