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.

Trip to Ulmera

Sometimes we find it hard to know what to do on a weekend.  Its not like we’re stuck for things to do but sometimes we look for an opportunity just to take a break.  This weekend we settled on a little drive to the mountains to a place called Ulmera.  You head west from Dili along the usual scenic coast road, then head up into the mountains.  At some seemingly random point hang a right and you’re off into the bush with a little 4WD touring – in the dry that is.  In the wet it would be more serious.  We come to a sweet little cluster of houses related to our neighbours.  We sat and chatted and exchanged the usual cup of Timor coffee for a bunch of goodies from our standard kit:  clothes & things donated from Oz, a couple of cook stoves, a few Bibles.  We also checked out the water source which is the usual hard luck story of a little spring way down in a gully with an arduous hike to carry it up to the house.  For entertainment, I ask why the heck is the water downhill and the houses uphill?  Why not build the houses below the spring – it would be a whole lot easier to sort out their water.  At least two NGOs have looked at it and walked away.  We might have crack at it.  I haven’t done a water system in so long I’m beginning to go through withdrawals.

Xakira surveys the scene at Ulmera, climbing the ladder to a mango tree.

Folks sit at the spiritual house on the left, the small chapel on the right and the spirit post front centre surrounded by rocks:  gotta keep all bases covered.

An unfortunate possum with an uncertain future tied up around his hips at a local house
Some other pics…

MAF continues to save lives in more ways than one – 44 gallon drums will save many tonnes of farmer’s corn.  How many can you fit on one ute?

Cynthia and Emmy packing 100 hygiene packs for women – made by Bele Kria, funded by Rotary for Bairo Pite Clinic.

Joseph gets 4 laptops for training uni students.  Thanks to the kind folks from the Clarence for arranging this.

When Tim Came to TL

We’ve just had the priveledge of meeting Tim.  He cam to visit some friends but made the fatal mistake of asking if there was anything he could do to help.  “What are your skills?” I ask. “Carpenter,” he says.  Beaudy, I think to myself.  “Know any languages?” I ask. “Indonesian,” he says.  Double beaudy. This guy’s not going to get off lightly.
Suddenly, Samuel goes into turbo mode – why the heck did this guy not give me forewarning?! 
Ok, to the story at hand.  We’ve been wanting for a carpenter to come over for a week and move the youth centre forward and so I sent Tim off with my tool box and the ute with a couple of friends to Los Palos.  He was able to give them a boost with electrical, hand railing, doors and windows.  I am very thankful.  Hopefully a few mates from Darwin will be here soon to almost knock the job off.

Tim and a collection of friends from Kenya and TL – try to figure out who’s who.
 
Tim got to show the guys in Los Palos how to do a variety of jobs.  Great job, mate!
 


Uli and the girls holding the fort at Los Palos while Pastor Samuel is in Dili.


Its harvest time now.  Here one of the young guys at Los Palos is checking out a new device for getting all the corn kernels off the cob ready for drying and storage in drums.  More on this job later.
As a reward, I took Tim out to my favourite destination in Atauro – you have to have a little courage to hop in a small boat and cross the sea.  But the rewards were awesome.  We got to see the usual pod of dolphins – I’ll have to name them soon (except there’s so many – you can be Bob & Bob & Bod, and you guys could be Duncan & Duncan & Duncan – sorry, back to the story)  Also got to swim with some pygmy whales I think.  It was some first filming with my new GoPro birthday pressy – thats right folks, you all get to see what I see now.  Enjoy the movie.

Ok, so life’s not entirely without its mishaps.  Perhaps we should have checked our motor before embarking on the voyage.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.
There’s heaps of mammals in this sea.

We walked from Maker to Atekru.  Tim inspects a goat coral.  The flower hedges in Atekru touched our hearts.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.
 
Local girls preparing beans from their harvest ready to store for the dry season.

Emmy’s very cool hut where we stayed.
Atekru is a great village.  This time we were taken with the beautiful hedges of flowers.  I filmed a bit of diving through some tunnels.  Also spent some time following a local mate, Tobias, spear fishing – I like to think of it as underwater hunting, he hides, waits, stalks all under water.

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 Harvest

    This week I went on a round trip of the eastern end of East Timor.  The first stop was Los Palos to inspect a corn crop. This crop was the result of that movie we showed last year with the Darwin men.  We swung a deal with a member of the local house church.  The Darwin guys put in money for a silo and its transport.  Thats the thing that looks like a tank in the picture with their old “silo” next to it which is a beat up, rusty 44 gallon drum.  Seeds of Life donated some of their top growing corn seed and the farmer grew the corn.  Seeds of Life also gave 2 tarps for drying the corn and I put in two tarps and a hand made, hand cranked “take the kernel off the cob” machine.  They planted out 1.4 Ha of corn and have done very well.  They began harvesting soon after I left.  Its great to see this project moving.  We hope to fill the 2000L silo which should take around 1.6 tonne of grain.  About 50kg of the best seed will be kept to put in another crop.  We plan to seal up the silo and wait till October/November for the grain price to go up from 60c/kg (now) to $1/kg.  They will repay us the cost of the silo plus interest so we can buy another silo for someone else and continue the project.  Eventually the Darwin guys could get their money back and have supplied many large silos to poor farmers in this country – what a very nice investment!
                                      



Pastor Samuel eventually got his 7000L tank on the very round tank stand base which worked perfectly.  Its all hooked up to the guttering.  Now they have heaps of water for their family, their church and the veggie patch.  Thankyou very much to the Palmerston Baptist Church, NT for donating the funds for this.  




     Down on the south coast we gave out more tarps from Seeds of Life and inspected more corn.  One job was assisting the young Losconi group in building a large shelter to dry their corn in.  Specifically, I was showing them how to install black builder’s plastic under the slab to stop dampness rising up.  I breathe a sigh of when I get back as the roads a pretty wild.  There are countless landslides and we passed three trucks that recently rolled off the edge resulting in a number of deaths.  The government sprinkles around a number of excavators through the mountains just to wait for the next landslide and push a way through.


The presidential election went very well and proved to be a peaceful event.  Jose Ramos Horta has been knocked out of the game, leaving two candidates – Taur Matan Ruak (former Defence Chief?) and Lu Olo (representing Fretilin) – to go onto to a second vote.  The poster encourages people to vote with the words “Respect, Law, Peace, Unity”.  We passed packed out buses and trucks taking voters home from their epic journey to vote.

I got a job!  Big surprise for us.  The position is Climate Change Advisor (stop laughing) for Seeds of Life within the Ministry of Agriculture.  We hope that we can continue to serve the people of East Timor in this new role.  It will involve scientific research in the field of climate and advising the Timorese on how to improve their crop yields and look after their land in a changing climate.  This will help us to pay off a few expected and unexpected debts and perhaps live a little (although Samuel thinks our life is quite well appointed, the rest of the family beg to differ). 
As we live by the sea, we experience the reality of occasionally losing a life to the great blue.  But this time it was not to be.  A young man who was caught out in the high seas in his rather too small dugout was thankfully found.  His little boat was towed in to a crowd of over 100 very worried locals.
  
We also had the priviledge of hosting a baptism with the Potter’s House church.  (sure to send a query up a spine or two back home).  A great bunch of people who are keen to follow Jesus.