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.

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.

East Timor and the results of the job interview

We have finally walked away from the work in Lismore.  Of Course Samuel worked right up to the last moment before hopping in the car to go to Brisbane.  One of the more notable accomplishments in the last week (in Samuel’s mind) was the construction of a composting toilet complete with solar powered exhaust fan.  I hope it works.  The most notable accomplishment was really Cynthia holding things together, organising final appointments and getting supplies ready to leave Australia for an indefinite period.  We are really going out on a limb here.  We do not have enough money to do any more than just arrive in Dili and hope we get this job.  And we certainly don’t have enough money to come back again if this fails.  Still Samuel is adamant that you only live once and every once in a while you should take a little risk.
Stephen from CRC Churches graciously picked us up in Darwin in the middle of the night so we could sleep in a bed for a few hours.  The kids loved their dogs.  Thanks for everything guys. 
We arrived in Dili Wednesday morning  and were very happy to see old friends and East Timor.  We were welcomed back to the little family cluster and are able to stay in the original shared house arrangement from last year.  We spent the day relaxing, swimming, sleeping and Samuel studying documents and acronyms for the job interview.  Serenity and Israel got a little sick with fever possibly due to all the changes in aeroplane aircon and tropical humidity but seem to be ok now.




We checked out the new mission base and its looking great.  The boys are doing a good job and laying the blocks for the upper floor.  It even comes with a jump ramp out the front (which the builders are using to barrow up concrete for now).




 
Thursday morning I sat for the interview with a panel of 4 men – 1 Australian from the University of Western Australia and 3 Timorese.  The Australian didn’t know much Tetun and the 2 key Timorese didn’t know much English so I answered a set of English questions briefly in English, then translated the questions into Tetun and then answered them extensively in Tetun.  Interesting way of doing things.  You might be happy to know I shaved, bought an opshop paisley tie and Cynthia even ironed my pants (quite a feat in Timor).

…

Dumb job, who wants a job like that anyway.  Grmbl *;;###’^^  grr, grmmf.

When Cynthia realised I was not succesful in getting the job she went inside and broke out in tears.  What a disaster.  Samuel is ever the optimist and figures God probably has some other plan in mind.  Cynthia is not sure if heaven exists.  It was probably the paisley tie that did it.
So now what? Go for a swim.  Its a nice beach here.

A Hard Road

Disaster.  Christmas day we were taking a large load of scaffolding from the building site back to the builder about 100km away.  We were doing it on Christmas day because Samuel's family lives up in Lismore where the house is being built and Cynthia's family lives down south near the builder.  Dumb idea.  It was raining and coming down a hill Samuel lost control, we left the road and slammed into a large camphor laurel tree, rolled and finished up upside down on the road.  By the grace of God, we all lived.  I am still a bit surprised.  We all climbed out of a rear window that had smashed and hugged in the rain with blood running down onto our clothes.  Its a hard road sometimes. 

As you can imagine, the whole thing has shaken us up a bit and rattled our nerves.  We look to God for strength and wonder sometimes at how to go on.  Samuel feels pretty bad about this.  Just for your interest, we actually really loved this car.  Samuel used to make his own fuel for it - yep, it was a veggie oil car.  Samuel would filter out the chip crumbs and pour the veggie oil straight into the 2nd fuel tank.  We had many great adventures in this car.  But I have learnt that we should be thankful for what we have got and not be too sad about what we have lost.  I am so thankful for my beautiful and courageous family.  Hallelujah.

From the Ashes

It has been a difficult and emotional time for us in these last two weeks with the sudden death of our good friend Maun Je. Personally, I really felt the need to wind back a number of our projects and just spend time with the family group we live with who have lost a good friend, brother, father – basically the patriarchal leader here. You may remember that earlier this year we lost another father to alcohol related liver damage. There are only three houses in our ‘cluster’ – of the three families, two of the men have died leaving behind two widows, 9 children and about 10 other young people (from their mountain families) being supported through school. All this responsibility rests in the hands of the last remaining man – Anen, a 27 year old young man with his own wife and two young children. I have been slowly growing to trust and admire Anen over this year, being the neighbour on our other side.  Now as we stand side by side at our friend’s grave (right outside our front door) our friendship is forged stronger. On top of all this, we are in the thick of an investment project with Anen that is literally dramatically life changing for them in terms of finances. The problem is that Maun Je was our head builder. He was the sort of man that, when he walked on site, you could breathe a sigh of relief knowing that everything was going to be ok.  Now he is gone we must find strength in Jesus, that great and humble builder, the one who is always 'onsite'.   I believe that when someone dies, God knows whats going on.  Its just that I dont.  But I trust in Him and know that it is no good sitting down.  We must stand up, thank God that we are alive, pick up the tools and go back to work.  A number of Aussies have visited us in the last couple of weeks.  We thank God for them.  It is because of their encouragement and other donations (for which we are truly grateful) that we have decided to to get organised and become a more determined force in our struggle for people's lives here.  As part of this "getting organised" we have decided to appoint coordinators over various areas of our work and take on 3 new staff (we currently employ around 4-6 people).  With God's help we will rise from the ashes with a new resolution.

Sorrow and service

We had two Aussie men arriving Monday morning the 16th
We were a bit concerned about the arrival of these men as our truck was still in at the mechanics waiting for the brakes to be installed.  We had waited 3 weeks for the parts to arrive from Australia, and then they were too big, so they had to be filed down and adapted etc.  We were asking God to let it be ready so we could take the men to Los Palos for the week. 

Then our neighbour developed a severe headache in the early hours of Sunday morning.  He awoke with a scream, got out of bed and vomited, then walked a little way before falling over.  He improved slightly, enough to lay on a couch.  The severe headache persisted all day with no help from medication..  We urged and urged them to go to hospital, but he and the family resisted.  We put Serenity and Israel to bed, and sat up at the table trying to pray, read, sing.  I (Cynthia) heard some strange noises, and soon realised it was Maun Je's breathing - laboured and gasping.  I knew then it would not be long.  I started to cry.  I was so angry and sorrowful, I could not stop sobbing.  Samuel took me up to bed where I sobbed for a while before quieting down.  Samuel soon returned and urgently insisted i get up and get the children into the car.  As soon as the family became aware that Maun Je had stopped breathing they would commence their loud wailing throughout the night and the next day.  We both knew i was in no state to remain waiting for that to commence.  As we drove away all i felt was anger.  But the further we drove, the calmer i felt.  I no longer had to wait for the start of the wailing.  we called a lovely missionary who lived 5 mins away (thankfully she was still awake at 11:30pm).  She welcomed us around, and Samuel dropped me off to try and get some sleep there with the kids.  I lay weeping for a long time and finally drifted off for a few hours sleep before waking before dawn.  I knew there was no way he had lived.  Tragically he died around 11:30pm that night.  It was such an intense shock to us all.  He was Samuels’s best friend here and assisted Samuel in many projects.  He was fit and strong and didn’t smoke or drink alcohol.  He left 6 children behind in ages from 13yr old twin boys to a 3 yr old girl.  We now have 2 widows out of the three families living here.  Praise God Maun Je had worked with Samuel in 2008 to create 2 apartments which will continue to provide an income for his family. 
Samuel spent the night with the mourning family and drove to the airport at 7:30am to pick up the two men.  We were able to take them to the MAF house to do some internal painting.  Samuel was busy for most of the day helping witih various jobs related to Maun Je's death. Praise God our truck was ready to use again in the afternoon.  We then drove to Hera and stayed the night.  In the morning Samuel took the men to the preschool and built a cupboard with them.  In the afternoon we drove back to Dili for the funeral.
The next morning (Wednesday) we headed to Los Palos.  Samuel, Nick and Graham worked really hard to lay tiles through almost the whole house, including the "bathroom", and also brought it to lock up stage, with front and rear doors built and installed, 5 internal doors built, all windows fly-screened and security meshed, and a new slab out the back for a laundry space.

As it takes us a full day to travel each way, they only had 3 working days at Los Palos, so they really pushed themselves, working till after 9pm on the last evening!  Sunday morning we joined in the church service and Samuel preached a great sermon (more below). We drove back to Hera on Sunday afternoon, and stayed overnight there at Branca and Sorayas house.  In the morning Samuel checked on the water projects at Beraka and we also managed to visit Sidara.  We drove to Dili, did a bit of tourist shopping and then Samuel quickly showed Nick and Graham around our place and our projects, before driving them to the airport.

Samuel had been reading through Isaiah every morning.  On Monday morning he read up to 41:9.  On Tuesday morning feeling very sad and discouraged he read only 41:10.  He asked God whether he could take it on.  Then he walked out to the breakfast table.  His phone had received a message.  It was a text from a good friend in Australia, giving some encouragement, and ending with "read 41:10".  Thanks be to God.
So do not fear; for I am with you: do not be dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you and help you; I will uphold you with my righteousness right hand.
Isaiah 41:10