The Passion for Los Palos

This week we have had the privilege of Geoff, Graham and Nick visiting us from Darwin. They had two main aims for this 10 day trip: to improve the water supply for Pastor Samuel in Los Palos and show the “Passion” movie to some of his house church groups. After much discussion on how to go about making the water more reliable for the church we settled on buying two more 1100L tanks. Transport is now a serious difficulty since our truck is no longer able to make the trip to Los Palos. We travelled around the streets of Dili to find that the main shops had sold out of all tanks. By mid morning we figured we’d missed our slim opportunity to buy tanks and put them on top of a bus to Los Palos so we abandoned the idea and decided to go for buying a corrugated zincalum tank in Baucau, a major town half way to Los Palos. The other preparation was to purchase a data projector, DVD player, speakers and other electrical equipment as well as the DVD for showing the Passion movie. With all this equipment loaded into a borrowed vehicle we set off for Los Palos. Its about a 6 hour journey to cover the 220km with some spectacular views along the way. We follow the northern coast of the country and turn up into the mountains toward the end of the road. Los Palos is situated in a large catchment that drains to a mountain lake at the eastern end of the country.
We found all the gear we needed for the tank stands in Los Palos and began work on these. One was an extension of a stand I had made last year which they thought was a little on the wobbly side. Picky, picky! A few diagonal bracings sorted that out. The other stand was to be a concrete base for the metal tank. In my mind this, of course, was going to be a circular base. The boys were more than a little surprised at considering anything other than a square. Coming from the hills of Lismore, I think straight lines are over-rated, curves are beautiful. It took a fair amount of coaxing and cracking of jokes to bring them around, but finally they let me make a circle.  I am almost positive that somewhere through the process they began standing back and admiring the beauty of a curve.
 

 


Pastor Samuel happily waters their community garden with the new tap installed by Graham.  The young people have a few beds to grow vegetables for the group as well as some to sell to gain a small income. 


Showing the Passion movie proved a little more tricky. The first night was fraught with electrical problems. The electrical wiring in the house where we were screening the movie was all but completely fried. Rusty connections and melted fittings meant his fuse switch regularly tripped and proved unusable in its current condition. A crowd had already gathered and I had my tools so frantically set to work trying to make the wires somewhat usable and not get myself fried in the process. Meanwhile the boys set up the little generator from the church. This actually worked for the first 3^rd of the movie although we could smell something melting. Eventually the voltage regulator sent up a plume of smoke. I removed it from the equation and then the DVD player got immediately fried. By then we worked out the generator had serious carburettor issues and wouldn’t start. We then wired the system straight into the house fuse switch bypassing the house wiring altogether and used a borrowed DVD player that turned out not working. In a last effort we shorted the blown fuse in the other DVD player but when it started sparking we figured it was the end of the night. The locals really wanted to see the film so we decided to come back the following night better armed. The next morning I rewired their house while Nick did an overhaul on the carby. We decided in the end to take a bigger generator owned by the church. The boys bought another DVD player and voltage regulator and we showed the movie with no problems. A number of people came up to receive Bibles at the end of the night and then wandered off into the darkness including one child who happened to carry off the key to our car. After an extensive search we left the car and walked the 5km back home (very embarrassing for yours truly who was the last one with the key). By the following morning church folk had scoured the village knocking on doors and miraculously the key materialised to my great relief. During this time I got to talk to a couple of families about purchasing a 2000L air-tight silo to save their harvest of corn. We figure that with the sales from the first harvest they can repay the cost of the silo. They are a hardworking community. One 70+ year old  gentleman had turned over about 2 acres of field by hand with a metal rod from an axle shaft. I have never seen a piece of steel so shiny just from continual daily use. Much of their corn will be eaten by weevils within the first 2 months of harvest. A silo like this will increase their effective storage by 10 times.
The last night of viewing was at a house church run at the town markets. People at the markets run small stalls selling clothes, vegetables and other items. Many families sleep in their small shops as it is their only home. The movie was screened outside on a wall of one of the market buildings. The night was going well until 5 young men took it upon themselves to try to stop the movie. They started throwing rocks onto the nearby roof and into the crowd. The crowd quickly dispersed in fear and several of us took off into the darkness in the direction from where the rocks were coming. We met with boisterous, partly drank and angry young men who demanded we stop the film. Fortunately some young men in our church who had been saved from a life of violence boldly stood their ground against these men and sent them off. They returned soon after walking angrily around the place where we were showing the movie. Our Darwin boys made a formidable guard around the the gear being almost 50% bigger than the Timor guys. While we tried to negotiate some sort of agreement, the crowd got in on the act and started demanding that they let the movie continue. Eventually the young men settled down or walked away and gave us no more trouble that night. The Timorese here really identified with the suffering they saw as Jesus was being tortured. They have experienced a lot of torture and bloodshed in their life. At the end of the movie Pastor Samuel gave a short message and the remaining Bibles we had were quickly snatched up. The families in the market and also across Los Palos live in a volatile environment like this continually. We hope that the message of Jesus will help to bring them hope and peace. 
 

 
 
On Saturday the Darwin boys hired a ca r and drove up the mountain to help Mateus level the building site for his school in Liquidoe.
 
 
 

 
On Monday, we went out fishing to test some gear they brought over for the boat. We hope we can snag a big fish on it.  I am working with a new Timorese man to get the fishing business going.  He is making a trade run to Atauro which I’ll tell you about sometime.  Here he is taking rice, kero, and plastic sheet to trade for bamboo and fish.  The drum is from “Drums on Farms” donated by MAF and is being taken to the island to assist in corn storage.
We really appreciated guys like Graham, Nick and Geoff who give of their time, their money and their heart to encourage us and support us in our work. Thanks guys.

A bamboo fence

Since I am a bit of a hippy at heart, I am always trying to steer my construction toward environmentally sustainable practices.  Its not puritan by any means and you may one day even see me with a chainsaw in my hand.  In Los Palos, they have a pressing need for food.  Samuel and Uli, the Pastors of a youth church, take in as many people as they can feed which is not a lot on a meagre $70 per month allowance.  They have an excellent patch of land but if they try to grow vegies some hungry person or animal ends up eating it before they do.  This means the land lays fallow and unproductive.  The challenge was to build the cheapest and most achievable fence possible with what we had.  It also had to be strong enough and tall enough to keep out children and goats from the garden.  That way they could harvest their food and give it to those who really needed it.  So we … ok, I came up with a bamboo fence design – I’ll take the credit, that way if it doesn’t work, you know who to blame.
First we dug a trench down 20cm deep and 20cm wide.   





Then we fill it with cement and rock – ok the cement came from Indonesia but the limestone rock was onsite and the sand came from a local river.  Spot  the flying rock from Keith’s hand.

We shoved in some bamboo poles about 1.8m long into the trench about every 2m.  The Timorese know which poles are good for posts, in this case its ‘red bamboo’ (I know to the untrained eye they look green, you might have to use your imagination)  The bottles are an idea for protecting the top of the bamboo from filling with water. 


Then we split a different type of bamboo in half for the horizontal fence rails.  This is easier than you may think – if you have a good machete, and a good eye.  But once you’ve got the split going it tends to run along the grain and pop apart.
    
Then we cut more bamboo at 1.8m and split it up into strips about 4cm.  We nailed the pickets onto the rails with 5cm flat head nails and bent them over on the back.  Some pre-drilling goes down well. 
   
Then sections are carried to the poles to be screwed on with … wait for it … my little trade secret … roofing screws!  These screws bore their own hole into the bamboo without it splitting and hang on real tight – sensational!
Don’t tell anyone else about this.  I think bamboo is the next big thing that’s going to happen to Australia.  Just as soon as I finish mucking around in East Timor I’ll come and grow some bamboo in oz and make a mint off picket fences.
Ok, out of my instruction mode, we had a great time in Los Palos with the locals.  Uli and Cynthia had lots of long D&M’s and got to know each other real well.  It was a great soul time for them both (And I just thought they were sitting around not doing anything important?!)  We finally finished the last of the tiling a year after starting the building.  Credit must go to Sylvia for the long hours she put in grouting and cleaning.
 
We also finished building their shed walls, got the rafters and battens on the shed and provided funding for the iron which the Timorese will happily put on later. 
 
And all this in 3 days of action.  A big thanks to Alan Kent from Leongatha Salvation Army Corps and Sylvia, Keith and Lynise from Tweed Heads Salvation Army Corps who had the courage to come to East Timor and give of their time, talents and money to help make this a reality. 
It was a great time in Los Palos and a real boost to the youth – they’re finally seeing a bit of action.  This sort of work gives them hope and lifts their spirits.  They are the real heroes.
   
        They are the ones going around their community telling others about God and how great he is and what he has done for them.  There are many testimonies of how God how freed them from abuse, violence, disease and evil spirits.  There are many testimonies about how God meets their daily needs.  And I must testify too, to the way God has provided for us, watched over us and kept us safe.  I thank Him.

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.

A team from Darwin arrives

After a jam packed 2 weeks it is hard to know how to keep you up to date with all that has been going on. So we will do it by brief points:

A team of 5 people came from a Baptist Church in Darwin – Crossroads Christian Church? (I think I got that name wrong, how embarrassing.) In 10 days they did 4 main jobs:

1. A reno job on the office of Wycliffe Bible Translators – the poor bloke was trying to translate the Bible in a dark little room stuffed with boxes. So the boys put in shelves, gave it a lick of paint, installed a large fluoro light and delivered some new furniture – a desk, comfy chair and pin board. Sr Carlos is very happy and it gives him a lift in his work.

Nick, James and Graham - hot sweaty in the office with Sr Carlos the Bible translator and his wife.

2. Trip to the island of Atauro (cue wicked laugh – ‘Aha,ha,ha,ha,haaa’) very nice big boat going over. We checked in on Dunalva’s Preschool building project which deserves far more time than I am putting into it. They are up to the walls. She is so brave and I wish I could get out there with my tools. We then walked several km’s around the rocky coastline with 70 odd scriptures in our packs to visit Maquili. We discussed a small development project with them. They want to buy a coconut shredding machine to make oil to sell. It’s a big vision involving pigs and biogas (my pet subject). The boys are happy to enter a microfinance arrangement with them if they can come up with a decent business plan. This will take the place of my chook pen idea. Oh, well. We returned on a dawn voyage in a small boat that regular visitors to this blog know only too well. The novel thing this time was that we actually got the boat driver to deliver us right to our beach front from the island. Very cool, shame you weren’t there.

3. Finishing work on the Los Palos Youth Training Centre – the guys finished some tiling, tidied up the electrical work, installed the waste water plumbing, doors, kitchen bench top and even found time to make a very cool cob (mud and straw) oven to assist in cooking. Its an experiment (like our whole life) based on the Patsari oven for poor communities in Mexico. We’ll send some cool pics when we get them.

4. Installing an insulated ceiling with fans!!!! for Cynthia’s sewing room. Woohoo.

As well as all this, the team has been very encouraging for us as a family. The 12 yr old boy and 17 year old girl had a great time with our kids. Inlcude 2-3 days travel time and you can imagine it was hectic. Whats new.


Cynthia is selling more bags than her sewing group can make. She just received her first order of 100 cloth pads for women through HIAM Health. Woohoo.

God bless,

Samuel

Getting Organised

Click on this video to check out village life (about 4Mb)

This week we have put on some new “staff”. Sounds all official, but really I wonder if we are just mucking around. Cynthia has found a great young woman called Sinta for the sewing room. Cynthia finds it hard to teach in a group setting so she has taken on Sinta as an employee to work in the sewing room. We hope that she’ll be confident enough to become a coordinator of this project and bring in other suitable women to be able to sew products. This week they have been working on women’s products as well as sewing up bags for school kids to carry their books. Cynthia is working hard on the numbers to try to make this a financially viable endeavour (so it pays for itself). Serenity is also proving to be one of the best sewers amongst the women. She is even on the payroll (is this child labour?).

Cynth in her element - materials, threads and sewing machines

Sinta - our new up coming Sewing group coordinator - she's a great worker.

Cynthia with Laura in the sewing room.  2 years ago she nearly died of dengue, this year her father died of alcohol poisoning.

I have put on a guy fresh out of uni to do community development. His name is Simeao. It’s a new area that we are going into and sort of riding on the back of water projects – its like the next step after getting water into a community. My hope is that if he can carry some of the responsibility, training and implementation then I can be freed up to do other stuff. (I get a bit busy.) I introduced him to the community of Beraka and we had a long talk with the community about why the water system is not going as it should. It seems there’s just one man at the top of the system who wants the water to go his way and to no one else. Pray for him. We have organised for the construction of a small dispersal tank to hopefully deal with this problem. They have a serious problem with evironmental degradation – many trees are being cut down for firewood and the creek has caused massive erosion in the last wet season covering good land with river rock making it unusable for crops. There are some good opportunites to provide seed and we are considering a small loans project to get in some vegies to sell to market. Simeao and I also went to his home community of Maquili on the island.

Simeao - uni graduate who is my new Community Development worker, checking out the rocky slopes on teh island.

It’s a fascinating village. They make awesome fish traps and seem quick to learn and try new things. They are already implementing some great ideas such as diverting precious waste water into banana and paw paw gardens and using quality composting toilets. I negotiated with one man to provide a $400 loan to build a chicken pen as a small business endeavour. All going well, he can sell chooks or eggs and pay back the loan over 2 years. Part of Simeao’s work will be to monitor this area of microfinance as well as provide education for the communities. (No harm in dreaming.)

On the roof of the beach villas with a labourer we employ - Juli

The beach house project is still going ahead. I put in a couple of days to give them a boost on the roof – it’s a bit technical with valleys and hips. We’ve put on another builder to help with this work. We hope to get one ready at least for a team coming in 2 weeks from Darwin.

Amau - Maun Je's second in charge.  A real nice guy who now becomes our head builder.

Scriptures are slowly getting distributed on an adhoc basis. We are also getting out our little activity book designed for primary school kids. Its been pretty exciting but unfortunately our wizz bang new printer is being very temperamental. We got it rigged up in a dodgey sort of way to external ink tanks so it seems the ink ink is running out externally everywhere!

Our truck made its first trip into the mountains this week to deliver drums to farmers for rat and weavel free storage. This is the work of an organisation called Drums on Farms. We are assisting with transport. It’s a two way street where they get cheap transport and we get enough money to pay for fuel, a driver and extra money that will help keep the truck maintained for all the work we do. Anen is training up a young man to take on the role of driver which we desperately need to free up both Anen and I. His name is Natalino and I hope that he will be also able to drive Simeao with supplies to community development projects as well as (dream big) support a vegie run to bring all those wonderful vegies from the community to the city.

It’s a big plan for a little guy. I suppose its just a little plan for a big God.

We finally got a tap rigged up to a basic water dispenser. Israel is fascinated with this contraption from which you can just put your cup under, turn it on and get a drink.

God bless, enjoy your week. Be grateful if drinking water comes out of your tap today.

Our back yard, yeah its tuff.