So I was coming home from the districts last week where I was running the orientation for our new students who attend a Catholic agricultural school that's run by a bunch of Salation Priests (the Catholic church is a power house here, a giant statue of Jesus stands at one end of the capital and a giant statue of the Pope stands at another. We're trapped.) Anyway, I needed to get back to the capital which was about 7 hours away. One of the Fathers had a meeting part way towards the capital and offered to give me a ride ("So long as Miss Mariesa will write my English lesson plans ha ha ha... seriously.") I gladly accepted and figured that once I got to Baucau (the part way point) I would easily be able to hop on a bus going to Dili (the capital). The Father dropped me and my backpack off at the bus station, wait... rephrase... the bus "traffic jam" is more accurate, and promptly took off. As I walked through the traffic jam I yelled loudly "bis? Dili? bis?" looking for the bus to Dili. When I asked a young girl and her mother about when the next "bis" to Dili was going to arrive, she sadly shook her head no and then happily asked me if I wanted to buy something from her kiosk. Fortunately I wasn't convinced that a bus was never going to come and I ended up running into two Dili University students that were on the same Dili bis hunt.
After waiting about 30 minutes a giant bis with "SOCRATES" written across the front windshield and a seductive picture of Avril Lavine across the back pulled up and my university friends and myself quickly jumped on. I soon learned that the number of seats on the bis was no indication whatsoever of how many people, chickens, goats and other items our bis would be transporting. The bis idled for over an hour as more and more people somehow found room to climb in and a combination of animals and baggage was strapped on the roof. Shortly after seating myself next to a lovely lady, I found myself next to 40 other lovely people and their most prized Dili-worthy poultry. There was a rooster perched next to me, a chicken under my seat, and I was soon handed one to hold in my lap while more luggage, firewood, humans and livestock were loaded onto this bis. At one point I offered my seat to a little old "tia" (auntie) and ended up having to stand on one leg and gripping a rooster for balance as our bis served around the mountain hairpin corners, there just wasn't room for both my feet on the floor.
I've learned that the best way to make friends in situations like these is to start offering gum and candy to my fellow travellers and complementing them on the grandeur of their respective roosters. Roosters are the most well fed animals in TL as they are often raised as pets and then thrown into a cock fighting ring where they either meet a gruesome death or bring home loot for their owner.
As we approached our end destination one of the men in charge wearing an “i'm lovin' it” McDonald's t-shirt, crowd-surfed his way from the back to the front of the bis collecting fair. The people sitting at the time coughed up $4 while the people crouching, standing, balancing, or hanging out the doorway were only expected to pay $2. There's nothing like being squished on a bis with 40 fellow travellers and their wordily possessions for four hours of narrow, cliff hanger roads to make good friendships. It was certainly a highlight of my travels.
On another note, if I were to designe an Olympics where the people of TL would win all gold I would have the following events:
Staring contest
Coconut tree climbing
Basket weaving
Spear fishing (while swimming!)
Midwife-ing
I would NOT have:
Race walk
It's interesting to think about how new problems are delt with in a traditional manner. For example, all the littering problems that come with mass amounts of imported water bottles and snack food. This could in part be because when things were wrapped in palm branches or coconut leafs the wrapping could be simply dropped to the ground and nature would take care of itself. However, people have continued to do the same with plastic wrapping and I wonder if that's because the social sigma around littering hasn't had as much time to develop.
I had a break through moment last week in the districts with some of our agribusiness students. There was some confusion about the price of the program. Some of the students were told that it was $17 per month, some thought it was $12 and some believed that it was only $5. When they approached me I knew they were seriously concerned. They all gathered around me looking very solumn and one of them in the middle put his hands together in a prayer like fashion, bowed slighly and explained to me the problem. Once I heard them out I was able to sort through the confusion and inform them that it was actually only $5. They're excitement at the news was awesome. They were high fiving, pumping their fists and cheering. I imagine I would have lost half the students if the price was $12 or more per month. For me this was a break through experience on three levels. First, that the students felt comfortable enough to approach me with a concern, second that we were able to discuss and resolve the issue all in Tetum and finally, it was just so cool to see how excited they were that they could continue with the program. Man, I love my job.
The other day I was gathering some information on the students such as name, birthdate, place of birth et cetera when I noticed that many of the students that I had gathered the same information from a couple weeks previously had given me different birthdates. Approximately 80 percent of the students that I asked for the second time about their birthdate, gave me a significantly different number (one of them said they were born in 1970). I asked one of my coworkers about this and he said that it happens when the parents are illiterate, and as our program targets agricultural students, most of the children have parents that come from the lowest income farming class and therefore aren't very well educated.
Yesterday as I was biking home from work in the sweltering heat I was shocked to hear "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" blaring from one of the street shops. December has arrived and TL has gotten the Christmas bug. Stores have giant Santa Clauses pasted to their windows, Christmas lights are starting to be put up and all the shops are playing their christmas tunes, all the while people are sweating buckets in the humidity and reapplying sunscrean.
My dad is coming on Saturday! Yayayayay!!!!
much love,
mariesa
Monday, November 30, 2009
Thursday, November 5, 2009
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
condoms and graffiti
November 2, 2009
The “Did You Know” list must be amended:
58. The Timorese consider it polite to ask “ita ba ne'be?” when they see you. This translates to “where are you going?” Therefore, an international walking down the street will often get asked by stranger, “Mister! Mister! Where are you going?” I usually respond: “La hatene” (“I don't know”)
59. None of the houses in TL have addresses. And there are very very few street signs and the streets that are marked are more often referred to by a completely different name. The best way to give directions in TL is to refer to common land marks, for example, “Turn left at the giant Jesus statue, if you reached the fish stalls you've gone too far.”
60. The TL is on the American dollar.
61. TL has two independence day holidays. One celebrating the short lived independence of 1975 (in May) and another celebrating the current independence of 1999 (at the end of August).
Here are a few other interesting items I've noticed:
After 1999 TL wanted to change its currency from the Indonesian rupiah. For the next two years the money system was very complicated as people used Indonesian, Australian, Portuguese and American dollars. In stores items would often have four different prices on them. The Portuguese and Australian dollars were the first to drop off, followed by the Indonesian rupiah. Currently TL used American cash but has its own coins.
I've found it interesting that the two major Catholic countries in South East Asia (TL and the Philippines) are also the two countries that eat with knifes, forks and spoons. This is just a thought that I have been mulling over.
I have now seen one midget and two albinos in TL. I still haven't seen any special needs children.
I was also wondering about illegal drug issues in TL. I've heard that cocaine is a problem in brothels and that people do smoke marijuana (although I haven't smelt any yet). Apparently drugs were a much bigger problem during the crises of 1999 and 2006 when there were military and gang wars.
Glasses? No one wears glasses. I have only seen about 10 people in 4 months of living here wearing glasses. All of these people have been elderly. I imagine the elderly people who have glasses have them from the Indonesian or Portuguese occupations. None of the nationals wear contacts, contact solution isn't even sold in TL.
Spreading information in the districts is mostly done by radio broadcasting or bulletins at the local church. No TV. No newspapers. No billboards. There is a newspaper that circulates around Dili that has articles in Tetum, English and Bahasa Indonesian. However, I have heard that less than 4 percent of the population reads the newspaper.
Last weekend we were in the districts trying to recruit students for our agricultural program. In two of the major districts the radio system was broken. The best way of letting the local communities know about our program was putting up fliers at the local church, asking the local priest to make an announcement about our program and then giving the church a donation. The second best way is to just talk out program up with local groups of people hanging out around town having a cigarette. The cool part is that it has worked, we've had a number of students sign up from those districts that we've visited.
Oddly enough I have seen beautiful new “School Zone” and “Bridge Ahead” signs out in the heart of ET where there is certainly no English speakers… who was the brains behind that idea?
I have also seen graffiti that said: “F*CK OOF”, which I thought was pretty funny.
I saw a used condom on the sidewalk: Usually I would think, “that’s gross” but now think, “wow someone used birth control, great.”
The price of food in the market is directly correlated with their quantity (Ah! Basic economics!). Although this is a fairly obvious fact, it goes to show how fresh I'm getting my vegetables when I can't buy cucumbers because, well, cucumbers aren't growing now.
“The closer I get to the Timorese, the further I realize I am from understanding them”. This is what a Father who has been living in TL for 40 years said. At first I thought this statement was silly and counter intuitive, but now I'm slowly realizing how true it is. In the beginning when I first arrived I thought that I was becoming more and more intimate with the Timorese and their culture. Now that I've been here a while I realize that the the more I learn about their culture, the more I realize I don't understand – and will probably never understand. I suppose having cultural secrets is a clever way of keeping a culture alive, especially when there is so much Western influence within TL. It allows for the people to maintain a unique identity.
This one's for my dad:
Getting a loan in TL: There are no banks in the districts, and often the local people have no ownership certificates for their homes, therefore cannot put up any corralteral to make a bank loan. As a consequence micro finance NGOs have a system where they start by giving small loans and slowly increase the loan amount so long as the borrower continues to make timely payments. This way people can build their credit and borrow larger and larger sums without the enticial collatoral. It helps to keep in mind that because villages are so small, the microfinancers usually have a fairly good idea who will be able to pay back their loans with interest and who is going to have to continue borrowing from family.
I find it so interesting how people without a lot of money spend what money they have. For the Timorese, weddings and funerals are extremely important affairs.
Funerals: Everyone is invited to a funeral. If I was invited to a funeral, my family would be expected to provide something for the family whose member past away. For example, I would give the deceased person's family a pig from my family. The deceased person's family would then record what my family gave so that they could give back one third of the value of our gift (perhaps a third of a pig or a small goat).
After the funeral the family is expected to put flowers on the grave everyday for a week, every week for a month, every month for a year, then annually. The family wears black for 1 year if someone young has died, but only has to wear black for 6 months when someone old has died. It's interesting that funerals are big events and birthdays are not. I was talking with one of my coworkers and he said that deaths are more celebrated than births because your ancestors will take care of you if you treat them well in death.
I'm writing this part a few days later: I just spent the weekend celebrating the All Saints and All Souls festival with one of my coworkers and his family. I have a correction: although the Timorese believe that if they take care of their ancestors their ancestors will take care of them, by pooling together and going through the extensive (and often very expensive) mourning process as a family, they are actually taking care of each other.
Wedding are also huge events. I mean HUGE. Last weekend I attended a wedding of a middle class Timorese couple. Once again, everyone is invited to the event. I was invited by a coworker who didn't even know the bride's name. At the reception there were about 500 people, all of whom were fed dinner. The cake was ten layers, the bride's dress was white and beautiful, the groom was wearing a three piece white suit complete with a baby blue vest and white gloves. The guests were dressed to the nines. And all the guests received a small gift when the entered. The amazing thing is that this was completely the norm. My coworker estimated the cost at $20,000. In all likelihood the families will be paying for it for the rest of their lives but it's considered money well spent because being able to throw a party like that is a status symbol.
The dancing at the wedding deserves a special mention. As a lady I sat at the side of the dancing floor with my hands in my lap. The band would start playing and a man would walk across the dance floor – making no eye contact – approach... approach... then suddenly look up and peg his dance victim with a stare and extended hand. If it happened to be me (and once they released that the 'malae' could dance, it often was) then off we went, two-stepping across the dance floor with the other couples. After the song was over, we would briefly nod thank you, and then return to our seats. Only to have the whole process start again.
Interestingly, for all extensive purposes the couple that got married were pretty much married before they threw the huge bash. Many couples that get married already having been living together and already have a small family before they actually say the vows.
NB: For traditional ceremonies, such as a wedding, often the groom’s family will give the bride’s family a buffalo and in return the bride's family will give the groom’s family a pig. However, in these traditional exchanges buffalo and other animals can be substituted by money, however the party that is responsible for giving a pig must give a pig.
In sum: Give buffalo/money = ALWAYS pig
This exchange is no joke. Our driver was all set to get married to a woman whom he had already started a family with (they have a young boy). The wedding was planned to be at the end of October (I even knew what I was going to wear). But then one week before the big event, word got out that it was called off because the bride's family wanted our driver's family to give a buffalo, but his family was only prepared to give a goat and some beer. Now... well lets just say, the relationship is on the rocks.
Traditional bride negotiations: Grooms family comes over to the bride’s family’s home and then men sit together and discuss the barlaki, or the price of the bride. The men are the only ones allowed to talk although many guests are invited to attend the discussions. The discussions are very serious and men bargain by putting something similar to poker chips on the table. The groom cannot be apart of the discussions and neither can the bride. They are not even allowed to listen. Often in the districts these negotiations take days. And after each day of negotiating all the guests are provided with dinner.
Back to employment in ET:
I have a coworker that has spoken with some students who have told her that they do not want to get a job because if they start earning an income their family members will ask them for all of their money. So in order for them to keep their earnings they either have to lie to their family or move out of the country.
School is starting soon! The students will be arriving on November 9th which is really exciting because the students have had an extended holiday this summer because this year the government decided to switch to the southern hemisphere calender. Therefore, the students have been out of school for almost 4 months now.
One of the challenges that we have had with the schools is the lack books for the students. Rather, the lack of access to books for the students. In two of our schools there are quite good libraries that are stacked with books on agriculture, however, whenever one of the LOL staff go to the schools and ask for the library to be open, no on ever seems to know where the key is. The issue seems to be that the teachers are afraid that if they open the library the students will steal the books. Therefore, all the books are locked behind a door and none of the students get to use them. This is very frustrating, and certainly something that we're going to work on for this year.
MUCH LOVE,
m
The “Did You Know” list must be amended:
58. The Timorese consider it polite to ask “ita ba ne'be?” when they see you. This translates to “where are you going?” Therefore, an international walking down the street will often get asked by stranger, “Mister! Mister! Where are you going?” I usually respond: “La hatene” (“I don't know”)
59. None of the houses in TL have addresses. And there are very very few street signs and the streets that are marked are more often referred to by a completely different name. The best way to give directions in TL is to refer to common land marks, for example, “Turn left at the giant Jesus statue, if you reached the fish stalls you've gone too far.”
60. The TL is on the American dollar.
61. TL has two independence day holidays. One celebrating the short lived independence of 1975 (in May) and another celebrating the current independence of 1999 (at the end of August).
Here are a few other interesting items I've noticed:
After 1999 TL wanted to change its currency from the Indonesian rupiah. For the next two years the money system was very complicated as people used Indonesian, Australian, Portuguese and American dollars. In stores items would often have four different prices on them. The Portuguese and Australian dollars were the first to drop off, followed by the Indonesian rupiah. Currently TL used American cash but has its own coins.
I've found it interesting that the two major Catholic countries in South East Asia (TL and the Philippines) are also the two countries that eat with knifes, forks and spoons. This is just a thought that I have been mulling over.
I have now seen one midget and two albinos in TL. I still haven't seen any special needs children.
I was also wondering about illegal drug issues in TL. I've heard that cocaine is a problem in brothels and that people do smoke marijuana (although I haven't smelt any yet). Apparently drugs were a much bigger problem during the crises of 1999 and 2006 when there were military and gang wars.
Glasses? No one wears glasses. I have only seen about 10 people in 4 months of living here wearing glasses. All of these people have been elderly. I imagine the elderly people who have glasses have them from the Indonesian or Portuguese occupations. None of the nationals wear contacts, contact solution isn't even sold in TL.
Spreading information in the districts is mostly done by radio broadcasting or bulletins at the local church. No TV. No newspapers. No billboards. There is a newspaper that circulates around Dili that has articles in Tetum, English and Bahasa Indonesian. However, I have heard that less than 4 percent of the population reads the newspaper.
Last weekend we were in the districts trying to recruit students for our agricultural program. In two of the major districts the radio system was broken. The best way of letting the local communities know about our program was putting up fliers at the local church, asking the local priest to make an announcement about our program and then giving the church a donation. The second best way is to just talk out program up with local groups of people hanging out around town having a cigarette. The cool part is that it has worked, we've had a number of students sign up from those districts that we've visited.
Oddly enough I have seen beautiful new “School Zone” and “Bridge Ahead” signs out in the heart of ET where there is certainly no English speakers… who was the brains behind that idea?
I have also seen graffiti that said: “F*CK OOF”, which I thought was pretty funny.
I saw a used condom on the sidewalk: Usually I would think, “that’s gross” but now think, “wow someone used birth control, great.”
The price of food in the market is directly correlated with their quantity (Ah! Basic economics!). Although this is a fairly obvious fact, it goes to show how fresh I'm getting my vegetables when I can't buy cucumbers because, well, cucumbers aren't growing now.
“The closer I get to the Timorese, the further I realize I am from understanding them”. This is what a Father who has been living in TL for 40 years said. At first I thought this statement was silly and counter intuitive, but now I'm slowly realizing how true it is. In the beginning when I first arrived I thought that I was becoming more and more intimate with the Timorese and their culture. Now that I've been here a while I realize that the the more I learn about their culture, the more I realize I don't understand – and will probably never understand. I suppose having cultural secrets is a clever way of keeping a culture alive, especially when there is so much Western influence within TL. It allows for the people to maintain a unique identity.
This one's for my dad:
Getting a loan in TL: There are no banks in the districts, and often the local people have no ownership certificates for their homes, therefore cannot put up any corralteral to make a bank loan. As a consequence micro finance NGOs have a system where they start by giving small loans and slowly increase the loan amount so long as the borrower continues to make timely payments. This way people can build their credit and borrow larger and larger sums without the enticial collatoral. It helps to keep in mind that because villages are so small, the microfinancers usually have a fairly good idea who will be able to pay back their loans with interest and who is going to have to continue borrowing from family.
I find it so interesting how people without a lot of money spend what money they have. For the Timorese, weddings and funerals are extremely important affairs.
Funerals: Everyone is invited to a funeral. If I was invited to a funeral, my family would be expected to provide something for the family whose member past away. For example, I would give the deceased person's family a pig from my family. The deceased person's family would then record what my family gave so that they could give back one third of the value of our gift (perhaps a third of a pig or a small goat).
After the funeral the family is expected to put flowers on the grave everyday for a week, every week for a month, every month for a year, then annually. The family wears black for 1 year if someone young has died, but only has to wear black for 6 months when someone old has died. It's interesting that funerals are big events and birthdays are not. I was talking with one of my coworkers and he said that deaths are more celebrated than births because your ancestors will take care of you if you treat them well in death.
I'm writing this part a few days later: I just spent the weekend celebrating the All Saints and All Souls festival with one of my coworkers and his family. I have a correction: although the Timorese believe that if they take care of their ancestors their ancestors will take care of them, by pooling together and going through the extensive (and often very expensive) mourning process as a family, they are actually taking care of each other.
Wedding are also huge events. I mean HUGE. Last weekend I attended a wedding of a middle class Timorese couple. Once again, everyone is invited to the event. I was invited by a coworker who didn't even know the bride's name. At the reception there were about 500 people, all of whom were fed dinner. The cake was ten layers, the bride's dress was white and beautiful, the groom was wearing a three piece white suit complete with a baby blue vest and white gloves. The guests were dressed to the nines. And all the guests received a small gift when the entered. The amazing thing is that this was completely the norm. My coworker estimated the cost at $20,000. In all likelihood the families will be paying for it for the rest of their lives but it's considered money well spent because being able to throw a party like that is a status symbol.
The dancing at the wedding deserves a special mention. As a lady I sat at the side of the dancing floor with my hands in my lap. The band would start playing and a man would walk across the dance floor – making no eye contact – approach... approach... then suddenly look up and peg his dance victim with a stare and extended hand. If it happened to be me (and once they released that the 'malae' could dance, it often was) then off we went, two-stepping across the dance floor with the other couples. After the song was over, we would briefly nod thank you, and then return to our seats. Only to have the whole process start again.
Interestingly, for all extensive purposes the couple that got married were pretty much married before they threw the huge bash. Many couples that get married already having been living together and already have a small family before they actually say the vows.
NB: For traditional ceremonies, such as a wedding, often the groom’s family will give the bride’s family a buffalo and in return the bride's family will give the groom’s family a pig. However, in these traditional exchanges buffalo and other animals can be substituted by money, however the party that is responsible for giving a pig must give a pig.
In sum: Give buffalo/money = ALWAYS pig
This exchange is no joke. Our driver was all set to get married to a woman whom he had already started a family with (they have a young boy). The wedding was planned to be at the end of October (I even knew what I was going to wear). But then one week before the big event, word got out that it was called off because the bride's family wanted our driver's family to give a buffalo, but his family was only prepared to give a goat and some beer. Now... well lets just say, the relationship is on the rocks.
Traditional bride negotiations: Grooms family comes over to the bride’s family’s home and then men sit together and discuss the barlaki, or the price of the bride. The men are the only ones allowed to talk although many guests are invited to attend the discussions. The discussions are very serious and men bargain by putting something similar to poker chips on the table. The groom cannot be apart of the discussions and neither can the bride. They are not even allowed to listen. Often in the districts these negotiations take days. And after each day of negotiating all the guests are provided with dinner.
Back to employment in ET:
I have a coworker that has spoken with some students who have told her that they do not want to get a job because if they start earning an income their family members will ask them for all of their money. So in order for them to keep their earnings they either have to lie to their family or move out of the country.
School is starting soon! The students will be arriving on November 9th which is really exciting because the students have had an extended holiday this summer because this year the government decided to switch to the southern hemisphere calender. Therefore, the students have been out of school for almost 4 months now.
One of the challenges that we have had with the schools is the lack books for the students. Rather, the lack of access to books for the students. In two of our schools there are quite good libraries that are stacked with books on agriculture, however, whenever one of the LOL staff go to the schools and ask for the library to be open, no on ever seems to know where the key is. The issue seems to be that the teachers are afraid that if they open the library the students will steal the books. Therefore, all the books are locked behind a door and none of the students get to use them. This is very frustrating, and certainly something that we're going to work on for this year.
MUCH LOVE,
m
Friday, October 9, 2009
Now you know
Did you know that….
1. The price of gas in Dili is about 97 cents a litre
2. There are Pakistani UN soldiers guarding the road that the president lives on
3. Taxis don't run at night
4. There used to be electricity and telephones and paved roads in the districts during the Indonesian occupation but now there is not
5. People drive on the left hand side of the road
6. A pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream cost $17.00
7. In the countryside people don't fence in their livestock
8. If you hit someone while driving in your car you have to drive away as quickly as possible to the police station and send the police back to the accident so that the local people don't attack you in an attempt to deliver justice
9. The average number of children per family is 7
10. Average life expectancy is about 60 years old
11. You can buy almost anything in Dili, even Ben and Jerry's ice cream, because so much food is imported
12. Even the rice (which people eat for 2 meals a day) is imported
13. Even eggs (which are sold in the local markets) are mostly imported
14. Vegtables are not imported
15. You can buy 3 foot long green beans and they’re good!
16. There are 32 different dialects and languages spoken in ET alone
17. If you hit any animals (even a stray dog) while driving on the road you have to pay for it. For example, last week we hit a small dog and had to pay the nearest old lady $5.
18. It gets dark at about 7pm everyday throughout the year
19. There is one beach in Dili where many expats go and you can wear two piece swimsuits on most of the other beaches it is best to swear shorts and a t-shirt
20. There are traffic lights in Dili, I haven't seen any in the other small towns around ET.
21. After dark (around 7pm) the traffic lights only flash yellow for every direction
22. “Pulsa” is cell phone talking and texting minutes that are bought from venders on the side of the street in $1, $2, $5 and $10 amounts
23. The ‘Pulsa Venders’ assume that all malae (foreigners) are in desperate need of more pulsa
24. The Pulsa Venders hang out in packs and are aged anywhere from 7 to 45
Portuguese will be ET only official language soon. Although this decision makes little sense practically, it is a political decision
25. Timorese only have to pay taxes if they make over $500 a month. After that they are taxed at roughly ten percent of their income
26. It costs $30 a semester to go to UNTL, University National Timor Leste
In Dili there are Turkish, Nepalese, Japanese, American, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and many other different types of restaurants
27. Traditional houses in TL have thatched roofs and are raised about 5 feet off the ground on wooden legs (perhaps because of the flooding during rainy season)
28. ET has an enclave in WT which is Indonesia
29. There are 13 districts in ET, one of which, Oecusse, is the enclave in WT.
30. Many districts have distinct culture, traditions and languages
31. I type “TL” or “ET” because I don't want my blog posts to be picked up by the major list serve here
32. There are no beggars in TL
33. That local yell “Mister! Mister!” to foreigners as they are walking down the street, no matter the foreigner’s gender
34. The average speed of drivers on the road is approximately 20 m/hr, yet as soon as the traffic lights turn green horns start blaring and the car take off at snail’s pace
35. Many older Timorese women chew a form of nut (similar to beetle nut) that makes their teeth and mouths blood red
36. Most adolescent men have at least one outrageously creepy long finger nail (I’m talking two inches at least)
37. By the age of 11 all Timorese are considered adults
38. The UN has been in TL twice in the last ten years. The most recent mission started after the 2006 crisis and is schedule to depart by 2012
39. The 2006 crisis was a inter country conflict between the Eastern supported military and the Western support national police force
40. There isn’t any public transportation; however there are privately owned “microlettes” which are minibuses that drive around town on specific routes. A person can get on a microlette and get off a microlette where ever they want on route for 10 cents
41. That ‘cents’ are called ‘centivu’
42. Numbers from 1-10 are said in Tetum, numbers above 10 are said in Bahasa. And prices are always said in Bahasa Indonesian.
43. In some districts there is a “barlaki” which translates to “bride price”. This is the price a male has to pay his in laws when he wishes to marry.
44. The most expense barlaki is in the district of Los Palos where going price is 77 buffalo, a debt a man could end up paying for rest of his life
45. Some districts have the opposite of a barlaki, where the woman’s family has to pay their in laws. This complicates marriage that are between families from patriarchal and matriarchal districts
46. May 20th is the Timorese Independence Day.
47. This past August, TL celebrated their 10th anniversary of the referendum which was the democratic vote where 70 percent of the Timorese voted for independence
48. There was a 98 percent turn out for the 1999 referendum vote
49. After the results of the referendum vote instigated the 1999 violence
50. One of main roads in Dili is named “Hudi Laran” which mean “In Bananas” because either side of the road is lined with a forest of banana trees
51. There are two season in ET, rainy season (November – March), and dry season (April – October)
52. Approximately 98 percent of Timorese people are Catholic
53. The majority of Timorese believe in some sort of form of black magic
54. Rooster crow, dogs bark, baby cry at any odd hour at night and often all at once
55. If you don't wear a helmet while driving a motor bike you will be fined by the police
56. However, passengers don't have to wear helmets
October 7, 2009
Teacher quality is a huge problem in ET. One of the reasons is that to be qualified to teach a subject a person only has to have studied that subject in University. For example, I would be qualified to teach economic because I majored in economics in university. Therefore, although the teachers may understand the material, they are not necessarily good teachers. Furthermore, having a teacher with a university education is certainly the exception rather than the norm. Many of the 'teachers' at the agricultural high schools are simply students that have graduated from the program in previous years.
On the other hand, the life expectancy for Timorese is about 60 years old and the average age in TL is around 20. Therefore, not only is TL a young country, but it's population is also very young. As a consequence, youth are given the responsibilities that a middle aged North American would receive. For example, my best teachers were the ones with the most experience, most of which were over the age of 40. However, the minority of the population in ET is over the age of 40 and those that are the minority are most likely grandparents. I have to keep on reminding myself that the students that graduate from out program are approximately my age, and our expectations for these students is to go out and create small farming cooperatives and businesses, a task that I would find very daunting, even with a steller education.
The other challenge that our young graduates face is simply invisioning what their cooperative/agribusiness could be like. I have to remind myself that in North America we have people and stories like Bill Gates that shape our dreams, where as in TL (unless they have access to TV and movies) the youth look around and they see a lot small vegetable stands, a few private shops, many decrepid buildings, and most of the profitable stores and restaurants owned by internationals. I imagine that this can dampen the creativity and imagination needed for young entrepreneurals.
There are no beggers in TL. I have only seen one old lady who was once sitting on the steps to a shop, she wasn't begging, but I quitely took the money that I gave her. When I talked with my coworkers about this they told me that there is a lot of shame associated with begging and only old people who cannot do jobs such as selling fruit off of wagons or dusting off parked cars in exchange for a dollar, lower themselves to begging. However, just because there are no beggers, doesn't mean that there aren't people who desperately need money and are without a job. My coworker was telling me that he often gives money to people that he knows and asks him. It is expected that families support each other. I believe that all of my Timorese coworkers live with extended family and they are paying for their brothers' and sisters' education. The story that this reminds me of is about a Timorese man who opened a bar in Dili that was quite successful but he had a hard time making a profit because his family and extended family would walk behind the counter and take money out of the cash regrister. They did not believe that they were stealing, only taking what was also belonged to them.
On another note, the LOL USAID project recently had representatives from USAID in Washington come and evaluate our program. I believe that the evaluation went well and that the main concern was the quality of teachers for our program. I had an interesting conversation with the USAID representative who was telling me that most USAID projects get funding for 2- 5 years. This came as a surprise to me because one would think that after a couple of year a project would be most efficient and that in fact development projects should have longer term funding because development takes time. However, I was reminded that congress determines which projects USAID will fund and it's possible that after a couple of years they get tired of supplying money to one project. Therefore, in order for a USAID project such as LOL to get funding for more than 5 years the program has to keep on changing its 'pitch' to congress. For example, there is a coffee growing USAID funded NGO that is ten years old. However, during the last ten years it has broaden its focus from coffee plantation to cow fattening projects and other agricultural development. Although the expansion of the program is great, expansion doesn't necessarly mean that more people are help. What is more often the case is that the farmers who initicially received NGO assistance with coffee production are the same farmers that are receiving assistance with the cow fattening project (this project organises farmers to fatten their cattle and then export the cattle to West Timor, Indonesia). So there's a bit of a catch: for an NGO to continue to receive funding from USAID their pitch to congress has to have new bells and whistles. However, perhaps more local farmers may benefit if a project maintained a single focus for over 5 years rather than having fewer farmers continuing to benefit in different ways.
Although I doubt it's that black and white, I do find it very interesting that development projects usually only receive 2 years of funding with possible extension to 5 years when you would think that a program in it's fifth year would be a lot more effective than another new program.
As we were driving through the districts last week a coworker of mine pointed out a coffee bean planation. The coffee bean plants were very mature and it looked more like a forest than a farm. My coworker was telling me that the government had tried to convince the local farmers that production would increase if the farmers pruned their coffee bean plants. However, the farmers were not willing to do so because they could not afford to lose the year of production that would result from the pruning. I asked my boss why the farmers didn't just prune 25 percent of their crops over 4 years. He said that the farmers or the government officials may have just not thought of that or that maybe the farmers were so close to having nothing that they couldn't afford to lose a quarter of their crops even if it was only for a few years.
This is something interesting that occurs when a county changes its national language: as we were driving home, over the national radio station (which normally plays a variety of English and Bahasa Indonesian music) an audio language course came on. There was a lady's voice that would say something in Tetum and then a man's voice would repeat it in Portuguese and then there would be a pause for the listener to repeat the Portuguese out loud! So all over Timor for a couple of hours a day people are practicing Portuguese!
Finally, I got a small look into some of the traditional beliefs of the local Timorese when we were having lunch at a fish stand one afternoon. The family that own the fish stand was warning us not to swim in the ocean because there were crocodiles (TL is one of two places in the world where there are salt water crocodiles). She went on to tell us that not to long ago a man had killed a crocodile and they had to skin it and then wrapped its skin in black clothe and then through it into the ocean so that they would have rain this year. She was very serious and so cool to listen to.
Alright, I'm off!
mariesa
1. The price of gas in Dili is about 97 cents a litre
2. There are Pakistani UN soldiers guarding the road that the president lives on
3. Taxis don't run at night
4. There used to be electricity and telephones and paved roads in the districts during the Indonesian occupation but now there is not
5. People drive on the left hand side of the road
6. A pint of Ben and Jerry's ice cream cost $17.00
7. In the countryside people don't fence in their livestock
8. If you hit someone while driving in your car you have to drive away as quickly as possible to the police station and send the police back to the accident so that the local people don't attack you in an attempt to deliver justice
9. The average number of children per family is 7
10. Average life expectancy is about 60 years old
11. You can buy almost anything in Dili, even Ben and Jerry's ice cream, because so much food is imported
12. Even the rice (which people eat for 2 meals a day) is imported
13. Even eggs (which are sold in the local markets) are mostly imported
14. Vegtables are not imported
15. You can buy 3 foot long green beans and they’re good!
16. There are 32 different dialects and languages spoken in ET alone
17. If you hit any animals (even a stray dog) while driving on the road you have to pay for it. For example, last week we hit a small dog and had to pay the nearest old lady $5.
18. It gets dark at about 7pm everyday throughout the year
19. There is one beach in Dili where many expats go and you can wear two piece swimsuits on most of the other beaches it is best to swear shorts and a t-shirt
20. There are traffic lights in Dili, I haven't seen any in the other small towns around ET.
21. After dark (around 7pm) the traffic lights only flash yellow for every direction
22. “Pulsa” is cell phone talking and texting minutes that are bought from venders on the side of the street in $1, $2, $5 and $10 amounts
23. The ‘Pulsa Venders’ assume that all malae (foreigners) are in desperate need of more pulsa
24. The Pulsa Venders hang out in packs and are aged anywhere from 7 to 45
Portuguese will be ET only official language soon. Although this decision makes little sense practically, it is a political decision
25. Timorese only have to pay taxes if they make over $500 a month. After that they are taxed at roughly ten percent of their income
26. It costs $30 a semester to go to UNTL, University National Timor Leste
In Dili there are Turkish, Nepalese, Japanese, American, Chinese, Indian, Indonesian and many other different types of restaurants
27. Traditional houses in TL have thatched roofs and are raised about 5 feet off the ground on wooden legs (perhaps because of the flooding during rainy season)
28. ET has an enclave in WT which is Indonesia
29. There are 13 districts in ET, one of which, Oecusse, is the enclave in WT.
30. Many districts have distinct culture, traditions and languages
31. I type “TL” or “ET” because I don't want my blog posts to be picked up by the major list serve here
32. There are no beggars in TL
33. That local yell “Mister! Mister!” to foreigners as they are walking down the street, no matter the foreigner’s gender
34. The average speed of drivers on the road is approximately 20 m/hr, yet as soon as the traffic lights turn green horns start blaring and the car take off at snail’s pace
35. Many older Timorese women chew a form of nut (similar to beetle nut) that makes their teeth and mouths blood red
36. Most adolescent men have at least one outrageously creepy long finger nail (I’m talking two inches at least)
37. By the age of 11 all Timorese are considered adults
38. The UN has been in TL twice in the last ten years. The most recent mission started after the 2006 crisis and is schedule to depart by 2012
39. The 2006 crisis was a inter country conflict between the Eastern supported military and the Western support national police force
40. There isn’t any public transportation; however there are privately owned “microlettes” which are minibuses that drive around town on specific routes. A person can get on a microlette and get off a microlette where ever they want on route for 10 cents
41. That ‘cents’ are called ‘centivu’
42. Numbers from 1-10 are said in Tetum, numbers above 10 are said in Bahasa. And prices are always said in Bahasa Indonesian.
43. In some districts there is a “barlaki” which translates to “bride price”. This is the price a male has to pay his in laws when he wishes to marry.
44. The most expense barlaki is in the district of Los Palos where going price is 77 buffalo, a debt a man could end up paying for rest of his life
45. Some districts have the opposite of a barlaki, where the woman’s family has to pay their in laws. This complicates marriage that are between families from patriarchal and matriarchal districts
46. May 20th is the Timorese Independence Day.
47. This past August, TL celebrated their 10th anniversary of the referendum which was the democratic vote where 70 percent of the Timorese voted for independence
48. There was a 98 percent turn out for the 1999 referendum vote
49. After the results of the referendum vote instigated the 1999 violence
50. One of main roads in Dili is named “Hudi Laran” which mean “In Bananas” because either side of the road is lined with a forest of banana trees
51. There are two season in ET, rainy season (November – March), and dry season (April – October)
52. Approximately 98 percent of Timorese people are Catholic
53. The majority of Timorese believe in some sort of form of black magic
54. Rooster crow, dogs bark, baby cry at any odd hour at night and often all at once
55. If you don't wear a helmet while driving a motor bike you will be fined by the police
56. However, passengers don't have to wear helmets
October 7, 2009
Teacher quality is a huge problem in ET. One of the reasons is that to be qualified to teach a subject a person only has to have studied that subject in University. For example, I would be qualified to teach economic because I majored in economics in university. Therefore, although the teachers may understand the material, they are not necessarily good teachers. Furthermore, having a teacher with a university education is certainly the exception rather than the norm. Many of the 'teachers' at the agricultural high schools are simply students that have graduated from the program in previous years.
On the other hand, the life expectancy for Timorese is about 60 years old and the average age in TL is around 20. Therefore, not only is TL a young country, but it's population is also very young. As a consequence, youth are given the responsibilities that a middle aged North American would receive. For example, my best teachers were the ones with the most experience, most of which were over the age of 40. However, the minority of the population in ET is over the age of 40 and those that are the minority are most likely grandparents. I have to keep on reminding myself that the students that graduate from out program are approximately my age, and our expectations for these students is to go out and create small farming cooperatives and businesses, a task that I would find very daunting, even with a steller education.
The other challenge that our young graduates face is simply invisioning what their cooperative/agribusiness could be like. I have to remind myself that in North America we have people and stories like Bill Gates that shape our dreams, where as in TL (unless they have access to TV and movies) the youth look around and they see a lot small vegetable stands, a few private shops, many decrepid buildings, and most of the profitable stores and restaurants owned by internationals. I imagine that this can dampen the creativity and imagination needed for young entrepreneurals.
There are no beggers in TL. I have only seen one old lady who was once sitting on the steps to a shop, she wasn't begging, but I quitely took the money that I gave her. When I talked with my coworkers about this they told me that there is a lot of shame associated with begging and only old people who cannot do jobs such as selling fruit off of wagons or dusting off parked cars in exchange for a dollar, lower themselves to begging. However, just because there are no beggers, doesn't mean that there aren't people who desperately need money and are without a job. My coworker was telling me that he often gives money to people that he knows and asks him. It is expected that families support each other. I believe that all of my Timorese coworkers live with extended family and they are paying for their brothers' and sisters' education. The story that this reminds me of is about a Timorese man who opened a bar in Dili that was quite successful but he had a hard time making a profit because his family and extended family would walk behind the counter and take money out of the cash regrister. They did not believe that they were stealing, only taking what was also belonged to them.
On another note, the LOL USAID project recently had representatives from USAID in Washington come and evaluate our program. I believe that the evaluation went well and that the main concern was the quality of teachers for our program. I had an interesting conversation with the USAID representative who was telling me that most USAID projects get funding for 2- 5 years. This came as a surprise to me because one would think that after a couple of year a project would be most efficient and that in fact development projects should have longer term funding because development takes time. However, I was reminded that congress determines which projects USAID will fund and it's possible that after a couple of years they get tired of supplying money to one project. Therefore, in order for a USAID project such as LOL to get funding for more than 5 years the program has to keep on changing its 'pitch' to congress. For example, there is a coffee growing USAID funded NGO that is ten years old. However, during the last ten years it has broaden its focus from coffee plantation to cow fattening projects and other agricultural development. Although the expansion of the program is great, expansion doesn't necessarly mean that more people are help. What is more often the case is that the farmers who initicially received NGO assistance with coffee production are the same farmers that are receiving assistance with the cow fattening project (this project organises farmers to fatten their cattle and then export the cattle to West Timor, Indonesia). So there's a bit of a catch: for an NGO to continue to receive funding from USAID their pitch to congress has to have new bells and whistles. However, perhaps more local farmers may benefit if a project maintained a single focus for over 5 years rather than having fewer farmers continuing to benefit in different ways.
Although I doubt it's that black and white, I do find it very interesting that development projects usually only receive 2 years of funding with possible extension to 5 years when you would think that a program in it's fifth year would be a lot more effective than another new program.
As we were driving through the districts last week a coworker of mine pointed out a coffee bean planation. The coffee bean plants were very mature and it looked more like a forest than a farm. My coworker was telling me that the government had tried to convince the local farmers that production would increase if the farmers pruned their coffee bean plants. However, the farmers were not willing to do so because they could not afford to lose the year of production that would result from the pruning. I asked my boss why the farmers didn't just prune 25 percent of their crops over 4 years. He said that the farmers or the government officials may have just not thought of that or that maybe the farmers were so close to having nothing that they couldn't afford to lose a quarter of their crops even if it was only for a few years.
This is something interesting that occurs when a county changes its national language: as we were driving home, over the national radio station (which normally plays a variety of English and Bahasa Indonesian music) an audio language course came on. There was a lady's voice that would say something in Tetum and then a man's voice would repeat it in Portuguese and then there would be a pause for the listener to repeat the Portuguese out loud! So all over Timor for a couple of hours a day people are practicing Portuguese!
Finally, I got a small look into some of the traditional beliefs of the local Timorese when we were having lunch at a fish stand one afternoon. The family that own the fish stand was warning us not to swim in the ocean because there were crocodiles (TL is one of two places in the world where there are salt water crocodiles). She went on to tell us that not to long ago a man had killed a crocodile and they had to skin it and then wrapped its skin in black clothe and then through it into the ocean so that they would have rain this year. She was very serious and so cool to listen to.
Alright, I'm off!
mariesa
Friday, September 18, 2009
The Black Stallion
September 13, 2009 Sunday 9:27pm
I just had a wonderful week in the districts. I was suppose to helping with the student registration in Fuiloro but the Fathers decided that I would be more use teaching English to the masses of local children (and indeed, I wasn’t need for registration as the turn out was quite low). Thank goodness I had classroom experience from China to call upon, I used every trick in the book and really had a fulfilling week teaching English, learning tetum, and hanging out with the Fathers and local students.
The other day I noticed that when people are filling their car tanks up with gas they often rock the car. I asked a coworker why they did this and was told that they rock the car because they think that filling up the tank with gas is similar to filling up the tank with gravel or grain. When a person is filling up a bucket of gravel they shake the bucket to let the gravel settle so that they can get more in. Of course, gas is liquid therefore there is no need to settle the gas in the tank so the rocking is pointless. I wonder if there may be other reasons why they rock the cars when they are filling them up with gas because this reason really surprised me.
At school we had a wonderful debate among the student about “barlaki”. Barlaki translates to 'bride price’; it is the price a man has to pay his bride's family when he marries her. In the district of Los Palos, the barlaki is traditionally the most expensive. A man has to give the family of his potential wife 77 buffalo! Barlaki negotiations involve the entire family and often the price demanded by the bride's family is so high that couples can't afford to marry so just live together and have a family until they can save enough money (or buffalo) to be married. Once a man agrees to marry a woman for a certain price he can spend the rest of his life in debt to her family. This happens in matriarchal districts, the confusion increases when a woman from a matriarchal district marries a man from a patriarchal district (because then it's the other way around and the woman must buy into the man's family). Although most of ET is matriarchal, there are a few districts that are patriarchal. One of my coworkers has been living with a lady for quite sometime but cannot marry her because her family's barlaki price is too high (they believe that he can pay a lot because he works for an international organization). As a consequence he cannot marry her until the price decreases (perhaps as his bride-to-be ages her barlaki decreases). Both sides of the students' debate brought up interesting points. One student said that the barlaki fosters domestic violence as the husband can claim that he's not beating his wife, but the buffalo with which he paid for her.
The students had to make presentations on a short essay that they had written and then be prepared to answer questions from the class. One of the boys in the class called me over during a presentation and asked me to proof read his essay. His essay was titled, “How to Attack a Girl”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only did this boy have the gull to call me over to proof read an essay on attacking women, but he also had a fellow female student leaning over his shoulder helping him write it. When I quickly snatched the paper from his desk and started about the importance of style and brains in choppy English, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t an essay about ‘attacking’ women rather, it was intended to be an essay about ‘attracting’ women! My darling student was preparing a presentation on ‘How to Attract a Girl”!
I was reminded once again of the importance placed on hierarchy in the TL society when I accidently wandered into lunch two minutes late. I had been told that lunch was in the mess hall at 1 o’clock and that all the student would be there eager to spend the time practicing their English with me. On my walk over to the mess hall I got a little confused and ended up getting slightly lost. I wandered into the hall a few minutes after 1 o’clock looking slightly confused. My confusion was then compounded by the arousing applause that I received from approximately 40 students that stood up to welcome me to lunch. The food was all layed out on a table in the middle of the hall but no one had touched it yet as I (the honoured English speaking malae) had not yet arrived to serve herself first. Couple with my confusion (it feels a little out of the ordinary to wander around lost looking for a dining hall and then to be greeted by a standing ovation when randomly entering one of the campus buildings) was the feeling of embarrassment as I had kept all the hungry students waiting on their lunch. As soon as I had served myself there was a rush as all the students scrambled up to fill their dishes. Needless to say, for the rest of the week I made sure I was 10 minutes early to the most important appointment of the day.
I had another wonderful memory of my week in Fuiloro. This is perhaps my favorite memory of TL thus far. After class everyday I would go for a run down a dirt road that went through the school’s cattle fields and out to neighbouring villages. As I ran down the road student who were walking home would wait for me to pass on the side of the road. Without saying a word they would join me on my run and follow along behind me. At one point I probably had 20 students thumping along behind me with their notebooks and sandals flapping about. I had to chuckle to myself as I saw our silhouette over the fields, it reminded me of the scene in Forest Gump where he’s running across the country and people are just joining in for no real reason at all.
Last weekend I went for a wonder run with an Australian friend of mine. She has been living in ET for a while now and is working with an organization that is helping create the new land law. Land ownership is a seriously complicated ordeal here. As I had previously mentioned there are issue with traditional ownership of land and ownership transfers during the Indonesian occupation. And to further complicate matters, in the last 10 years there have been two occasions where people have fled their homes to live in IDP camps. Although I am still very confused about the land title procedure, I was enlightened about some other questions I had about ET.
First, I was wondering why in 1975 Indonesia was so intent on taking control of ET. Apparently this had something to do with the fact that Australia had just given up Papa New Guinea and ET had just gain independence from Portugal. Rumor has it that the Indonesian government wasn’t keen on any of the boisterous islands that made up its territory to start thinking along the same independent lines. Thus to illustrate its strength and intolerance to any disloyalty to the Indonesian government, the Indonesian military was told to invade the then independent ET (there was about a 3 month window of ET independence between Portugal’s rein and Indonesia’s in 1975).
Prior to Indonesia’s occupation the ET population lived in the mountains, above the malaria line. They lived in small villages self sustaining villages and ate mostly mais, cassava and sweet potato, rather than rice. After Indonesia took over, the population was forced to move down to the valleys where they could be controlled and better organized. Furthermore, propaganda was used to change the diet of the ET people so that they ate more rice. Propaganda such as, “Only the uneducated don’t eat rice”. In addition to not having the correct temperate to grow rice in the quantities needed, having all the people living together on the flat land, rather than in smaller communities in the mountains, made it difficult for sufficient food production. Moreover, because ET is in a ‘rain shadow’ and thus doesn’t get as much rain as other Asian countries, in order for the people to eat mass amounts of rice they had to become dependant upon Indonesian imports.
There was also mass deforestation during the Indonesian occupation as the Indonesian military would burn forests in order to prevent people from sneaking away to provide the resistance movement with supplies. There are different feelings about the Indonesian occupation depending on whom you talk to. This past week I was travelling with two coworkers who reflected fondly on the Indonesian times. They both said that they had good jobs (although one of them is a native of Indonesia, thus he would have received benefits natives of ET would not have) and that the roads were better, small villages in the districts had electricity (now there remains only the telephone polls without any electrical cord) and that more money was spread over ET into the districts rather than all the government spending in the capital city. Currently, the government seems to have been giving the capital all its attention rather than making improvements and creating employment out in the districts. Although both of my coworkers spoke longingly of the Indonesian days, they told me that they had both voted for independence during the 1999 referendum. “Independence is better, and we are making progress” they argued as our truck drove along a semi paved road in the jet black night.
My running partner also made the interesting point that a county of 1 million was able to defeat a country of 200 million which also had the support of the United States. She said that everyone contributed towards the resistance movement in whatever way they could. In such a small country, the lines where drawn in the sand, you were either for the resistance moment or against, there wasn’t much room in the middle and everyone knew where you stood.
On another note, I have two animal stories. I saw my first cock flight the other day in Fuiloro. Well, I didn’t actually see the roosters fighting, I didn’t particularly want to, but there was a huge crowd of men in the middle of a field by the side of the road. Around the crowd of men there were dozens of roosters tied up waiting for their turn to flight. The roosters have large sharpened talons attached to their feet and are trained to fight to the death. What I find particularly sad is that the roosters aren’t just birds to the ET men, they become what a pet dog would be to someone in North America. The roosters become companions more than anything else. These birds are cared for, trained, groomed and cherished by their owners until they are put in a ring and expected to fight for their lives. It sad for me to think that in addition to the bird losing its life, the ET man loses his pet.
I also saw a real horse the other day. A real live big horse! This shocked me so much because besides this one incident all I have ever seen are small rugged ponies. I don’t even think this horse was all that impressive on the whole, but to me he looked like the Black Stallion. It’s amazing how magnificent he looked in comparison to all the other small packer ponies. I was in love instantly.
The children here are simply the best. Just this past week when my two coworkers and I were in Suai we went to dinner at one of my coworker’s friend house. It was a small little shack in the middle of a farmer’s field. We only had a candle to light our faces as we all chatted and I played with the children. There were millions of stars in the sky and besides the 10 foot radius of candle light, the scenery was pitch black. But what I love about the children is how beautiful they are and how quickly they smile. Although there was a little bit of a language barrier, we were quickly all laughing and giggling during a game of hide and go seek and then laying out on the grass with out heads together staring up at the stars. It was a wonder meal and another one of those special moments where I feel like I get to taste the real ET culture. What fantastic people!
I just had a wonderful week in the districts. I was suppose to helping with the student registration in Fuiloro but the Fathers decided that I would be more use teaching English to the masses of local children (and indeed, I wasn’t need for registration as the turn out was quite low). Thank goodness I had classroom experience from China to call upon, I used every trick in the book and really had a fulfilling week teaching English, learning tetum, and hanging out with the Fathers and local students.
The other day I noticed that when people are filling their car tanks up with gas they often rock the car. I asked a coworker why they did this and was told that they rock the car because they think that filling up the tank with gas is similar to filling up the tank with gravel or grain. When a person is filling up a bucket of gravel they shake the bucket to let the gravel settle so that they can get more in. Of course, gas is liquid therefore there is no need to settle the gas in the tank so the rocking is pointless. I wonder if there may be other reasons why they rock the cars when they are filling them up with gas because this reason really surprised me.
At school we had a wonderful debate among the student about “barlaki”. Barlaki translates to 'bride price’; it is the price a man has to pay his bride's family when he marries her. In the district of Los Palos, the barlaki is traditionally the most expensive. A man has to give the family of his potential wife 77 buffalo! Barlaki negotiations involve the entire family and often the price demanded by the bride's family is so high that couples can't afford to marry so just live together and have a family until they can save enough money (or buffalo) to be married. Once a man agrees to marry a woman for a certain price he can spend the rest of his life in debt to her family. This happens in matriarchal districts, the confusion increases when a woman from a matriarchal district marries a man from a patriarchal district (because then it's the other way around and the woman must buy into the man's family). Although most of ET is matriarchal, there are a few districts that are patriarchal. One of my coworkers has been living with a lady for quite sometime but cannot marry her because her family's barlaki price is too high (they believe that he can pay a lot because he works for an international organization). As a consequence he cannot marry her until the price decreases (perhaps as his bride-to-be ages her barlaki decreases). Both sides of the students' debate brought up interesting points. One student said that the barlaki fosters domestic violence as the husband can claim that he's not beating his wife, but the buffalo with which he paid for her.
The students had to make presentations on a short essay that they had written and then be prepared to answer questions from the class. One of the boys in the class called me over during a presentation and asked me to proof read his essay. His essay was titled, “How to Attack a Girl”. I couldn’t believe my eyes. Not only did this boy have the gull to call me over to proof read an essay on attacking women, but he also had a fellow female student leaning over his shoulder helping him write it. When I quickly snatched the paper from his desk and started about the importance of style and brains in choppy English, I suddenly realized that it wasn’t an essay about ‘attacking’ women rather, it was intended to be an essay about ‘attracting’ women! My darling student was preparing a presentation on ‘How to Attract a Girl”!
I was reminded once again of the importance placed on hierarchy in the TL society when I accidently wandered into lunch two minutes late. I had been told that lunch was in the mess hall at 1 o’clock and that all the student would be there eager to spend the time practicing their English with me. On my walk over to the mess hall I got a little confused and ended up getting slightly lost. I wandered into the hall a few minutes after 1 o’clock looking slightly confused. My confusion was then compounded by the arousing applause that I received from approximately 40 students that stood up to welcome me to lunch. The food was all layed out on a table in the middle of the hall but no one had touched it yet as I (the honoured English speaking malae) had not yet arrived to serve herself first. Couple with my confusion (it feels a little out of the ordinary to wander around lost looking for a dining hall and then to be greeted by a standing ovation when randomly entering one of the campus buildings) was the feeling of embarrassment as I had kept all the hungry students waiting on their lunch. As soon as I had served myself there was a rush as all the students scrambled up to fill their dishes. Needless to say, for the rest of the week I made sure I was 10 minutes early to the most important appointment of the day.
I had another wonderful memory of my week in Fuiloro. This is perhaps my favorite memory of TL thus far. After class everyday I would go for a run down a dirt road that went through the school’s cattle fields and out to neighbouring villages. As I ran down the road student who were walking home would wait for me to pass on the side of the road. Without saying a word they would join me on my run and follow along behind me. At one point I probably had 20 students thumping along behind me with their notebooks and sandals flapping about. I had to chuckle to myself as I saw our silhouette over the fields, it reminded me of the scene in Forest Gump where he’s running across the country and people are just joining in for no real reason at all.
Last weekend I went for a wonder run with an Australian friend of mine. She has been living in ET for a while now and is working with an organization that is helping create the new land law. Land ownership is a seriously complicated ordeal here. As I had previously mentioned there are issue with traditional ownership of land and ownership transfers during the Indonesian occupation. And to further complicate matters, in the last 10 years there have been two occasions where people have fled their homes to live in IDP camps. Although I am still very confused about the land title procedure, I was enlightened about some other questions I had about ET.
First, I was wondering why in 1975 Indonesia was so intent on taking control of ET. Apparently this had something to do with the fact that Australia had just given up Papa New Guinea and ET had just gain independence from Portugal. Rumor has it that the Indonesian government wasn’t keen on any of the boisterous islands that made up its territory to start thinking along the same independent lines. Thus to illustrate its strength and intolerance to any disloyalty to the Indonesian government, the Indonesian military was told to invade the then independent ET (there was about a 3 month window of ET independence between Portugal’s rein and Indonesia’s in 1975).
Prior to Indonesia’s occupation the ET population lived in the mountains, above the malaria line. They lived in small villages self sustaining villages and ate mostly mais, cassava and sweet potato, rather than rice. After Indonesia took over, the population was forced to move down to the valleys where they could be controlled and better organized. Furthermore, propaganda was used to change the diet of the ET people so that they ate more rice. Propaganda such as, “Only the uneducated don’t eat rice”. In addition to not having the correct temperate to grow rice in the quantities needed, having all the people living together on the flat land, rather than in smaller communities in the mountains, made it difficult for sufficient food production. Moreover, because ET is in a ‘rain shadow’ and thus doesn’t get as much rain as other Asian countries, in order for the people to eat mass amounts of rice they had to become dependant upon Indonesian imports.
There was also mass deforestation during the Indonesian occupation as the Indonesian military would burn forests in order to prevent people from sneaking away to provide the resistance movement with supplies. There are different feelings about the Indonesian occupation depending on whom you talk to. This past week I was travelling with two coworkers who reflected fondly on the Indonesian times. They both said that they had good jobs (although one of them is a native of Indonesia, thus he would have received benefits natives of ET would not have) and that the roads were better, small villages in the districts had electricity (now there remains only the telephone polls without any electrical cord) and that more money was spread over ET into the districts rather than all the government spending in the capital city. Currently, the government seems to have been giving the capital all its attention rather than making improvements and creating employment out in the districts. Although both of my coworkers spoke longingly of the Indonesian days, they told me that they had both voted for independence during the 1999 referendum. “Independence is better, and we are making progress” they argued as our truck drove along a semi paved road in the jet black night.
My running partner also made the interesting point that a county of 1 million was able to defeat a country of 200 million which also had the support of the United States. She said that everyone contributed towards the resistance movement in whatever way they could. In such a small country, the lines where drawn in the sand, you were either for the resistance moment or against, there wasn’t much room in the middle and everyone knew where you stood.
On another note, I have two animal stories. I saw my first cock flight the other day in Fuiloro. Well, I didn’t actually see the roosters fighting, I didn’t particularly want to, but there was a huge crowd of men in the middle of a field by the side of the road. Around the crowd of men there were dozens of roosters tied up waiting for their turn to flight. The roosters have large sharpened talons attached to their feet and are trained to fight to the death. What I find particularly sad is that the roosters aren’t just birds to the ET men, they become what a pet dog would be to someone in North America. The roosters become companions more than anything else. These birds are cared for, trained, groomed and cherished by their owners until they are put in a ring and expected to fight for their lives. It sad for me to think that in addition to the bird losing its life, the ET man loses his pet.
I also saw a real horse the other day. A real live big horse! This shocked me so much because besides this one incident all I have ever seen are small rugged ponies. I don’t even think this horse was all that impressive on the whole, but to me he looked like the Black Stallion. It’s amazing how magnificent he looked in comparison to all the other small packer ponies. I was in love instantly.
The children here are simply the best. Just this past week when my two coworkers and I were in Suai we went to dinner at one of my coworker’s friend house. It was a small little shack in the middle of a farmer’s field. We only had a candle to light our faces as we all chatted and I played with the children. There were millions of stars in the sky and besides the 10 foot radius of candle light, the scenery was pitch black. But what I love about the children is how beautiful they are and how quickly they smile. Although there was a little bit of a language barrier, we were quickly all laughing and giggling during a game of hide and go seek and then laying out on the grass with out heads together staring up at the stars. It was a wonder meal and another one of those special moments where I feel like I get to taste the real ET culture. What fantastic people!
Friday, September 4, 2009
August 31, 2009
6:45pm
I have some answers to the questions of the previous blog. First, the children have blond hair for one of two reasons. The first reason being that blond hair is one of the first signs of malnutrition and the second is that sometimes children have their hair bleached when they have lice.
As for the lack of bargaining and competition in the markets: I asked around and was told that there is animosity within the community towards people who branch away from the set standard. Tomatos are sold 4 for one dollar, the kiosks all sell the same set of goods and no one strays from the that going rate. I found this very interesting, especially in contrast to China where there is so much bargaining and competition one has to be on the ball whenever they go shopping. I also found it interesting that this strong sense of community and lack of competition seems to run along the communistic vein which ET has never experienced politically, unlike China.
Here some challenges ET faces in development. The first major difficulty within the country is that there are so many different languages that is hard to unite when the people can’t communicate. Before 1975 protugese was the official language, so all the older people and government officials know and speak protugese. Post 1975 all the schooling was in Indonesian, so the younger generation has had schooling in Bahasa Indonesian. Post 1999 the schooling system seems to be in part Bahasa Indonesian, part Protguese and part Tetum. Right now on the street people speak Tetum and Bahasa and the government has currently decided that all schooling must be in Protugese because Tetum is too simple to teach complicated terms (for example, words that you would use as a mechanic, chemist, doctor, etc.) In addition there are no books written in Tetum, all the books are in either Bahasa, Protugese or English. Currently the students are in the middle of a shift from schooling in Tetum to schooling in only Protugese. Teacher trainers from Brazil are coming over to train the Timorese teachers in Protugese. All this while the cartoons on TV are in Bahasa Indonesian. To make things more confusing, Tetum is not the only local language. In many of the districts people speak different languages that can’t be understood by native Tetum speakers. I have heard that there are over 23 different dialects and language within ET. Apparently having the people speaking many different languages was desired by the Indonesian government during their rule so that the people would have a difficult time uniting against the Indonsian government.
Very confusing? You betcha.
In addition, this year the government has decided that the schools needs to run on a southern hemisphere clock. Therefore, schools are no longer starting in September and ending in July. They now start in January and end some time in November. However, due to the fact that this is a transitional year, the students are out of school from July until January this year! I believe that the Ministry of Education is using this time to train local teachers in Protugese as they will have to teach in Protugese starting in January. This is a huge shift. It is like asking English speaking teachers to start teaching in only French after a couple of months (maybe only a couple of weeks) of French language classes. But I understand that the shift has to happen, Tetum is not developed enough for a modern day country and there is a desire for ET to be independent from Indonesia politically and culturally.
The language problem within the schooling system is not a new difficulty. I was talking with Lino, one of my coworkers, and he was saying that the first day of University he walked in to class and realized that his entire schooling was going to be in Protugese! Forunately, he is very talented with languages and stuck with it, but he said that by the end of the first month most of his classmates had dropped out. Not surprising, I would have too. Lino’s gift with languages is not all together rare among the Timorese. Many people speak Tetum (at least one of the dialects) and Bahasa (due to the fact that most the TV is in Bahasa) and many of the people mix in Portugese when the speak Tetum, especially for more complicated words.
Another thing about the schooling system that I recently learned was that during the Indonesian occupation, the Indonesian teachers that were sent to ET were intentionally not the best teachers. My housemate was telling me that often Indosenian teachers were sent to ET as a punishement. She describe it as the students having to learn chemistry by having a teacher read out of a book in front of the class. The reasoning behind the poor quality of teachers seems to be that the Indosnian thought that insure that the Timorese remained dependant.
It’s interesting driving through the districts on partly paved roads, and seeing old telephone poles that no longer have wire running through them. The roads and electricity wire are reminents from Indonesian occupation. Currently the roads are in desperate need of maintance, and many people are without electricity although they did have it during the Indonesian occupation. I have been told that the country was in better condition during the Indoneisan reign, but that in fact, the Timorese were not better off because the Indonesians had all the jobs.
But then again, approximately 50% of men ages 20 -35 are currently not employed. I wonder if the government has any plans for training programs that would enable Timorese to work construction and electrical jobs. There certainly is a need for that kind of labour, especially in the districts.
Along those lines, I was talking with an Australian friend of mine and we were discussing the oil issue in ET. Apparently there is debate over whether an oil refinery should be built in ET or in Darwin, Australia. She was saying that it would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly to built the refinery in Darwin, but there are people who are pushing for the refinery in ET because it would create jobs. However, she has argued that it would make more sense to have the Timorese working the medium skill jobs on the oil barges and in the mining process, rather than importing the medium skill labour which is what is currently happening. In addition to environmental and economical costs of building a refinery, there would also be social costs as a town would have to be built for the oil refinery workers, which would then lead to problems such as protestation, and there is only an expectation of the oil supply for the next 15 years. Overall, I hear and see a great need for medium skilled workers, so my next question is along the lines of what steps is the government taking to provide for this demand.
6:45pm
I have some answers to the questions of the previous blog. First, the children have blond hair for one of two reasons. The first reason being that blond hair is one of the first signs of malnutrition and the second is that sometimes children have their hair bleached when they have lice.
As for the lack of bargaining and competition in the markets: I asked around and was told that there is animosity within the community towards people who branch away from the set standard. Tomatos are sold 4 for one dollar, the kiosks all sell the same set of goods and no one strays from the that going rate. I found this very interesting, especially in contrast to China where there is so much bargaining and competition one has to be on the ball whenever they go shopping. I also found it interesting that this strong sense of community and lack of competition seems to run along the communistic vein which ET has never experienced politically, unlike China.
Here some challenges ET faces in development. The first major difficulty within the country is that there are so many different languages that is hard to unite when the people can’t communicate. Before 1975 protugese was the official language, so all the older people and government officials know and speak protugese. Post 1975 all the schooling was in Indonesian, so the younger generation has had schooling in Bahasa Indonesian. Post 1999 the schooling system seems to be in part Bahasa Indonesian, part Protguese and part Tetum. Right now on the street people speak Tetum and Bahasa and the government has currently decided that all schooling must be in Protugese because Tetum is too simple to teach complicated terms (for example, words that you would use as a mechanic, chemist, doctor, etc.) In addition there are no books written in Tetum, all the books are in either Bahasa, Protugese or English. Currently the students are in the middle of a shift from schooling in Tetum to schooling in only Protugese. Teacher trainers from Brazil are coming over to train the Timorese teachers in Protugese. All this while the cartoons on TV are in Bahasa Indonesian. To make things more confusing, Tetum is not the only local language. In many of the districts people speak different languages that can’t be understood by native Tetum speakers. I have heard that there are over 23 different dialects and language within ET. Apparently having the people speaking many different languages was desired by the Indonesian government during their rule so that the people would have a difficult time uniting against the Indonsian government.
Very confusing? You betcha.
In addition, this year the government has decided that the schools needs to run on a southern hemisphere clock. Therefore, schools are no longer starting in September and ending in July. They now start in January and end some time in November. However, due to the fact that this is a transitional year, the students are out of school from July until January this year! I believe that the Ministry of Education is using this time to train local teachers in Protugese as they will have to teach in Protugese starting in January. This is a huge shift. It is like asking English speaking teachers to start teaching in only French after a couple of months (maybe only a couple of weeks) of French language classes. But I understand that the shift has to happen, Tetum is not developed enough for a modern day country and there is a desire for ET to be independent from Indonesia politically and culturally.
The language problem within the schooling system is not a new difficulty. I was talking with Lino, one of my coworkers, and he was saying that the first day of University he walked in to class and realized that his entire schooling was going to be in Protugese! Forunately, he is very talented with languages and stuck with it, but he said that by the end of the first month most of his classmates had dropped out. Not surprising, I would have too. Lino’s gift with languages is not all together rare among the Timorese. Many people speak Tetum (at least one of the dialects) and Bahasa (due to the fact that most the TV is in Bahasa) and many of the people mix in Portugese when the speak Tetum, especially for more complicated words.
Another thing about the schooling system that I recently learned was that during the Indonesian occupation, the Indonesian teachers that were sent to ET were intentionally not the best teachers. My housemate was telling me that often Indosenian teachers were sent to ET as a punishement. She describe it as the students having to learn chemistry by having a teacher read out of a book in front of the class. The reasoning behind the poor quality of teachers seems to be that the Indosnian thought that insure that the Timorese remained dependant.
It’s interesting driving through the districts on partly paved roads, and seeing old telephone poles that no longer have wire running through them. The roads and electricity wire are reminents from Indonesian occupation. Currently the roads are in desperate need of maintance, and many people are without electricity although they did have it during the Indonesian occupation. I have been told that the country was in better condition during the Indoneisan reign, but that in fact, the Timorese were not better off because the Indonesians had all the jobs.
But then again, approximately 50% of men ages 20 -35 are currently not employed. I wonder if the government has any plans for training programs that would enable Timorese to work construction and electrical jobs. There certainly is a need for that kind of labour, especially in the districts.
Along those lines, I was talking with an Australian friend of mine and we were discussing the oil issue in ET. Apparently there is debate over whether an oil refinery should be built in ET or in Darwin, Australia. She was saying that it would be cheaper and more environmentally friendly to built the refinery in Darwin, but there are people who are pushing for the refinery in ET because it would create jobs. However, she has argued that it would make more sense to have the Timorese working the medium skill jobs on the oil barges and in the mining process, rather than importing the medium skill labour which is what is currently happening. In addition to environmental and economical costs of building a refinery, there would also be social costs as a town would have to be built for the oil refinery workers, which would then lead to problems such as protestation, and there is only an expectation of the oil supply for the next 15 years. Overall, I hear and see a great need for medium skilled workers, so my next question is along the lines of what steps is the government taking to provide for this demand.
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Guarda Kiik
August 16, 2009 8:03pm
It’s Sunday evening after a very busy and fun week. Here are some of the thoughts and observations and questions that I’ve had bouncing around my brain this week:
What would it take to get the grocery stores to stock local fruits and vegetables instead of importing everything in packages?
When I go to the local markets, everything that is sold is fairly similar from veggie stand to veggie stand. I wonder why there isn’t more competition in the market. The stand that I happen to stop in to buy tomatoes is almost completely random. There is no bargaining, and there is no added value to any of the piles of tomatoes. I always buy 4 for a dollar. That’s the going rate for all the stands and all the tomatoes look exactly the same. I wonder if there is something here that I don’t understand, for instance, the other market people would beat up a market person would sold the tomatoes at a better deal, but I’m curious as to why there isn’t more competition between the market stalls.
Everything here is very hierarchal. I noticed this when I was working with the students in Fuiloro and Maliana. As we were working on the student CVs and cover letters with the students, I would be politely interrupted in the morning and afternoon in order to inform me that morning and afternoon tea was ready. The first day I thanked the assistant kindly and told them that I was just going to finish my work on the student’s CV that I was currently working on and then I would meet up with everyone at tea. It wasn’t until later on in the week that I realized that the students couldn’t have their tea until I had mine because if they did that would be considered very disrespectful. So the teachers and the LOL staff would all leave the classroom to go to the room where tea was served and we would all drink and mingle, and then after we were finished the students were able to join us. So once I realized that it was necessary for me to have tea before the students were able, I stopped whatever work I was doing mid task and joined my coworkers for tea so that the students could then join us.
The other thing I learned while working in the districts with the students was that although it was valuable for the students to have CVs, cover letters and interview practice (we were running a job prep workshop), most of our students would be returning to their family and local farms after graduation and probably wouldn’t be applying for a job where they would need a CV. At first I didn’t understand this and was disappointed in this information, but then I was informed that this is exactly where the students need to take their knowledge after graduation. During the Indonesian occupation, from 1975 -1999, the farms were all run by Indonesians. As a consequence a generation of Timorese farmers was lost along with their agricultural knowledge. The students have been educated in farming techniques that they may have never known had they stayed on their family farms and had not gone to an agricultural technical school.
I was also talking with one of my local Timorese colleagues and he was saying that often a farming family will work for a year, save enough money to eat for a year and then take the next year off. There doesn’t seem to be much practice in financial savings. This is not a issue that is unique to Timor, it seems to be something that all poor countries struggle with as the poor discount the future at a very high rate. I can understand why someone would rather just relax for a year than slave in the hot sun, especially when they feel that there is little reason for them to save for anything more than food. I wonder even if they even think that saving to send their children to school would be worth it if they believe that their children will just be living the same life as they are. I wonder if an education in could be seen as a competitive advantage some how. For instance, family X works every year so that they can send their children to agricultural school, but family Y does not and just works a year and then takes the next year off, living day to day. If family X’s kids could come back to the farm knowing how to operate a hand tractor and were then able to increase their crop production. I wonder if family Y would see this and think to save to send their children to school. Although that would depend on family X being able to save enough to buy a hand tractor in addition to sending their children to school.
The other thing I was thinking about and talking with Jonathan and my Portuguese mother about was how being able to take care of special needs children was luxury of rich countries. My Portuguese mother’s husband works with special needs children in Portugal. It’s interesting because although there has to be special needs children here in Timor, I haven’t seen any at all. I have been told that they get locked in a room and hidden away. That is so sad, but I understand how that can happen when a family has 7 other children to feed and are working to feed those children day to day.
The other thing that I have to be careful about is not judging the intelligence of the students by how well they speak English. I found myself doing that a little bit when I was in the districts. It’s amazing though how wonderful and accepting and gracious the students are. It was a lot of fun working with them on their CVs and I understand how they must be feeling right now so close to graduation. Proud of themselves for accomplishing their schooling, but nervous that they will have to find jobs and create a life of their own and sad that they will be leaving their friends and school. I so admire how the students can leave home to go to agricultural school and many of them do not see or hear from their parents until they go home for holidays. That takes so much courage.
I have to say a little bit about our weekly soccer games. I’ve joined a soccer team of international women who work in Dili. Our numbers and skill vary and our coach is a forensic detective from Portugal. One of my favorit times during the week is on Saturdays when we play a local soccer team of Timorese girls. These Timorese girls are very skilled and have beaten us every game except one. But both teams have so much fun playing as hard as they can and the wonderful thing about sports is that the language is so simple. We also get quite a crowd. The soccer pitch is below a busy road so we get a crowd of people who are driving past (often taxi drivers) and are curious so they just pull over, get out of their cars and watch. There are also a bunch of local people who line the field and oooohh and awwee whenever either team get a good chance. They LOVE it when block shots and last Saturday I got quite a cheer when the ball came down and hit me square on the top of my head (I would like to say intentionally).
My puppy has open its eyes and the neighbours decided to name it “Guarda Kiik” which means “Small Guard”. Fittingly, their dog is named, “Guarda Boot” which means “Big Guard”. The originality cracked me up.
Much love,
mariesa
Monday, July 27, 2009
July 26, 2009 3:54pm
Re: Thought on ET
It’s Sunday, and it’s a beautiful Sunday. I’ve had quite an adventurous last couple of days. This coming week will be my second week of Tetum classes in the morning. They have been very helpful and I certainly feel more comfortable speaking tetum but I’m still have a hard time figuring out what people are saying to me when they talk quickly (and when they talk slowly). The funny thing about Tetum is that it’s the product of Bahasa Indonesian, Protégées and Tetum. Which means that people count to 100 in tetum, tell you the price of something in Bahasa, and look at you as if you’re crazy when you try to bargain despite the language you choose. In addition, you can learn a word in Tetum but depending on who you’re talking to they may or may not understand what you’re saying. However, I am making progress in some sort of language because I’ve been talking with the students that are interning at the LOL office and they seem to have a general idea what I’m saying. Often I am too quick to just agree with whatever they say in reply and then they think I understand and then we usually end up standing there looking at each other until one of us just starts laughing and we’re back to square one. One of my favorite parts of the day has been sitting down with the three students after I get back from tetum class and having a little informal language class where I practice sentences in tetum and they practice sentences in English. I have to keep in mind that although it is very important that I learn Tetum, it’s actually more important that they learn English. And I think they get as much joy out of teaching me tetum as I get out of teaching them English.
Besides tetum, I’ve learned a lot about ET in the last couple of days. On Friday I was asked if I wanted to take an overnight trip to Los Palos for the graduation ceremony of one of our interns. There are two school in Fuiloro, Los Palos that are private schools that are run by the catholic church. The Sisters run one school that has an administrative, sewing and sisterhood track and a Father runs a neighbouring school that has an agricultural track. LOL operates one of its programs out of the Father’s school. Boys and girls attend both schools although all the boy sleep at the Father’s school and all the girls sleep at the Sisters’ school. Our secretary intern was graduating from the Sister school and it was a great opportunity to travel to the country side to support her and to see the agricultural school where LOL has one of its programs. As soon as I got the text (I was at tetum class at the time) asking me if I wanted to go as soon as I got back I jumped at the opportunity. We left as soon as I got back stopping just to pick up my toothbrush and a change of clothes for the night. The drive took about 6 hours and apparently it’s the nicest time of year (the dry season) to make the trip. Although the school is the furthest away of the three LOL schools, it has the nicest road so it’s the easiest to get too. Note, that although the road was paved most of the way there were pot holes the size of our truck, hair pin and cliff hanger corners and the width of the road was not big enough for two vehicles to pass without me shutting my eyes. When my eye weren’t slammed shut they were glued to the window as the scenery was spectacular. The beach was always at our side with the hills of the country rolling out in front of us. The villages that we drove through were small but always full of children playing outside with stray dogs, wandering pigs, and roaming chickens. It was refreshing to get outside of Dili and really see ET’s stunning countryside.
During the ride up I learned a lot from my boss and coworker about the history of ET and the current economy. What is especially interesting is the land ownership situation. Currently most land ownership is done in a traditional fashion where people live on the land that their family has lived on and everyone in the community knows that its theirs because that’s the way it has always been. However, due to the 1999 conflict and again in 2006 many people had to leave their properties and live in IDP camps throughput Dili and the country side. The last of these camps is closing down now as people are being moved back to their original homes, however, there have been disputes over properties rights as some people want to go back to land that may or may not have been theirs traditionally, or may have been theirs during the Protégées rein, but then was taken away from them during the Indonesian rein and then they wanted it back now that ET is independent. My boss was saying although this is confusing and there isn’t any documentation as to who actually owns the property there is surprising few land disputes after the IDP camps were dismantled.
However, the lack of proper ownership documentation is an issue for Timorese who wish to open a bank account and borrow from the bank as they do not own any collateral. My boss was saying that in Africa small group microfinancing has been very successful as say a group of women can get together and take out a loan to start a sewing shop and each woman has to pay back her loan and the peer pressure from the rest of the group has almost guaranteed that the loans will be paid back. However, the Timorese culture doesn’t seem to support borrowing of any kind, there’s a belief that it’s almost better to do without than to borrow.
The lack of proper proof of land ownership and a culture that does not support borrowing has contributed to the lack of economical development . Surprisingly ET imports almost all of its rice and the food in the grocery stores all imported. The vegetables that I buy from the local markets are local, however the eggs and milk are not (except in Los Palos, apparently they sell local eggs, some from the agricultural school that LOL supports), the rice is not local because the government buys it internationally and then sells it to the people at a subsidized price. As a consequence it is cheaper to sell the imported rice than to grow it locally and then sell it. There are a number of NGOs here that I know are in the ‘food security’ sector. These organizations are trying to prevent potential disaster if there is a drought or a flood and the crops are ruined. The vegetables and fruit in the market are all similar products of the weather and harvest, thus with a lack of diversity in production many people would be out of jobs and without food if the crops failed. The grocery stores target the international community so the prices are very expensive and local people never shop there.
We came home from Los Palos Saturday afternoon after attending mass in the morning then the graduation ceremony and then doing a quick tour of the Father’s agricultural school. I was very impressed with the agricultural school. The school owns about 200 acres and consists of a small milking operation, a pig breeding operation and a chicken hatchery. Currently the chicken hatchery is the only operation that is making a profit and part of the reason why is that there is a lack of confidence in the profitability of the diary operation. The pigs are currently being raised and then sold/given to the local people so that they can raise them and then possibly sell them back to the school so that the school can deport the meat.
An interesting observation in the whole operation of this part of the agricultural world is that all the pigs, chickens and chicken feed have been imported. Now that the school has pigs they will start breeding them and hopefully will have to import less and less. However, growing crops for feed, such as chicken, cow and pig feed is not part of the agricultural mind set. Because growing corn for cows/chickens rather than humans has not been pursued it is difficult for the local people to create large chicken/pork/beef/diary operations. I was talking with the head of the USAID cow fattening project and he mentioned that feeding animals, ie taking the food to the animal rather than letting the animal roam the countryside in search for nutrients, is an idea that hasn’t really developed here. Thus people have chickens, but the chicken walk around and peck at the ground and eat whatever left overs they can find. This gentleman was also saying that his cow fattening project suffers because so often the families that have the cows that are supposed to be fatten and then exported to Indonesia, are slaughter prematurely because the family needs the money at that moment in an emergency.
In addition to a missing animal feed market, there is also a missing slaughtering market. There are no formal butchering practices and as a consequence the meat that is sold is not standardized in anyway. Although meat is not eaten often among the locals, it would be an interesting experiment to have a practicing butcher that could standardized the cuts and then even sell it to the grocery stores that target the international community. There are many many pieces to this puzzle but what I really like about the LOL project is that it starts somewhere. Although these students may never own their own diary farm they will have experience caring for animals and will understand the basic operations that are needed to make a profit from farming. These are skills that they can take home to their own family farms.
We got back from Los Palos around 8pm Saturday night. Sunday morning there was the annual First Lady’s Cup funrun 10k race. Almost every expat in Dili had signed up along with a number of local timorese. I’d say there was over 400 people present, some running, some walking, some just watching. The race went from the government palace building along Beach Road for 5km and then back. The first 10 men and first 10 women received a metal and a flat of canned orange juice. LOL represented very well, my boss finished within the top 40 of the men (the race was dominated by men, many of which were in the UN armed forces) and I finished 8th out of the women. The coolest part was that after the race the actual first lady, the Prime minister’s wife, who is Australian, was the one giving out the metals and flats of orange juice. I have only been here 2 weeks and I have already kissed the first lady on the cheek! The Prime minister was there as well in his running gear, as was their child and body guard. It was such a cool experience but the best part was certainly just competing and making LOL proud.
Today is Monday and I’m back in tetum class. I did learn something interesting today, I learned that in Tetum when you tell the time you either say the hour exactly or you say the hour and a half. For example, if you wanted to meet someone at 12 o’clock you would say “tuku sanulu resin rua” but if you wanted to meet someone at any time between 12 o’clock and 1 o’clock you would simply say “tuku sanulu resin rua o’balu”. ‘O’balu’ just means ‘a half’, it doesn’t matter whether you want to meet at 12:01 or 12:59, you always just say '12 and a half’. I’m sure there are ways around this, but it certainly is not clear and our teacher kept on telling us that ‘the hour is the only thing that matters here’.
Welp, off to bed I go! Much love,
mariesa
Re: Thought on ET
It’s Sunday, and it’s a beautiful Sunday. I’ve had quite an adventurous last couple of days. This coming week will be my second week of Tetum classes in the morning. They have been very helpful and I certainly feel more comfortable speaking tetum but I’m still have a hard time figuring out what people are saying to me when they talk quickly (and when they talk slowly). The funny thing about Tetum is that it’s the product of Bahasa Indonesian, Protégées and Tetum. Which means that people count to 100 in tetum, tell you the price of something in Bahasa, and look at you as if you’re crazy when you try to bargain despite the language you choose. In addition, you can learn a word in Tetum but depending on who you’re talking to they may or may not understand what you’re saying. However, I am making progress in some sort of language because I’ve been talking with the students that are interning at the LOL office and they seem to have a general idea what I’m saying. Often I am too quick to just agree with whatever they say in reply and then they think I understand and then we usually end up standing there looking at each other until one of us just starts laughing and we’re back to square one. One of my favorite parts of the day has been sitting down with the three students after I get back from tetum class and having a little informal language class where I practice sentences in tetum and they practice sentences in English. I have to keep in mind that although it is very important that I learn Tetum, it’s actually more important that they learn English. And I think they get as much joy out of teaching me tetum as I get out of teaching them English.
Besides tetum, I’ve learned a lot about ET in the last couple of days. On Friday I was asked if I wanted to take an overnight trip to Los Palos for the graduation ceremony of one of our interns. There are two school in Fuiloro, Los Palos that are private schools that are run by the catholic church. The Sisters run one school that has an administrative, sewing and sisterhood track and a Father runs a neighbouring school that has an agricultural track. LOL operates one of its programs out of the Father’s school. Boys and girls attend both schools although all the boy sleep at the Father’s school and all the girls sleep at the Sisters’ school. Our secretary intern was graduating from the Sister school and it was a great opportunity to travel to the country side to support her and to see the agricultural school where LOL has one of its programs. As soon as I got the text (I was at tetum class at the time) asking me if I wanted to go as soon as I got back I jumped at the opportunity. We left as soon as I got back stopping just to pick up my toothbrush and a change of clothes for the night. The drive took about 6 hours and apparently it’s the nicest time of year (the dry season) to make the trip. Although the school is the furthest away of the three LOL schools, it has the nicest road so it’s the easiest to get too. Note, that although the road was paved most of the way there were pot holes the size of our truck, hair pin and cliff hanger corners and the width of the road was not big enough for two vehicles to pass without me shutting my eyes. When my eye weren’t slammed shut they were glued to the window as the scenery was spectacular. The beach was always at our side with the hills of the country rolling out in front of us. The villages that we drove through were small but always full of children playing outside with stray dogs, wandering pigs, and roaming chickens. It was refreshing to get outside of Dili and really see ET’s stunning countryside.
During the ride up I learned a lot from my boss and coworker about the history of ET and the current economy. What is especially interesting is the land ownership situation. Currently most land ownership is done in a traditional fashion where people live on the land that their family has lived on and everyone in the community knows that its theirs because that’s the way it has always been. However, due to the 1999 conflict and again in 2006 many people had to leave their properties and live in IDP camps throughput Dili and the country side. The last of these camps is closing down now as people are being moved back to their original homes, however, there have been disputes over properties rights as some people want to go back to land that may or may not have been theirs traditionally, or may have been theirs during the Protégées rein, but then was taken away from them during the Indonesian rein and then they wanted it back now that ET is independent. My boss was saying although this is confusing and there isn’t any documentation as to who actually owns the property there is surprising few land disputes after the IDP camps were dismantled.
However, the lack of proper ownership documentation is an issue for Timorese who wish to open a bank account and borrow from the bank as they do not own any collateral. My boss was saying that in Africa small group microfinancing has been very successful as say a group of women can get together and take out a loan to start a sewing shop and each woman has to pay back her loan and the peer pressure from the rest of the group has almost guaranteed that the loans will be paid back. However, the Timorese culture doesn’t seem to support borrowing of any kind, there’s a belief that it’s almost better to do without than to borrow.
The lack of proper proof of land ownership and a culture that does not support borrowing has contributed to the lack of economical development . Surprisingly ET imports almost all of its rice and the food in the grocery stores all imported. The vegetables that I buy from the local markets are local, however the eggs and milk are not (except in Los Palos, apparently they sell local eggs, some from the agricultural school that LOL supports), the rice is not local because the government buys it internationally and then sells it to the people at a subsidized price. As a consequence it is cheaper to sell the imported rice than to grow it locally and then sell it. There are a number of NGOs here that I know are in the ‘food security’ sector. These organizations are trying to prevent potential disaster if there is a drought or a flood and the crops are ruined. The vegetables and fruit in the market are all similar products of the weather and harvest, thus with a lack of diversity in production many people would be out of jobs and without food if the crops failed. The grocery stores target the international community so the prices are very expensive and local people never shop there.
We came home from Los Palos Saturday afternoon after attending mass in the morning then the graduation ceremony and then doing a quick tour of the Father’s agricultural school. I was very impressed with the agricultural school. The school owns about 200 acres and consists of a small milking operation, a pig breeding operation and a chicken hatchery. Currently the chicken hatchery is the only operation that is making a profit and part of the reason why is that there is a lack of confidence in the profitability of the diary operation. The pigs are currently being raised and then sold/given to the local people so that they can raise them and then possibly sell them back to the school so that the school can deport the meat.
An interesting observation in the whole operation of this part of the agricultural world is that all the pigs, chickens and chicken feed have been imported. Now that the school has pigs they will start breeding them and hopefully will have to import less and less. However, growing crops for feed, such as chicken, cow and pig feed is not part of the agricultural mind set. Because growing corn for cows/chickens rather than humans has not been pursued it is difficult for the local people to create large chicken/pork/beef/diary operations. I was talking with the head of the USAID cow fattening project and he mentioned that feeding animals, ie taking the food to the animal rather than letting the animal roam the countryside in search for nutrients, is an idea that hasn’t really developed here. Thus people have chickens, but the chicken walk around and peck at the ground and eat whatever left overs they can find. This gentleman was also saying that his cow fattening project suffers because so often the families that have the cows that are supposed to be fatten and then exported to Indonesia, are slaughter prematurely because the family needs the money at that moment in an emergency.
In addition to a missing animal feed market, there is also a missing slaughtering market. There are no formal butchering practices and as a consequence the meat that is sold is not standardized in anyway. Although meat is not eaten often among the locals, it would be an interesting experiment to have a practicing butcher that could standardized the cuts and then even sell it to the grocery stores that target the international community. There are many many pieces to this puzzle but what I really like about the LOL project is that it starts somewhere. Although these students may never own their own diary farm they will have experience caring for animals and will understand the basic operations that are needed to make a profit from farming. These are skills that they can take home to their own family farms.
We got back from Los Palos around 8pm Saturday night. Sunday morning there was the annual First Lady’s Cup funrun 10k race. Almost every expat in Dili had signed up along with a number of local timorese. I’d say there was over 400 people present, some running, some walking, some just watching. The race went from the government palace building along Beach Road for 5km and then back. The first 10 men and first 10 women received a metal and a flat of canned orange juice. LOL represented very well, my boss finished within the top 40 of the men (the race was dominated by men, many of which were in the UN armed forces) and I finished 8th out of the women. The coolest part was that after the race the actual first lady, the Prime minister’s wife, who is Australian, was the one giving out the metals and flats of orange juice. I have only been here 2 weeks and I have already kissed the first lady on the cheek! The Prime minister was there as well in his running gear, as was their child and body guard. It was such a cool experience but the best part was certainly just competing and making LOL proud.
Today is Monday and I’m back in tetum class. I did learn something interesting today, I learned that in Tetum when you tell the time you either say the hour exactly or you say the hour and a half. For example, if you wanted to meet someone at 12 o’clock you would say “tuku sanulu resin rua” but if you wanted to meet someone at any time between 12 o’clock and 1 o’clock you would simply say “tuku sanulu resin rua o’balu”. ‘O’balu’ just means ‘a half’, it doesn’t matter whether you want to meet at 12:01 or 12:59, you always just say '12 and a half’. I’m sure there are ways around this, but it certainly is not clear and our teacher kept on telling us that ‘the hour is the only thing that matters here’.
Welp, off to bed I go! Much love,
mariesa
Monday, July 20, 2009
Exciting weekend!
July 20, 2009 9:54pm
Wow, has it even been an interesting weekend. On Saturday I got up and went into the office and helped a colluege of mine with an application essay for a US scholarship that is only offered to five Timorese each year. The more I learned about my college who is applying the more I was convinced that if anyone deserved a college education this woman did. She is the oldest of 6 children and currently is the provider for her family. She handles all of LOL finances and is as sharp as a whistle. Not only is her English almost perfect but she can also speak Portugese and some Indonesian. She studied in a convent to become a nun for four years but then had to drop out because she needed to support her family. And to top it all off she is the most patient Tetum teacher there is and as such a wonderful happy laugh. When I talked to her about living through the revolution in 1999 and the crisis in 2006 she is very honest about her family’s story of survival. And when I look at her incrediously and ask her how she does it all her 75 pound frame just chuckles and she responds, ‘it’s a life.’ I feel so fortunate to have her as such a good friend.
After we worked on the application and I used the internet in the office for a bit we went back to my place and had lunch and then headed off to the beach. It was nice just to float in the water practicing my Tetum and laughing about how ‘Jesus’ must be getting hot (referring to the giant Jesus statue on top of one of the mountains). After we went home and changed I needed to head off to my soccer game so we caught a cab and made plans to meet for mass Sunday morning at the Dili cathedral.
Now, the soccer game was a blast! I hadn’t played soccer for over 12 years but it was so much fun just to get out there and run around. I’m on a team with a bunch of international girls and we played a local Timorese girls team. They kicked our butts pretty cleanly but I managed to get our team’s only goal! We had quite a crowd out watching us and they would ooohhh and ahhh over ever save, bump, crash and kick. The best part was that both teams were having so much fun that we didn’t even care about the score. There were refs and everything so there were a few rules that I had to pick up mid match. But the other team was the nicest bunch of girls and I can’t wait to play again this weekend.
Saturday night I went to a friend’s going away party. Mostly I knew the soccer girls at the party but it was nice to hang out and meet some more international folks. The hard part was getting up Sunday morning at 6:30am so that I could catch a cab to the catherdral. When I thought I was going to a catherdral I though that I would end up at a pristeen European style giant Catherdral. However, this was not exactly the case. The ‘Cathedral’ is currently underconstruction and right now looks like a empty half built cement church. The church service was actually outside in the back yard of the construction where everyone stood or sat on plastic chairs. A lot of people were there, probably around 400 who either walk or rode their motorbikes. Although the service was in Tetun and I was a little tired, it was a great experience and I think it’s a nice was to integrate myself into the local community. This weekend my college and I are going to go to an English service that she has heard about.
After going to church my next big adventure was shopping with another friend and then heading to the beach with the soccer girls. We went to “Jesus’ backside beach” which is the beach behind the Jesus statue. It was actually quite overcast and it started to pore later on in the afternoon but not before I got the chance to walk all the way up to the Jesus statue and take a look at the bay from the balcony. What a beautiful sight. The island really is stunning and the ocean goes on and on forever. You look out and feel like there’s nobody else on earth.
That evening was my last evening at Bess’ place. It was sad to leave but Monday (today) after work I moved into my new home. This place really is wonderful. It’s a beautiful home that is not far at all from the city center. I think that once I have a bike I’ll be able to go anywhere fairly easily. It felt really good to unpack all my things and set myself up. The house is right next to the biggest farmers market in Dili. It’s huge! I walked in and was the only malae (foreigner) there. I got a lot of stares but I also got a lot of smiles and a lot of veggitables and fruit that was really inexpensive. The market also sells almost anything you would want to buy in a grocery store and it also has clothes and any sort of trinket you can imagine. I am so thrilled about its location.
This week Bess and I are taking tetum language classes every morning. Tetum is fairly easy to learn and I have made pretty good progress since I got here. It really helps to have coworkers that are willing to teach you all day. And this afternoon I went with a coworker to one of the USAID projects that our students are interning at in Dili. It was really fascinating to learn about this other project that focuses on cattle fattening, coffee growing, and tree planting. It was also good to meet some of the students and ask them about their experience thus far. The idea is that these students will get some work experience and knowledge that they can take back to their own family farm or use in the agricultural sector. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the other projects and being able to converse more easily with the students.
Off to bed, I’m going to walk to work in the morning and this time it may be a little bit of a hike! Bonoite!
LOVE
Mariesa
Ps. I’m having a difficult time trying to get my pictures off of my lap top and on to the internet. Soon they will come!
Wow, has it even been an interesting weekend. On Saturday I got up and went into the office and helped a colluege of mine with an application essay for a US scholarship that is only offered to five Timorese each year. The more I learned about my college who is applying the more I was convinced that if anyone deserved a college education this woman did. She is the oldest of 6 children and currently is the provider for her family. She handles all of LOL finances and is as sharp as a whistle. Not only is her English almost perfect but she can also speak Portugese and some Indonesian. She studied in a convent to become a nun for four years but then had to drop out because she needed to support her family. And to top it all off she is the most patient Tetum teacher there is and as such a wonderful happy laugh. When I talked to her about living through the revolution in 1999 and the crisis in 2006 she is very honest about her family’s story of survival. And when I look at her incrediously and ask her how she does it all her 75 pound frame just chuckles and she responds, ‘it’s a life.’ I feel so fortunate to have her as such a good friend.
After we worked on the application and I used the internet in the office for a bit we went back to my place and had lunch and then headed off to the beach. It was nice just to float in the water practicing my Tetum and laughing about how ‘Jesus’ must be getting hot (referring to the giant Jesus statue on top of one of the mountains). After we went home and changed I needed to head off to my soccer game so we caught a cab and made plans to meet for mass Sunday morning at the Dili cathedral.
Now, the soccer game was a blast! I hadn’t played soccer for over 12 years but it was so much fun just to get out there and run around. I’m on a team with a bunch of international girls and we played a local Timorese girls team. They kicked our butts pretty cleanly but I managed to get our team’s only goal! We had quite a crowd out watching us and they would ooohhh and ahhh over ever save, bump, crash and kick. The best part was that both teams were having so much fun that we didn’t even care about the score. There were refs and everything so there were a few rules that I had to pick up mid match. But the other team was the nicest bunch of girls and I can’t wait to play again this weekend.
Saturday night I went to a friend’s going away party. Mostly I knew the soccer girls at the party but it was nice to hang out and meet some more international folks. The hard part was getting up Sunday morning at 6:30am so that I could catch a cab to the catherdral. When I thought I was going to a catherdral I though that I would end up at a pristeen European style giant Catherdral. However, this was not exactly the case. The ‘Cathedral’ is currently underconstruction and right now looks like a empty half built cement church. The church service was actually outside in the back yard of the construction where everyone stood or sat on plastic chairs. A lot of people were there, probably around 400 who either walk or rode their motorbikes. Although the service was in Tetun and I was a little tired, it was a great experience and I think it’s a nice was to integrate myself into the local community. This weekend my college and I are going to go to an English service that she has heard about.
After going to church my next big adventure was shopping with another friend and then heading to the beach with the soccer girls. We went to “Jesus’ backside beach” which is the beach behind the Jesus statue. It was actually quite overcast and it started to pore later on in the afternoon but not before I got the chance to walk all the way up to the Jesus statue and take a look at the bay from the balcony. What a beautiful sight. The island really is stunning and the ocean goes on and on forever. You look out and feel like there’s nobody else on earth.
That evening was my last evening at Bess’ place. It was sad to leave but Monday (today) after work I moved into my new home. This place really is wonderful. It’s a beautiful home that is not far at all from the city center. I think that once I have a bike I’ll be able to go anywhere fairly easily. It felt really good to unpack all my things and set myself up. The house is right next to the biggest farmers market in Dili. It’s huge! I walked in and was the only malae (foreigner) there. I got a lot of stares but I also got a lot of smiles and a lot of veggitables and fruit that was really inexpensive. The market also sells almost anything you would want to buy in a grocery store and it also has clothes and any sort of trinket you can imagine. I am so thrilled about its location.
This week Bess and I are taking tetum language classes every morning. Tetum is fairly easy to learn and I have made pretty good progress since I got here. It really helps to have coworkers that are willing to teach you all day. And this afternoon I went with a coworker to one of the USAID projects that our students are interning at in Dili. It was really fascinating to learn about this other project that focuses on cattle fattening, coffee growing, and tree planting. It was also good to meet some of the students and ask them about their experience thus far. The idea is that these students will get some work experience and knowledge that they can take back to their own family farm or use in the agricultural sector. I’m looking forward to seeing some of the other projects and being able to converse more easily with the students.
Off to bed, I’m going to walk to work in the morning and this time it may be a little bit of a hike! Bonoite!
LOVE
Mariesa
Ps. I’m having a difficult time trying to get my pictures off of my lap top and on to the internet. Soon they will come!
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Jesus Statue
Blog post: July 16, 2009
After work yesterday Bess and I rode bikes out to the beach and went for a run towards the tip of the island where there is a giant statue of Jesus (although he’s in scaffolding right now). This was the first of a few things for me. It was the first time that I navigated the roads on a bicycle (this was a little nerve racking but I managed to remember to stay on the left hand side of the road and Bess and I stayed close together). We were going to bike all the way to the Jesus statue but then Bess’ tire was flat so we decided to park our bike and run. This was the first time I had been that far down the beach and it was the most beautiful run I have ever been on. We were running as the sun was setting and I was lucky that I didn’t fall flat on my face because I was looking out on the ocean with the sun setting on the horizon the entire time. Breath taking. There were actually many people (both “malae”, who are internationals, and local people) running along the road. In two weekends there is a big 10km race that I’m going to try to sign up for.
I have also joined a women’s soccer team here. We practice every Tuesday and Thrusdaya nd this Saturday I have my first game. Our coach is from Sweden and is a UN police officer. Last night the two girls I’m currently sharing an apartment with and I hosted a girls’ night. There was about 6 of us in total and most were from the soccer team. I’ve never been great at ball sports but I’m excited about playing a game on Saturday with a bunch of girls that I now know. Anyway, at the girls night, we made a bean dip and we all just sat around talking and devouring delicious food.
Today I went out to lunch with a bunch of people from the UN. One of the UN guys that we were eating with is from Vancouver. Within 5 days I’ve already met 3 people from Vancouver. Usually when I meet Canadians (and that has been relatively rare in the last couple of years) they’re from Toronto. But this nice Vancouver fellow who gave me information on how to contact a NGO that has a recycling project in Dili. Apparently because there isn’t a paper recycling in Dili this organization is collecting paper from offices and is going to make them in to paper bricks that you can burn. The paper is going to be burned anyway, but at least this would decrease the number of trees that are going to cut down and it would provide jobs for Timorese who work at the paper brick making factory. I noticed that LOL separates its paper and glass bottles and my boss said we are hoping to start recycling, perhaps we could contribute to the paper brick factory!
Next week I start an intensive Tetum language course that is every morning all week. My tetum is getting a lot better (I can piece together sentences with my co-workers. They are so patient it’s unbelievable). But I was thinking about how cool it will be to actually understand what they are saying to each other. It will take a bit of time to get to that point but I have time.
Much love,
mariesa
After work yesterday Bess and I rode bikes out to the beach and went for a run towards the tip of the island where there is a giant statue of Jesus (although he’s in scaffolding right now). This was the first of a few things for me. It was the first time that I navigated the roads on a bicycle (this was a little nerve racking but I managed to remember to stay on the left hand side of the road and Bess and I stayed close together). We were going to bike all the way to the Jesus statue but then Bess’ tire was flat so we decided to park our bike and run. This was the first time I had been that far down the beach and it was the most beautiful run I have ever been on. We were running as the sun was setting and I was lucky that I didn’t fall flat on my face because I was looking out on the ocean with the sun setting on the horizon the entire time. Breath taking. There were actually many people (both “malae”, who are internationals, and local people) running along the road. In two weekends there is a big 10km race that I’m going to try to sign up for.
I have also joined a women’s soccer team here. We practice every Tuesday and Thrusdaya nd this Saturday I have my first game. Our coach is from Sweden and is a UN police officer. Last night the two girls I’m currently sharing an apartment with and I hosted a girls’ night. There was about 6 of us in total and most were from the soccer team. I’ve never been great at ball sports but I’m excited about playing a game on Saturday with a bunch of girls that I now know. Anyway, at the girls night, we made a bean dip and we all just sat around talking and devouring delicious food.
Today I went out to lunch with a bunch of people from the UN. One of the UN guys that we were eating with is from Vancouver. Within 5 days I’ve already met 3 people from Vancouver. Usually when I meet Canadians (and that has been relatively rare in the last couple of years) they’re from Toronto. But this nice Vancouver fellow who gave me information on how to contact a NGO that has a recycling project in Dili. Apparently because there isn’t a paper recycling in Dili this organization is collecting paper from offices and is going to make them in to paper bricks that you can burn. The paper is going to be burned anyway, but at least this would decrease the number of trees that are going to cut down and it would provide jobs for Timorese who work at the paper brick making factory. I noticed that LOL separates its paper and glass bottles and my boss said we are hoping to start recycling, perhaps we could contribute to the paper brick factory!
Next week I start an intensive Tetum language course that is every morning all week. My tetum is getting a lot better (I can piece together sentences with my co-workers. They are so patient it’s unbelievable). But I was thinking about how cool it will be to actually understand what they are saying to each other. It will take a bit of time to get to that point but I have time.
Much love,
mariesa
Monday, July 13, 2009
first day at work!
I just had my first day of work and it was like Tetum Language Immersion: SUPER INTENSIVE. I can walk to work from where I'm living right now which is absolutely lovely. I didn't really have any set tasks once I got to work so after meeting everyone in the office and giving them all chocolates I decided that I'd spend my time studying Tetum with a little girl who seemed to work in the office as a cleaner and cook. We practiced all morning and then at lunch I went out with one of the staff that speaks english very well because he was educated in Australia. He wanted to hear all about Bernie Madoff. We had a quick lunch and then I came back to the office and started hanging out with the local staff, all of whom were more than willing to teach me Tetum (often all at once). It was really fun hanging out with them and I asked what they had been working on in the morning. Apparently they are planning trips out the organisations where the students are doing their internships this summer. I asked if I could join in on a trip and now it looks like I'll be treking across E. T. to at least one of the districts later on this week with some of the other staff. The idea is they are checking in to get some feed back from the organisations and from the students that were getting work experience for the last couple of weeks before they graduate. I'm going to head out now to go the market before it gets dark. More is coming on the adventure stories I missed from my trip here.
much love
mariesa
much love
mariesa
January 12, 2009 5:42pm, Dili (Bess’ place)
Boatarde!
I think that means “good afternoon”. Wow, what a crazy last two days it has been. Yesterday I flew in and as I looked at the mountains coming up out to the beautiful blue sea I thought to myself “wow, the trip was worth it.” It was a long journey here. But when I arrived Casey was at the airport terminal to meet me and give me a big hug. I had been up since 3:30am because my body hadn’t adjusted to the time change yet. But as soon as I saw her I got a good shot of adrenalin and I was ready to explore my surroundings.
First Casey took me to where I will be living for the next little while. I still have my eyes and ears open for a place and pretty much I’m asking anyone and everyone that I meet (and can communicate with) if they know of any places that are opening up. Right now I’m sharing Bess’ room which I’m actually quite thrilled about. Living with Bess I think will be kind of nice for the first little while as I make friends and get a bit of a routine. Right now Bess’ isn’t here because she went on a camping trip out into the districts with some friends. But she’s coming home this evening. Bess has a room in an apartment right below Casey, but Casey will be moving out on Tuesday as one of her friends is leaving and she’ll moving into her friend’s old place. This sounds rather confusing but it seems to be the way of life here as so many people are coming and going and all transactions are done by word of mouth. Bess’ has one room with a washroom in the apartment. There are two other rooms, a living room area with a TV, and a very small kitchen (pictures coming soon). There are two other people living on the flat and thus far I have only met one of them. He seems very nice and plays good African music in the morning. The other person is a girl who I think is on vacation right now.
Last night after I had bought a cell phone, had a nap and showered, I went with Casey to her friend’s goodbye party. At the party I met a bunch of people who work for Casey’s organization (IOM, it’s a branch of the UN that works with the Internally Displaced Camps). I made sure that I asked anyone that I met at the party if they knew of any places opening up where could stay. The people I met were mostly from England, Australia, USA, Portuagal and even one girl from Vancouver!
After the party I fell asleep so fast I barely made it my bed. I woke up around 10am and Casey and I went to the super market where I bought a SIM card for my phone from a kid who was selling them on the street and some oatmeal and bananas. Afterwards I met my boss, for lunch and I found out what Land O Lakes does here in Timor and what I will be doing for them. I'll explain that part in my next post.
Boatarde!
I think that means “good afternoon”. Wow, what a crazy last two days it has been. Yesterday I flew in and as I looked at the mountains coming up out to the beautiful blue sea I thought to myself “wow, the trip was worth it.” It was a long journey here. But when I arrived Casey was at the airport terminal to meet me and give me a big hug. I had been up since 3:30am because my body hadn’t adjusted to the time change yet. But as soon as I saw her I got a good shot of adrenalin and I was ready to explore my surroundings.
First Casey took me to where I will be living for the next little while. I still have my eyes and ears open for a place and pretty much I’m asking anyone and everyone that I meet (and can communicate with) if they know of any places that are opening up. Right now I’m sharing Bess’ room which I’m actually quite thrilled about. Living with Bess I think will be kind of nice for the first little while as I make friends and get a bit of a routine. Right now Bess’ isn’t here because she went on a camping trip out into the districts with some friends. But she’s coming home this evening. Bess has a room in an apartment right below Casey, but Casey will be moving out on Tuesday as one of her friends is leaving and she’ll moving into her friend’s old place. This sounds rather confusing but it seems to be the way of life here as so many people are coming and going and all transactions are done by word of mouth. Bess’ has one room with a washroom in the apartment. There are two other rooms, a living room area with a TV, and a very small kitchen (pictures coming soon). There are two other people living on the flat and thus far I have only met one of them. He seems very nice and plays good African music in the morning. The other person is a girl who I think is on vacation right now.
Last night after I had bought a cell phone, had a nap and showered, I went with Casey to her friend’s goodbye party. At the party I met a bunch of people who work for Casey’s organization (IOM, it’s a branch of the UN that works with the Internally Displaced Camps). I made sure that I asked anyone that I met at the party if they knew of any places opening up where could stay. The people I met were mostly from England, Australia, USA, Portuagal and even one girl from Vancouver!
After the party I fell asleep so fast I barely made it my bed. I woke up around 10am and Casey and I went to the super market where I bought a SIM card for my phone from a kid who was selling them on the street and some oatmeal and bananas. Afterwards I met my boss, for lunch and I found out what Land O Lakes does here in Timor and what I will be doing for them. I'll explain that part in my next post.
Tuesday, July 7, 2009
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