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!

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.