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.