Beyond the Classroom
Adapted from Catherine Nesbitt’s speech to assembled Moama Anglican Grammar School students.
Good afternoon everyone.
We have recently returned from 6 weeks in East Timor and we would like to share some of our experiences with you today.
Firstly, we would like to thank you all for your donations of pencils which were very well received by many children. We collected 1,087 in total and took them to villages and schools within Ainaro. Also, the $100 made from selling the Tais’ and ribbons we donated towards a new basketball court which we also spent time collecting rocks for, from the dry river beds.
Life in Timor is incredibly primitive by our standards, we felt like we were stepping back in time to the 18th century. This is East Timor! It is only a 1 hour flight off the Australian coast, north of Darwin, and yet it is one of the world’s poorest countries. The average income for a person is .70 cents/day. Could you buy a day’s food at Coles or Safeway for .70 cents?
When the international community forced the Indonesians to give East Timor independence in 1999, they did their best to destroy much of the infrastructure (many of the things) that they had spent 25 years building before they left. During Indonesian occupation, more than 200,000 people were brutally killed, or disappeared. Many important buildings were destroyed during the uprising, including the hospital.
The entire country once had 24hr power and clean water, 2000km of sealed roads and good health care. Today, only 2 cities, Dili and Baucau, have 24 hour power, the roads are in disrepair, and there is no health system to speak of, resulting in one of the world’s highest infant and maternal death rates. (That is where the mother dies giving birth.)
Life is RUGGED in East Timor; there is no other way to describe it. The people have to spend so much of their time surviving; they have no opportunity to earn an income to improve life for themselves. The amazing thing is that they are always happy, and yet have so little. They are a self subsistence community, which means they eat what they grow.
They have a large market each Saturday where many goods can be bought or sold,and there is a smaller market that operates daily, for garden produce. There are many shops set up in a front room of people’s homes, where you could buy basic food items, like flour, biscuits, eggs, lollies, butter and chocolate amongst other things. Don’t forget that the average wage is 70 cents a day, so very few locals could afford these items that we consider essential.
Ainaro is the township we lived in for 4 weeks; it is in the mountains and has a population of about 5,000 people. They all live in very rudimentary (basic) shacks, some made of cement, or cement blocks, others recycled tin, bamboo or grass huts. Our accommodation at the Canossian Convent was luxury by their standards but very basic by ours. Often they have built a temporary structure beside what used to be their home before the destruction of 1999.
The Convent houses 40 girls, some boarders and some orphans. 50 metres away is the Catholic Church, which runs a boys boarding house and orphanage combined. They have 75 boys living there. The Catholic Church has a primary, a junior secondary and a secondary school. The kids go to school for 4 hours a day, 6 days a week. They all go in shifts, some morning and others in the afternoon. The school isn’t big enough and also doesn’t have enough teachers, for them all at once. The education standard that the children receive is very low; often the teachers do not turn up for work, leaving the students unsupervised for the lesson. There are no toilet facilities at the school either, imagine that!!
The township has electricity from 6pm, for 6 hours, each night, provided it is working. This limits any use of electrical devices/appliances to this time.
Once a week on Monday night the girls from the boarding house have computer lessons for an hour. Many houses have satellite dishes to watch their TV, despite their poverty, 98% of East Timor’s water is infected with Giardia, a bacteria present in faeces. This is because everyone uses the river water for washing and bathing. Therefore it is not a good idea to drink the water or eat anything that has been washed in it. We were very lucky to be able to afford to purchase bottled water, which we used for everything.
At the convent, when the taps worked, we got water for perhaps an hour a day, hence the tiled reservoir in our bathroom. There were no flushing toilets, so we had to tip water down the toilet when we used it; the boy’s bathroom is pretty substandard.
Ainaro has a well established water treatment plant, which was set up by the Indonesians, but the distribution pipe work leaves a lot to be desired. It frequently has breaks in it, and there are no means of repairing it, and there are often broken taps, so water runs freely. There are some wells also. Water is often carried long distances.
Much of our time was spent helping dad in his work in the villages. (There are many albinos in Timor, who have many health problems but no education on how to look after themselves.) Dental care is not a priorty. Sometimes we walked for an hour to get to the people. We trekked through rivers and jungle areas, on mountain tracks, carrying all the medical supplies needed. (The leeches liked me)
We also assisted in many English classes, helping the students practice their language skills. We enjoyed many walks in the surrounding mountains, discovering waterfalls, caves and villages.
Everyone relies on fire to cook with, hence the need for fire wood. One Sunday, their only day off school, we spent all day collecting fire wood with the girls from the boarding house. At different times we also collected wood for elderly or disabled citizens, and helped dig new or maintain veggie gardens.
The food presented a challenge for us, eating rice twice a day with vegetables and some meat, usually buffalo, pig or chicken. Money meant that there was plenty of food for us, we were never hungry. It was often deep fried in lots of oil, which we weren’t used to. We cheated at breakfast by buying cereals like Frosties and Weetbix in Dili, with long life milk. The local diet typically consisted of rice 3 times a day with whatever they had to cook with it.
When dad finished a clinic, we were often treated to boiled sweet potato or cassava as a sign of thanks.
The sisters run a nutrition program where they supply high protein beans and rice for children in various villages.
Each week we went to a village called Sowbagalao, to feed and care for Peter, an elderly man who had a stroke some years ago. Both his sons were killed in the fighting with Indonesia and his wife has also died, so there is no one to care for him.
The most difficult thing we found to deal with was the lack of modern amenities. No toilets, showers, running water, let alone hot water (which is collected from a large pot) or many appliances that need electricity which make life more comfortable and efficient.
There are so many ways in which we could help the people of East Timor. Our School is going to start a collaboration with the school in Ainaro and to begin with we would like to ask everyone to make a donation to Mrs. Kemp’s collection, which will go to Timor. If each of us gives $5, we will raise more than $1500 which will help the Oak Tree foundation provide life changing opportunities for the youth of East Timor. So let’s not turn our backs on these people who are so desperate for our help.
Finally, Mr. Pullar is looking at the possibility of taking a group of students from our school to East Timor in 2011. The group will be responsible for a project that will benefit the community there. It will be a great opportunity to experience this amazing culture for yourselves and to do something worthwhile that you will always remember. Keep your eyes on the newsletter early next year for further details if you are interested.
Thank you for reading this. We hope that we have helped you understand how the other half live.
