East Timor
Week 3
14 May 2008
It’s hard to believe we only left England three weeks ago, we seem to have been away ages, there is so much to do here but everything is on a tight budget.
Flying into the airport at Dili the coastline looked very much like a tropical desert island, but once through the gates you are greeted with the devastations of burnt out building and this stretched for the next two hundred miles. As the Indonesians left they torched every building, often burning the people inside, even the local king who happened to live in a village near our school was burnt alive in his house.
Many of the houses will never be lived in again because there is no one left from the family to claim them.
Houses are being rebuilt but often with just wood and palm leaves some are built with reclaimed concrete blocks and salvaged corrugated metal roofing,
Most of the administration buildings will have to be rebuilt, but on an average wage of two pounds a week it is going to take a long time.
The journey to our school was quite a trip, part of the way we travelled along the coast some times long stretches of sand, next miles of swamps, and all the time going through many burnt out villages.
The final thirty miles around torturous bends and over raging rivers often three or four hundred feet across with torrential rain and gale force winds was quite horrendous.
Having climbed to three thousand feet we finally arrived at our destination
the school we are at is a girl’s boarding college with 100 girls 13 to 22 years off age. They do a one year course in English, and Computers, so it’s going to be fun fitting in with what they require. Most off the girls would like to be secretaries,
we have just found out the girls first language is Tetun, the written language is Portuguese and the computer are programmed in Indonesian. Leo has to teach Excel and Access in English
The government has decided that the first language is to be Portuguese and the second language English.
I think the girls are very bright as they all speak five languages
The Sisters are desperate to have English teachers out here as they have only had two volunteers here in the last two years, one from Australia for three weeks and one from Germany,
Having said that you have to be a little mad to live out here, no telephone, sporadic electricity and flies everywhere Angela has just asked me to get a bucket of water from the well !!!!
Actually we are coping quite well and the Sisters are fantastic in what they do,.
Our food is good, a bit strange, with rice and boiled leaves for breakfast, we will see what tomorrow brings!
in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover By Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week by not having to run the main generator.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty metre deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here.
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer making posters for the walls of the classrooms, the only paper she has is A4 size, much time is spent sticking to create a large poster.
We have to fit the computer lessons and any printing we need, with generator time.
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental so last night we had our evening meal with a lamp that Angela had brought with us and all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark.
Home Emails from the world East Timor Week 4
Week 4
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 4
The week has been quite busy I have been working in the boys collage repairing computers every morning. It’s rather difficult showing them how to do it when they only speak a little English, but we get by with lots of sign language.
When we both finish at 5 o’clock we are making time to go for a walk along some of the forest footpaths, where most of the people live. They are lovely people and they go out of the way to introduce them selves to us, many can speak a little English having been taught at one of our three schools.
There homes are along the tracks or in clearings in the forest cultivating just enough maize to feed them selves, Just after the war they had a serious shortage of food. The Indonesian military killed most of their animals often polluting their water supplies.
Until they have communications roads and good storage facilities they cannot develop a market economy,
Some of the villagers have never travelled very far from there homes, mainly because of the cost,. Cultivating in the forest provides most of the food/
In this part of East Timor the villagers had traditional Timorese houses, quite tall and built well of the ground, most of them where destroyed by the Indonesian militia, in the process destroying most of there history and land records.
It’s quite sad talking to them you can see them building new house out of cane and palm trees,
One lady we spoke to had not been able to buy beds tables and all the other nick knacks we take for granted. And this applied to every person in the villages as the militia did a very efficient job.
Till next time.
Leo
Week 9
East Timor
This week we are down in Dili to renew our Visas It is very distressing to see all burnt out buildings and rubbish. The main problem is that all the land records where destroyed so nobody has any legal claim to the land and the burnt out buildings.
They are very reluctant to do anything with the burnt out buildings, till the legal side has been sorted out, they have very few people with a high standard of education.. The top jobs where held by the Indonesians and prior to that by the Portuguese.
The people all speak Tatun, it was not a written language till 4 years ago when Geoffrey Hull who is an Australian put it into a written form, It has not yet developed enough to be used in legal documents. because of what happened with the Indonesians, and even though 95% speak Indonesian, the government decided to adopt the Portuguese language, all legal documents have to be written in Portuguese, this has made 95% of the population illiterate, as nobody can read or write it.
The Majority of the present government fled to Mozambique during the 25year war and formed a government in exile, so the government speak Portuguese but its subjects don’t. They have sacked a number of UN advisers and brought in Portuguese advisers.
The authorities have been going around changing computers in the government offices to Portuguese I have been asked by the Police to go and change theirs back to English as no one can input any information,. in the process I am getting jobs for our girls, to write data bases for them. So it looks like I may have been doing a good job after all. It appears that we are the only school in East Timor training Girls to write an Access Data Base
Next month the UN begins the pull out from East Timor, not having finished the job they came to do. I think there is some politics behind it, possibly to do with Oil..
I have met many of the oil workers, who are doing the drilling and they say it is the biggest field they have ever drilled,. It is possibly the fifth largest field in the world,
so I hope the Timorese benefit from it long term.
This country has 95% unemployment, no electric, no water supply, no telephone landline
The number of times I have tried to send an email and been cut off in the middle is countless,.
After all that we are still enjoying it and we are both keeping well.
Cheerio for now.
Leo & Angela
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 12
Three more weeks to go, no running water, no electricity, no telephone, but life goes on much the same for the people here, even Angela and I have got used to it, we call it Timor time, light and dark is all that matters, and plenty of patience, I am convinced they can all see in the dark,
When they are having study time in the evening they have a candle on each desk, then go to bed with fifty in a dorm using a candle This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover, by Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty meter deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it, all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer creating posters for the walls of the classroom using A4 sheets joined together with sellotape. We have to fit in the computer lessons and any printing we need when the generator is functioning
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental, so last night, we had our evening meal by lamplight, using a lamp that Angela had brought from England; all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark. it’s so dangerous climbing into a bed with a Mozzi net around you.,
Next week we go down to Dily to take our student s to their first jobs and for many their first venture out of the forest, a five-hour drive along rough roads..
They usually stay with a relation, some of them are quite frightened of going to Dili, I hadn’t realized that most of them had never been to the capital
The capital city is still filled with burnt out buildings, they are going to have quite a shock living there, a huge contrast to Fuiloro where most of the girls live in small villages with earth floors, walls built out of palm leaf stems, roofs thatched with palm leaves and if they are lucky a well within half a mile.
Nearly all the family get TB or Malaria, at some time in their lives, it’s so damp here with the monsoon rains every day, our mattresses have never been dry since we arrived,
When I was first asked to teach how to write a Data base I thought why?, I now realise there are jobs in the cottage hospitals, clinics, police station, army, banks, in fact we could have found jobs for many more, some of them asked for five or six students, we appear to be the only school in East Timor teaching Access,.
All this is done using a generator three hours every afternoon, morning is spent teaching them English with Angela translating computer language into Tatun so they can understand what it all means.
The transformer for my lap top has burnt out, the voltage here is up and down all the time, and Not good for computers, but life goes on tomorrow is another day.
WEEK 13
WEEK 13
Problems in Dili it’s a long story but at the moment the thousands of people of all ages are demonstrating to remove this government.
We are not sure if we can leave when we have to, the UN set up the election of this government, voting for a party, not the individual
The main party is Fretalin who stayed and fought the Indonesians, the opposition fled to Mozambique 25 years ago. A government was formed in Exile called Fretalin
At the end of Indonesian rule they came back from Mozambique and where better organized than the freedom fighters, as a result. they managed to get all their candidates on the election list., the people didn’t realize they where voting for a communists party...
. The first thing the new government did was to make Portuguese the official language, because most of them only spoke Portuguese not Indonesian like 100% of East Timor, thus making the population illiterate over night,
You can only work for this government if you can speak Portuguese,
The local news papers have difficulty in telling the people what is happening.
There is a feeling of unease and confusion throughout the villages.
The Army and police are on opposite sides. The police are now heavily armed and being paid more than the army.. The prime Minister is a Muslim and he is stopping the Catholic Church from teaching religion in the schools, he has threatened to close all the church schools if they don’t stop demonstrating, even though 97% are Catholic. If anyone is killed by the police the army have threatened to step in, non of the policemen are in favor of what is going on,. They have had enough of war.
We will see what happens when we get to Dily before we leave for home
See you all soon
Leo
East Timor
Week 3
14 May 2008
It’s hard to believe we only left England three weeks ago, we seem to have been away ages, there is so much to do here but everything is on a tight budget.
Flying into the airport at Dili the coastline looked very much like a tropical desert island, but once through the gates you are greeted with the devastations of burnt out building and this stretched for the next two hundred miles. As the Indonesians left they torched every building, often burning the people inside, even the local king who happened to live in a village near our school was burnt alive in his house.
Many of the houses will never be lived in again because there is no one left from the family to claim them.
Houses are being rebuilt but often with just wood and palm leaves some are built with reclaimed concrete blocks and salvaged corrugated metal roofing,
Most of the administration buildings will have to be rebuilt, but on an average wage of two pounds a week it is going to take a long time.
The journey to our school was quite a trip, part of the way we travelled along the coast some times long stretches of sand, next miles of swamps, and all the time going through many burnt out villages.
The final thirty miles around torturous bends and over raging rivers often three or four hundred feet across with torrential rain and gale force winds was quite horrendous.
Having climbed to three thousand feet we finally arrived at our destination
the school we are at is a girl’s boarding college with 100 girls 13 to 22 years off age. They do a one year course in English, and Computers, so it’s going to be fun fitting in with what they require. Most off the girls would like to be secretaries,
we have just found out the girls first language is Tetun, the written language is Portuguese and the computer are programmed in Indonesian. Leo has to teach Excel and Access in English
The government has decided that the first language is to be Portuguese and the second language English.
I think the girls are very bright as they all speak five languages
The Sisters are desperate to have English teachers out here as they have only had two volunteers here in the last two years, one from Australia for three weeks and one from Germany,
Having said that you have to be a little mad to live out here, no telephone, sporadic electricity and flies everywhere Angela has just asked me to get a bucket of water from the well !!!!
Actually we are coping quite well and the Sisters are fantastic in what they do,.
Our food is good, a bit strange, with rice and boiled leaves for breakfast, we will see what tomorrow brings!
in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover By Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week by not having to run the main generator.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty metre deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here.
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer making posters for the walls of the classrooms, the only paper she has is A4 size, much time is spent sticking to create a large poster.
We have to fit the computer lessons and any printing we need, with generator time.
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental so last night we had our evening meal with a lamp that Angela had brought with us and all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark.
Home Emails from the world East Timor Week 4
Week 4
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 4
The week has been quite busy I have been working in the boys collage repairing computers every morning. It’s rather difficult showing them how to do it when they only speak a little English, but we get by with lots of sign language.
When we both finish at 5 o’clock we are making time to go for a walk along some of the forest footpaths, where most of the people live. They are lovely people and they go out of the way to introduce them selves to us, many can speak a little English having been taught at one of our three schools.
There homes are along the tracks or in clearings in the forest cultivating just enough maize to feed them selves, Just after the war they had a serious shortage of food. The Indonesian military killed most of their animals often polluting their water supplies.
Until they have communications roads and good storage facilities they cannot develop a market economy,
Some of the villagers have never travelled very far from there homes, mainly because of the cost,. Cultivating in the forest provides most of the food/
In this part of East Timor the villagers had traditional Timorese houses, quite tall and built well of the ground, most of them where destroyed by the Indonesian militia, in the process destroying most of there history and land records.
It’s quite sad talking to them you can see them building new house out of cane and palm trees,
One lady we spoke to had not been able to buy beds tables and all the other nick knacks we take for granted. And this applied to every person in the villages as the militia did a very efficient job.
Till next time.
Leo
Week 9
East Timor
This week we are down in Dili to renew our Visas It is very distressing to see all burnt out buildings and rubbish. The main problem is that all the land records where destroyed so nobody has any legal claim to the land and the burnt out buildings.
They are very reluctant to do anything with the burnt out buildings, till the legal side has been sorted out, they have very few people with a high standard of education.. The top jobs where held by the Indonesians and prior to that by the Portuguese.
The people all speak Tatun, it was not a written language till 4 years ago when Geoffrey Hull who is an Australian put it into a written form, It has not yet developed enough to be used in legal documents. because of what happened with the Indonesians, and even though 95% speak Indonesian, the government decided to adopt the Portuguese language, all legal documents have to be written in Portuguese, this has made 95% of the population illiterate, as nobody can read or write it.
The Majority of the present government fled to Mozambique during the 25year war and formed a government in exile, so the government speak Portuguese but its subjects don’t. They have sacked a number of UN advisers and brought in Portuguese advisers.
The authorities have been going around changing computers in the government offices to Portuguese I have been asked by the Police to go and change theirs back to English as no one can input any information,. in the process I am getting jobs for our girls, to write data bases for them. So it looks like I may have been doing a good job after all. It appears that we are the only school in East Timor training Girls to write an Access Data Base
Next month the UN begins the pull out from East Timor, not having finished the job they came to do. I think there is some politics behind it, possibly to do with Oil..
I have met many of the oil workers, who are doing the drilling and they say it is the biggest field they have ever drilled,. It is possibly the fifth largest field in the world,
so I hope the Timorese benefit from it long term.
This country has 95% unemployment, no electric, no water supply, no telephone landline
The number of times I have tried to send an email and been cut off in the middle is countless,.
After all that we are still enjoying it and we are both keeping well.
Cheerio for now.
Leo & Angela
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 12
Three more weeks to go, no running water, no electricity, no telephone, but life goes on much the same for the people here, even Angela and I have got used to it, we call it Timor time, light and dark is all that matters, and plenty of patience, I am convinced they can all see in the dark,
When they are having study time in the evening they have a candle on each desk, then go to bed with fifty in a dorm using a candle This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover, by Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty meter deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it, all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer creating posters for the walls of the classroom using A4 sheets joined together with sellotape. We have to fit in the computer lessons and any printing we need when the generator is functioning
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental, so last night, we had our evening meal by lamplight, using a lamp that Angela had brought from England; all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark. it’s so dangerous climbing into a bed with a Mozzi net around you.,
Next week we go down to Dily to take our student s to their first jobs and for many their first venture out of the forest, a five-hour drive along rough roads..
They usually stay with a relation, some of them are quite frightened of going to Dili, I hadn’t realized that most of them had never been to the capital
The capital city is still filled with burnt out buildings, they are going to have quite a shock living there, a huge contrast to Fuiloro where most of the girls live in small villages with earth floors, walls built out of palm leaf stems, roofs thatched with palm leaves and if they are lucky a well within half a mile.
Nearly all the family get TB or Malaria, at some time in their lives, it’s so damp here with the monsoon rains every day, our mattresses have never been dry since we arrived,
When I was first asked to teach how to write a Data base I thought why?, I now realise there are jobs in the cottage hospitals, clinics, police station, army, banks, in fact we could have found jobs for many more, some of them asked for five or six students, we appear to be the only school in East Timor teaching Access,.
All this is done using a generator three hours every afternoon, morning is spent teaching them English with Angela translating computer language into Tatun so they can understand what it all means.
The transformer for my lap top has burnt out, the voltage here is up and down all the time, and Not good for computers, but life goes on tomorrow is another day.
WEEK 13
WEEK 13
Problems in Dili it’s a long story but at the moment the thousands of people of all ages are demonstrating to remove this government.
We are not sure if we can leave when we have to, the UN set up the election of this government, voting for a party, not the individual
The main party is Fretalin who stayed and fought the Indonesians, the opposition fled to Mozambique 25 years ago. A government was formed in Exile called Fretalin
At the end of Indonesian rule they came back from Mozambique and where better organized than the freedom fighters, as a result. they managed to get all their candidates on the election list., the people didn’t realize they where voting for a communists party...
. The first thing the new government did was to make Portuguese the official language, because most of them only spoke Portuguese not Indonesian like 100% of East Timor, thus making the population illiterate over night,
You can only work for this government if you can speak Portuguese,
The local news papers have difficulty in telling the people what is happening.
There is a feeling of unease and confusion throughout the villages.
The Army and police are on opposite sides. The police are now heavily armed and being paid more than the army.. The prime Minister is a Muslim and he is stopping the Catholic Church from teaching religion in the schools, he has threatened to close all the church schools if they don’t stop demonstrating, even though 97% are Catholic. If anyone is killed by the police the army have threatened to step in, non of the policemen are in favor of what is going on,. They have had enough of war.
We will see what happens when we get to Dily before we leave for home
See you all soon
Leo
East Timor
Week 3
14 May 2008
It’s hard to believe we only left England three weeks ago, we seem to have been away ages, there is so much to do here but everything is on a tight budget.
Flying into the airport at Dili the coastline looked very much like a tropical desert island, but once through the gates you are greeted with the devastations of burnt out building and this stretched for the next two hundred miles. As the Indonesians left they torched every building, often burning the people inside, even the local king who happened to live in a village near our school was burnt alive in his house.
Many of the houses will never be lived in again because there is no one left from the family to claim them.
Houses are being rebuilt but often with just wood and palm leaves some are built with reclaimed concrete blocks and salvaged corrugated metal roofing,
Most of the administration buildings will have to be rebuilt, but on an average wage of two pounds a week it is going to take a long time.
The journey to our school was quite a trip, part of the way we travelled along the coast some times long stretches of sand, next miles of swamps, and all the time going through many burnt out villages.
The final thirty miles around torturous bends and over raging rivers often three or four hundred feet across with torrential rain and gale force winds was quite horrendous.
Having climbed to three thousand feet we finally arrived at our destination
the school we are at is a girl’s boarding college with 100 girls 13 to 22 years off age. They do a one year course in English, and Computers, so it’s going to be fun fitting in with what they require. Most off the girls would like to be secretaries,
we have just found out the girls first language is Tetun, the written language is Portuguese and the computer are programmed in Indonesian. Leo has to teach Excel and Access in English
The government has decided that the first language is to be Portuguese and the second language English.
I think the girls are very bright as they all speak five languages
The Sisters are desperate to have English teachers out here as they have only had two volunteers here in the last two years, one from Australia for three weeks and one from Germany,
Having said that you have to be a little mad to live out here, no telephone, sporadic electricity and flies everywhere Angela has just asked me to get a bucket of water from the well !!!!
Actually we are coping quite well and the Sisters are fantastic in what they do,.
Our food is good, a bit strange, with rice and boiled leaves for breakfast, we will see what tomorrow brings!
in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover By Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week by not having to run the main generator.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty metre deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here.
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer making posters for the walls of the classrooms, the only paper she has is A4 size, much time is spent sticking to create a large poster.
We have to fit the computer lessons and any printing we need, with generator time.
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental so last night we had our evening meal with a lamp that Angela had brought with us and all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark.
Home Emails from the world East Timor Week 4
Week 4
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 4
The week has been quite busy I have been working in the boys collage repairing computers every morning. It’s rather difficult showing them how to do it when they only speak a little English, but we get by with lots of sign language.
When we both finish at 5 o’clock we are making time to go for a walk along some of the forest footpaths, where most of the people live. They are lovely people and they go out of the way to introduce them selves to us, many can speak a little English having been taught at one of our three schools.
There homes are along the tracks or in clearings in the forest cultivating just enough maize to feed them selves, Just after the war they had a serious shortage of food. The Indonesian military killed most of their animals often polluting their water supplies.
Until they have communications roads and good storage facilities they cannot develop a market economy,
Some of the villagers have never travelled very far from there homes, mainly because of the cost,. Cultivating in the forest provides most of the food/
In this part of East Timor the villagers had traditional Timorese houses, quite tall and built well of the ground, most of them where destroyed by the Indonesian militia, in the process destroying most of there history and land records.
It’s quite sad talking to them you can see them building new house out of cane and palm trees,
One lady we spoke to had not been able to buy beds tables and all the other nick knacks we take for granted. And this applied to every person in the villages as the militia did a very efficient job.
Till next time.
Leo
Week 9
East Timor
This week we are down in Dili to renew our Visas It is very distressing to see all burnt out buildings and rubbish. The main problem is that all the land records where destroyed so nobody has any legal claim to the land and the burnt out buildings.
They are very reluctant to do anything with the burnt out buildings, till the legal side has been sorted out, they have very few people with a high standard of education.. The top jobs where held by the Indonesians and prior to that by the Portuguese.
The people all speak Tatun, it was not a written language till 4 years ago when Geoffrey Hull who is an Australian put it into a written form, It has not yet developed enough to be used in legal documents. because of what happened with the Indonesians, and even though 95% speak Indonesian, the government decided to adopt the Portuguese language, all legal documents have to be written in Portuguese, this has made 95% of the population illiterate, as nobody can read or write it.
The Majority of the present government fled to Mozambique during the 25year war and formed a government in exile, so the government speak Portuguese but its subjects don’t. They have sacked a number of UN advisers and brought in Portuguese advisers.
The authorities have been going around changing computers in the government offices to Portuguese I have been asked by the Police to go and change theirs back to English as no one can input any information,. in the process I am getting jobs for our girls, to write data bases for them. So it looks like I may have been doing a good job after all. It appears that we are the only school in East Timor training Girls to write an Access Data Base
Next month the UN begins the pull out from East Timor, not having finished the job they came to do. I think there is some politics behind it, possibly to do with Oil..
I have met many of the oil workers, who are doing the drilling and they say it is the biggest field they have ever drilled,. It is possibly the fifth largest field in the world,
so I hope the Timorese benefit from it long term.
This country has 95% unemployment, no electric, no water supply, no telephone landline
The number of times I have tried to send an email and been cut off in the middle is countless,.
After all that we are still enjoying it and we are both keeping well.
Cheerio for now.
Leo & Angela
Tuesday, 27 May 2008
Week 12
Three more weeks to go, no running water, no electricity, no telephone, but life goes on much the same for the people here, even Angela and I have got used to it, we call it Timor time, light and dark is all that matters, and plenty of patience, I am convinced they can all see in the dark,
When they are having study time in the evening they have a candle on each desk, then go to bed with fifty in a dorm using a candle This week we have installed a small generator so we can run the computers in the afternoon without having to switch the large generator on,
It’s amazing what a gang of young girls can do, Monday morning they started digging a 300 meter trench to place the cable in and by Wednesday night the cable had been placed in a protective cover, by Friday we had it up and running, it will now save a few gallons of diesel per week.
We have no running water it is pumped from a twenty meter deep well and stored in a large tank, so unless the generator is running we have no water till the national grid kicks in at 6.30pm, till 11.pm, rather difficult when you have 100 girls using large amounts of water for cooking washing and cleaning.
The water has to be boiled in order to sterilize it, then when it is cool we can drink it, all the water and cooking is done in huge cauldrons with wood fires a rather warm job out here
Angela is busy making good use of my scanner & printer creating posters for the walls of the classroom using A4 sheets joined together with sellotape. We have to fit in the computer lessons and any printing we need when the generator is functioning
Government electricity and our generator can be a bit temperamental, so last night, we had our evening meal by lamplight, using a lamp that Angela had brought from England; all the girls and sisters had to go to bed in the dark. it’s so dangerous climbing into a bed with a Mozzi net around you.,
Next week we go down to Dily to take our student s to their first jobs and for many their first venture out of the forest, a five-hour drive along rough roads..
They usually stay with a relation, some of them are quite frightened of going to Dili, I hadn’t realized that most of them had never been to the capital
The capital city is still filled with burnt out buildings, they are going to have quite a shock living there, a huge contrast to Fuiloro where most of the girls live in small villages with earth floors, walls built out of palm leaf stems, roofs thatched with palm leaves and if they are lucky a well within half a mile.
Nearly all the family get TB or Malaria, at some time in their lives, it’s so damp here with the monsoon rains every day, our mattresses have never been dry since we arrived,
When I was first asked to teach how to write a Data base I thought why?, I now realise there are jobs in the cottage hospitals, clinics, police station, army, banks, in fact we could have found jobs for many more, some of them asked for five or six students, we appear to be the only school in East Timor teaching Access,.
All this is done using a generator three hours every afternoon, morning is spent teaching them English with Angela translating computer language into Tatun so they can understand what it all means.
The transformer for my lap top has burnt out, the voltage here is up and down all the time, and Not good for computers, but life goes on tomorrow is another day.
WEEK 13
WEEK 13
Problems in Dili it’s a long story but at the moment the thousands of people of all ages are demonstrating to remove this government.
We are not sure if we can leave when we have to, the UN set up the election of this government, voting for a party, not the individual
The main party is Fretalin who stayed and fought the Indonesians, the opposition fled to Mozambique 25 years ago. A government was formed in Exile called Fretalin
At the end of Indonesian rule they came back from Mozambique and where better organized than the freedom fighters, as a result. they managed to get all their candidates on the election list., the people didn’t realize they where voting for a communists party...
. The first thing the new government did was to make Portuguese the official language, because most of them only spoke Portuguese not Indonesian like 100% of East Timor, thus making the population illiterate over night,
You can only work for this government if you can speak Portuguese,
The local news papers have difficulty in telling the people what is happening.
There is a feeling of unease and confusion throughout the villages.
The Army and police are on opposite sides. The police are now heavily armed and being paid more than the army.. The prime Minister is a Muslim and he is stopping the Catholic Church from teaching religion in the schools, he has threatened to close all the church schools if they don’t stop demonstrating, even though 97% are Catholic. If anyone is killed by the police the army have threatened to step in, non of the policemen are in favor of what is going on,. They have had enough of war.
We will see what happens when we get to Dily before we have to leave for home
See you all soon
Leo