two months of life in timor: August 2006

on my way to the airport... this is what makes the country beautiful

and almost ending

I haven’t written in over a week due to work craziness…

Starting yesterday, we have three staff doing a training program with teachers on our peacebuilding program. There will be three groups of teachers, each receiving a full week of training. And after one week, the teachers will (hopefully!!) be able to lead all the activities in the Ba Futuru curriculum on human and child rights, conflict resolution, and dealing with trauma, loss, and grief so that they can then use the program in their classrooms. Usually Ba Futuru works directly with kids, just like the ongoing program in the Dili IDP camps. But taking time to do these trainings with teachers (as a government initiative) ensures that many more children have access to the program.

All week we were running around town (literally, of course), making sure that all the necessary materials were prepared and printed, and that our staff doing the implementation had time to review the program and feel comfortable leading the workshop with people twice their ages.

During most of the week, I was trying to focus – with great difficulty given the generally frantic state of the office – on completing that new manual on non-violent discipline and a corresponding training program… there is one half-day on this material with the teachers, so it had to be finished, and the staff needed to themselves be training on the material before the weekend…

Just as a side note about the manual, physical punishment is a huge problem in Timor, and definitely (in my not-so-humble opinion) a serious obstacle to eliminating the cycle of violence in the country. It starts at a young age… when children see adults solving their problems through violence, they learn to emulate the behaviour, and don’t learn any other way of dealing with conflicts. Given that situation here, when just over the past three nights we’ve witnessed 15 homes that were burned, seen a few streets freshly littered with stones, and heard a report of one person being shot to death -- all in relation to regional tensions and political divisions – you can only imagine that people need to stop using violence to solve their problems.

Ok. Sorry. I’ll stop ranting ☺

So, the manual was finished (halleluiah!), translated into Tetum (although even I could read it and realize that the translation wasn’t well done!), and then printed and packaged with a pretty cover. On Friday, we did a full day of training with the staff, doing all the games and activities they can use in actual program implementation.

It was really exciting for me because it was the first time I’ve written and facilitated a program entirely on my own. But it was also difficult. The need for constant translation made took forever but also some of the concepts were very hard to get across in another language. But more of a problem was a hesitation with the participatory teaching style. Through Indonesia and Portugal, people here have always been educated lecture-style… They are used to people standing at the front of a room and telling them what to know and what to think. Even amongst the staff of a non-formal alternative peace education organization, there was noticeable resistance to the idea that I actually wanted them to come up with their own answers and do talking.

But, knowing that the experience may help them be better facilitators – by learning how to lead by asking questions and encouraging everyone to contribute their ideas – was rewarding.

We worked all day in preparation on Saturday (minus a desperate 45 minutes at a hotel pool to work on my fast-fading tan ☺), and left on Sunday for the teacher training. It was no short journey. We drove in rented 4X4 cars to Bobonaro District, in the west of the country, bordering West Timor, which is part of Indonesia. The drive took 4 hours, first traveling along spectacular winding roads that hug cliffs above the coast, and then through the mountains where you pass amazing trees and rice paddies and little towns full of cute traditional Timorese houses (made out of wood and bamboo with palm thatched roofs). In fact, the Tetum word for “district” (foho) also mean “mountain” – these hills were no joke.

We arrived in Maliana at 7pm, the town where we spent the night… The hotel where we expected to stay and eat had apparently burned down– I think it was an accident as opposed to Dili’s mass arson campaigns – and tragically the new hotel did not have a restaurant! So, we went out in search of dinner at 8pm, just after nightfall, and found one Timorese buffet that was just closing up shop because they had ran out of food. Nothing else at all was open. Desperate to eat meal, some one suggested stopping at the church and speaking with the nuns. Seriously. It was already 8pm, and yet they still opened the door and cooked for 8 people. Dinner was served at 9:30pm. Rice, some grilled mini fishes, tuna, stir-fried cabbage, and mi gorang – super popular, Indonesian instant noodles that I might miss now that I’ve finally tried them. Eating in a church, complete with 10 photos of the pope and Jesus on the cross watching over our meal, was a totally bizarre experience for me. But it was amazingly generous, but I guess it’s all in a good day’s work for the sisters ☺

The following morning, we work up before dawn to drive to Bobonaro city, another hour from Maliana straight up a mountain. That road was slightly treacherous… Probably because of the tropical rainy season, there were several sink holes in the middle of the narrow road that just dropped two meters down and could have swallowed an entire car, and some of the pavement edges had washed away off the side of the mountain. Aye! And to think that Timorese people have to travel there in packed open back trucks. As we watched them pass, with people literally hanging on, I found myself just hoping that they don’t plunge down the cliff or go too quickly around a curve and throw the passengers off. But we arrived safe and sound, and just in time to start the first day of training with the teachers.

We left the staff during the lunch break, and drove the 5 hours straight back to Dili, singing for a good 2 hours because the only c.d.’s were of scary Portuguese pop music. We even had two sightings of wild monkeys, which was a first for me in my life…

Although I never made it to the common Timor tourist destinations, I have had two fabulous trips outside of Dili, one to Baucau in the East and this recent one to Bobonaro in the West. I fly out of Timor tomorrow to start the long journey home, but will leave having seen both sides of the country.

It’s an appropriate ending for these times, and one I feel good about.