What I take for granted.......

Its another noisy morning in Lospalos. The steady build up of crowing from the numerous cockerels; the barking dogs; the odd TumTum blasting out music as it passes the house; the noisy rumblings of a truck gathering up men to take to work somewhere on the road miles away; the tooting of the buses as they race around picking up passengers for Dili, revving their engines with impatience as they cram in as many people, animals and luggage as possible spilling out and upwards so the bus lumbers along precariously unbalanced for these rough track roads.

I am thinking about what I take for granted in my life today. Not the clean water that I can drink straight out of the tap, or the road rules everyone abides by, or the huge variety of nutritious foods available to me in NZ, or a postal system, or the ease with which I can seek medical treatment or even buy medicines and supplements over the counter, or the checks and balances that occur in a society with a functioning government where people get paid on time.

No, I am thinking more about the foundations of life and the way we are brought into the world and creatively nourished and cared for by a society that has had centuries of practice at these things. For the Timorese it is very different.

A sacred house in Lospalos belonging to the former King of the area- who was murdered in 1999 by the Indonesians for resistance. This was built and erected by his son’s family in 2015.

Under Portuguese rule the Timorese were virtually isolated from the rest of the world. For 400 years the Portuguese more or less remained in Dili and a few outposts in the country, and ruled. For the Portuguese it was the arse end of the universe and a desperate place to be. The rest of Timor was mountainous, forested and undeveloped. The Timorese had tiny kingdoms ruled by Kings, each with its own distinct language and each having very little to do with any other. This was a feudal system. The Portuguese did nothing to enhance the Timorese. They built no schools or roads or hospitals or infrastructure. It was not like any other colony. A handful of elite Timorese were educated but no more.

When the Portuguese left they did not develop a plan for self governance. They just left and the Timorese held a referendum and voted to be independent. Which they were for 9 days. Then the Indonesians marched in with some violence and took over the country.

The resistance was born and during the occupation many Timorese lived and hid in the mountains and forests, supported by villagers who smuggled food and messages to them. Timor was split between those who wanted to become part of Indonesia because they could see the sense in being ruled by a power that could offer them so much, and those who were sick of being ruled and oppressed by someone else and wanted to be free of those shackles.

The Indonesians did build roads and hospitals and started an education system. However they were cruel and unforgiving towards the resistance. Many massacres occurred throughout the country, many in churches….tales of horrible events abound. Initially in the first four years of occupation people were rounded up and put into concentration camps- and starved- in total there were over 50 of these all over the country.

A memorial to the 8 people killed in Apikuru Lautem ( on the way to Lospalos) in 1999 who were in a church, two of whom were nuns.

When eventually international pressure meant that the Indonesians had to allow the Timorese to vote- and they did so in amazing numbers despite intimidation and threats of violence- they once again voted for independence. As the Indonesians left they blew up everything and the Timorese who were with the Indonesian militia went on the rampage killing indiscriminately. It was a time of bloodshed and it took 3 years of UN support before the first elections took place in 2002. Heroes of the resistance were given top government jobs, men who had little experience and scant education. Not surprisingly there then followed years of unrest until in 2006 the UN had to come back into Timor and restore calm after the police and the army were literally shooting each other up.

Why any one thought a group of resistance fighters who had spent the last 20 years living in the jungle could run a country is, I think, a legacy of colonial indifference. But then I think of Brexit and Trump and check myself that a good education is not necessarily a recipe for competence.

In terms of the basic upbringing of people here, what does this mean for them, lacking in a foundation built on centuries of development. In Timor people were in survival mode for a very long time. Isolated from the rest of the world for centuries, living a subsistence life, then brutally occupied and oppressed for 25 years. Added to that the impact of dealing with the trauma of witnessing terrible violence and destruction.

They lacked an education system for so long. And no support or guidance on how to raise children and prepare them for school, no preschools, no libraries with books to read, no Plunket, no health checks, no understanding of the importance of play, no advice on positive parenting, no maternity care.

The education system here is chaotic and messy, party due to the confusion over languages. The Portuguese managed to get written into the constitution that Portuguese would be one of the official languages of Timor, the other being Tetun. This means that all laws and all higher education is in Portuguese- a language no one learns to speak in childhood. The other way to access high education is to go to Indonesia, and many do, but you have to speak Indonesian for this.

Schools are limited in resources and use rote leaning as the main teaching tool. Creative thinking, problem solving, questioning, comprehension, all these skills are not taught or even encouraged. And pre-schooling is not comprehensive and very basic and again play is not encouraged. Playgrounds are thin and far between. So the basic foundations of child development are lacking.

A children’s nativity completion in Dili.

Why am I writing about this? Well now I am in my place of work I am working with four wonderful, friendly people who lack very basic skills. Planning, time management, dealing with the unexpected, flexibility, focus, thinking ahead, these are all things that my colleagues struggle with. I am curious to know their experiences, I know they have lost people, seen atrocities and have many stories to tell, but it is early days.

My original assignment of teaching people about using the creative arts to work with trauma is out the window. I arrived to discover they have received a grant for a literacy project to produce some books in local languages and teach teachers and parents the importance of reading- something that is not my skill set, yet this is what I am supposed to be implementing. My colleagues know very little about literacy.

So it is a big challenge ahead for me in many ways.

Yet I can draw on my ability to think outside the box, where as the Timorese have been brutally oppressed for daring to question anything. I can use the foundations of my extensive and creative education and professional development, whereas the Timorese can only look at learning things by heart and see learning as being told how to do something and then doing it.

The artist who works here, who is a wonderfully talented painter, was surprised when I suggested that you could use a picture book with no words to tell a story. He simply said it was not possible until I showed him some pictures from children’s books and made up a story on the spot. That basic symbolic representation of an idea, thought or feeling in a mark, again the basis of literacy, is not embedded in the population here. They think very literally.

As for the stories, it has been suggested that we use traditional stories, some of which I am horrified to read. One involves a man leaving his pregnant wife at home and telling her if she has a boy to let him live but if she has a girl, to kill her and save her heart so that when the husband returns home he can eat it! I am hoping to discover more heartwarming local stories that we may be able to use.

As I approach the end of the year I am not sure I am up to this task, trying to make a project happen in an area that I know little about, living in such an isolated place with little support, feeling so out of my comfort zone. Yet I will try, because I have many skills to fall back on that I have taken for granted in NZ. Plus I am not traumatised, so my ability to think has not been impaired. I am grateful for the opportunities I have had in my life and the rich creative vein that dance, movement and art has inspired in me. This is what will sustain me.

I can make things happen, I am just not sure I can make this happen. Watch this space!