Monday 27 January 2014

An invasion of my own making

19 - 26 January 2014


This week saw me starting the training of new water supply systems design process with my counterparts here at BESIK.  I have set the lessons so that it is only about 2 hours a day to enable them to practice afterwards (known as reflective practice).  It is an interesting experience to be teaching the Timorese counterparts, especially considering their underlying learning experience is by rote learning.  It is a challenge for me to teach in such a way that they understand the content as well knowing how to find the solution off their own bat after I finish my placement.

I wonder sometimes if this is a too high ideal to be imparting here Timor-Leste.  I say this not as a criticism of the Timorese people, there are really nice people to work with, but it does highlight endemic problems with the education system, the teaching methods used, poor nutrition in relation to brain development and the hand to mouth existence most Timorese live by.  I am only cataloguing the challenges not criticising the people themselves who are products of the system(or lack of) but there are times where their ingenuity is simply priceless as well as a source for chuckle.

I have heard of anecdotes where school children are taught only by repeating what has been written by an unqualified or poorly qualified teacher off a blackboard.  This was my mother’s experience back in the not-so distant past, no wonder she left at 15 to work (I know there are only reasons too).  It hardly helps that a lack of books and considering the national languages are Tetun and Portuguese (English and Bahasa Indonesian is spoken too) this makes it very difficult and costly to source texts for the students.  This is hardly the way to inspire students about learning at large; their parents are also a product of this system too, compounding the problem further, where their education has been disrupted several times too.

It just makes my challenge seem small in comparison and the changes I have seem already have given me hope that it will not be wasted….
Onto more superficial matters, I was invited to Heather’s place in Atabae to celebrate Australia Day (AKA Invasion Day).  Atabae is a hard 2-3 hour motorbike ride west of Dili, towards West (Indonesian) Timor.  It is good fun to be on a bike riding down this road considering the number of work-related trips to Maliana, which is another 2 hours drive past Atabae.  Steve (who was a fellow traveller on the Baucau trip) and I met at Papa John’s (Pope John Paul II statue) mid-afternoon to avoid the hottest part of the day (but we got rained on).  I am envious of Steve’s trail bike as it can take lumps and bumps of the road whereas my bike (now known as the Durango 95) makes funny noises when taking a big hit.
(Atabae is towards the bottom left of map)

But the Durango 95 purred away real horror show to Liquiça and Maubara, making Maubara in just over the hour.  The section of road between Liquiça and Maubara is almost freeway standard making it almost a tourist attraction in its own right to the expats here who labour their way around the country’s other roads, I just wished it kept going.  The road deteriorates rapidly after Maubara where a trail bike/4WD is better suited however I managed to make it as smooth as possible finding the best lines through some pretty crappy sections of road.  It certainly makes for an interesting time when the road has been stripped back to sub-base level leaving massive puddles to drive through, the Timorese just whizz past me through these sections as they are much lighter, there are times when I drive right next to 30 ton excavators as there are that moving the earth around….

(there is a 1.5 m gap and please excuse the picture angle, I did not realise the helmet camera mount was coming loose)

Steve and I got to Atabae by late afternoon and was warmly welcomed by Heather and the rest of the Atabae residents (expats and local alike) for the Australia Day party.  There was even beach cricket – it was nice to get the sand between the toes but the water was not safe enough to swim in (waves/current not crocs).  A lot was said back Heather’s place into the wee hours of the morning before hitting the tiles to get some sleep, no we did not drink that much booze!  I had to smile that I had to spray insect repellent before sleeping, the mosquitos were not bad, but a mosquito net just makes it too damn hot to sleep without a fan/air con.


(Perfect beach cricket pitch conditions, catch Heather!, life’s pretty good here)

Steve and I said our thank you and goodbyes to all at about midday to get back to Dili, I was disappointed to discover that my bike had been dropped several times by the neighbours as they had to for reasons unknown to me move the bike in the front yard.  I now have no mirrors and a bent handlebar that needs to be fixed, I just got other parts of the bike fixed from a similar incident several weeks ago.  A bike’s roadworthiness here is based on whether it still goes forward and is not based on whether the indicators are working or still having round wheels …  It is one of things here where I have to go with the flow, I quite often find my bike has moved during the night at home (it has been dropped there too) or when I have been out to meet friends.

Needless to say that Steve and I got back to Dili safely otherwise I would not be writing this post.  It looks like I need to go to work for a rest.

It will be a little light on for TL news as I will be heading to Oz for two weeks for a well-deserved break next week.

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