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.

At last! A breakthrough worth talking about

After enduring a headache that lasted about three days last week caused by (the metaphoric) banging my head on a wall, I have finally cracked the surveying puzzle!  I won’t bore you all of the details, but needless to say, it seemed every piece of progress was slowly gained (estimated speed: five miles a fortnight) but today it all came together – woohoo!  So much so I spent about one hour processing the other three survey jobs that I have sweated out in the TL sun for in 2013.

Who would have thought I would weep tears of joy?!?  Well not quite but I was close.

The picture above shows the different values from the orthographic elevation (bold numbers) and ellipsoid height.  Most people are familiar with using orthographic elevation which is used in most maps with contours.  This particular problem has puzzled me for ages to resolve and of course, the solution is tucked away in a series of menus and drop-down choices that are not intuitive, well to me anyway.  I will leave it to Mark Silver to explain the differences range between the orthographic elevations to ellipsoid heights: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX6a6kCk3Po&feature=youtu.be, warning he does talk in feet not metres.

And to add a little more colour to this post, I thought I would show the Tapo survey too:

So what’s next?  Some would say that this work is only the part of the iceberg you can see, personally I don’t care about the bit under water as that is the easy part but it just takes time.  So basically I can now train my counterparts in how to transfer the data on their computer and process the data.  Easy!  The rough plan is as follows:

• Train the Timorese engineers in the correct use of the survey equipment
• Once they are trained, go berserk with two or three rover units where ever a survey is required across the whole East Timor
• Start surveying existing water supply systems as most systems do not have as constructed plans for these systems – local knowledge of these systems is great but how do you pass on this information to others?

This is a job that will take longer than my placement and that is what really motivating me, the Timorese need to be able to do this work, not me.

Another highlight this week has been seeing Devil the Brain Damaged Dog strutting around as he has found a girl dog.  So there is hope for the less fortunate dogs out there…  To be honest I thought there was something going on as he has become less afraid of me to the point that he wags his tail whenever I get home from work and doesn’t scurry away at the sight of me.  At least there is someone happy to see me when I get home, the walls at home have little new conversation material these days.  

Talking of walls, back when I was learning Tetun soon after arriving here, I had to make up a sentence in Tetun that in English was “I will go home after work and talk with my gecko”.  Little did I know that gecko is a term for girlfriend, well that did make the teacher and classmates giggle and me blush.  I only have the cold-blooded variety of gecko in my house, there is about six geckos of various sizes that scurry around on the walls keeping the bugs to a minimum.

Not that I am counting, it is nearly five months here in TL and I am still going strong.  I will be heading back to Oz for a two week break at the beginning of February, before Christmas that seemed so long ago but now it is not far away at all.  I just hope I get a window seat on the plane…

The self-propelled road trip to Baucau

26 - 31 December 2013

The Christmas-New Year period has seen me with not a lot to do and plenty of time to do it in.  I had bought some more DVDs (legitimate of course) in an attempt to while away the hours on the couch with something a little more meaningful than staring at the wall – which is probably something I needed to do too.  And no, I am not going mad….

Tennant, Steve and I planned a self-guided ride to Baucau, which was the first major town I headed to soon after arriving here in September 2013 but we were tourists this time.  Each of us had a motorbike, mine as I may have mentioned is a clapped out Honda Megapro while the others’ were brand new Kawasaki 125 trail bikes.  No prizes for guessing which bike was able to take the lumps and bumps better out of the group.

So we set off on a fine sunny Dili day after delaying the departure for a day due to the rain and made reasonable time to our first stop at Dollar Beach (41 kms out of Dili).  When the UN were in TL is large numbers, everyone was charged for the pleasure of sand between their toes and is considered one of the better beaches in TL, I would agree whole heartedly.  We decided to not get sand in our toes this time and saddled up on the bikes for the next leg to Manututo which is about an another hour away.  

 (View of Dollar Beach, pretty pink church in Laleia, flag pole with skulls supporting map of Timor-Leste represents Indonesian occuption)

This is a spectacular section of road; the road is perched on the cliff face, the sealed road is only 1.5 cars wide, which is not a problem on a motorbike and the drop off should we mishandle the bike can be up to 100m down to the sea.  Obviously we did not lose anyone to the edge (“don’t look where you do not want to go”) but we did stop at a small hamlet to get the wet weather gear on, well Tennant and Steve did, I had to ride for the next hour in the pouring rain, much to amusement of the children as we whizzed past (Malae Bulak or Crazy white man (polite form)).

We reached Manututo by lunch time in a bedraggled mess and found somewhere to eat lunch even though it was the holidays (of sorts).  We made good friends with a local, Marcus, who able to guide me to a repair shop as my motorbike had lost a bolt on the front brake assembly.  A dollar later and Marcus with a pack of ciggies for his assistance, we were on our way for the remaining half of our ride.  By this time, my bike was purring along, I think that most of the riding I have done on it has been short rides around town and the occasional long ride going no more than 40 km/h.  It was amazing to be riding on a road where 95% of the road was sealed and/or repaired, it made for a very comfortable ride, although the backside was starting to complain a little, all of those years of cycling had not prepared for the pain either.

(Steve, Marcus and Tennant, garish orange guesthouse in Baucau, looking east from Baucau)

We reached Baucau by mid-afternoon and were immediately on the task of finding somewhere to stay.  The Pousada was a little too expensive for our respective volunteer allowances so we had settle for the guest house next door, which was very comfortable if a little garish in its bright orange, green and maroon colour scheme with a contrasting blue roof.  What better way to recover from the ride than having a swim in the Baucau pool.  Ahhhh!!!!

There are many springs surrounding the town which supplies water to the residents as well as the pool – it is one of the few places where there seems to be an excess of water even during the dry times.  The Portuguese took advantage of this water by building a fort up high on the hill as protection from possible ship-borne cannon attacks back in the time of tall ships, making Baucau not your typical TL town.  There is matching port (of sorts) at the sea’s edge with a long winding road up to Baucau proper known as Osolata.  

We rode down to the Osolata beach in the hope of finding a safe place to swim or a crocodile.  We did neither although the water is very tempting to swim in; at the time we could not work whether this building was some sort of change room as it did not seem to be your typical Portuguese building (Indonesian built?!?).  It turned out to be the old customs house.  It was a very pretty spot that has so much potential for tourism.  It was also nice to see so many Hermit Crabs going about their business, there were literally 100’s of them.

(Osolata customs house, Osolata beach, Rob and Tennant discussing the merits of swimming where possibly crocs lurk)

Dehydration was starting to set in, so we headed back up the hill for refreshments and lunch in Baucau.  We also took the frog-inspired approach to re-hydration by going back to pool and remaining in the water for ages.  As like last time I was there, the pool was full of Timorese staring at us – we would look funny with our tanned arms, legs and faces and brilliant white everything else.  Surely we are the coloured ones?

(Rob and Tennant warming up for some synchronised swimming, Dili Hell’s Angels waiting for dinner, sometimes blackouts add to the mood at dinner)

As we finished dinner, we were blessed with a power blackout, “quick let’s run and not pay!” was the first thought that entered our minds, but we didn’t.  “Look at those pretty stars”, was the next and less controversial thought we had before turning in for the night.

The ride back to Dili was largely an uneventful affair, although we all experienced a degree of saddle soreness along the way.  Forcing us to stop at several locales along the way, although Laleia was the most macabre of the stops, where a flagpole is supported by a map of East Timor and the skulls of the victims of 1970’s Indonesian invasion.

(, even goats enjoy the marquees at Dollar Beach, the cow paddock between the marquees and beach)

What better way to finish off the trip by stopping for a swim at Dollar Beach.  The urge to swim was greater than the risk of being eaten by a crocodile, this is a great beach in comparison to Jesus’ Backside Beach which is the only other beach I have swam in here in TL.  There are beach side shelters about a 50 metre walk through a cow paddock to the water.  So goats have worked out that the shelters are good to get out of the sun too.

Another hour’s riding after Dollar Beach saw us back in Dili, just before the afternoon rain hit town.  

It was nice to get back to the Palació before the New Year’s celebrations starts, apparently there were two container loads delivered to Dili for the festive period….