Where do you begin?

We have had such busy days going from group to group, it has been hard to almost get your brains around the monumental amount of work that is being done here and what still needs to be done.


So many of the people that are doing the teaching and training are from all over the world, the Netherlands, Australia, Philippines, Indonesia, Brazil and others. They are all here with the understanding that they must help teach the Timorese the skills they need to effectively run their country. Yet I think any of us not from this country can’t really understand even the largeness of this, because it goes all the way across the board, all the way from the basic human right of safety and sovereignty to food, education, writing and re-writing policies for government, police and many other agencies. All complicated by the language issues of Portuguese, Tetum, Bahasa, English and many other local languages and dialects. Even deciding which language to teach in schools is a difficult and controversial one. So if anyone has ever been involved in starting up any organization you might have a small idea what is being done here. In the beginning you need to sort out just what needs to be done, the order of priorities, get funding in place, figure out who will do what and how. One has to write policies for every sector of life. It is even hard to explain. Yet it is so encouraging to see all the young people working in high powered jobs, well educated in capacity building with their commitment and passion to their causes. By young I mean between 22 and 45. THIS COUNTRY IS NEW. I think we are the oldest people in Timor Leste. LOL. Even the women in the women’s shelter we went to, where the oldest lady in the shelter was 45 and had been there two months, she was like a mother to the younger girls, even one who had been raped by her father at fifteen. There was one who didn’t speak for the first six months she was at the center. The girls stood behind this “older lady” like a typical 3 year old, eyes cast down, not wanting to make eye contact with a stranger.

Yet how does one put this in a blog? There is one thing that keeps coming to mind; Young and New, Young and New, Young and New. Monumental.

Dorothy