LETS work together

DonationS so far:  $008,192

​The district of Letefoho, which our parish has supported for over 10 years is about 3 hours out from Dili, the capital of Timor Leste, on very rough roads. It’s in the mountains some 1500m above sea level so not too hot and quite cool at night. The area has a population of about 30,000 in 65 villages, and the village of Letefoho has about 600 people spread out randomly. It was incredibly dry and dusty, so I was rather dirty quite a lot of the time.

Time and arrangements are a rather fluid concept and there is a lot of talking about doing something and it is guaranteed to be considerably later than planned.

Most people are very poor and the houses are mostly a lager room with curtains separating areas and a separate kitchen with a fire - a lot of fumes and smoke.

The people tend to be very thin due to a lack of protein and are quite small.  They live mainly on rice and limited seasonal vegetables, with occasional chicken. Very little fruit and no dairy products.

The villagers walk to a well to collect water and wash their clothes there. There is a water project which is nearly complete, which will pump water from a well in a valley below the village to provide running water. Most equipment such as poles, electrical cables and pump had to be carried down a steep hill by hand and erected manually.

Electricity is usually off for some hours every day but there is a generator for the priests’ residency and the accommodation connected to the new community hall near it, where Georgina, who I accompanied, and I stayed. If there is no electricity there is no running water as it needs to be pumped. Bottled water is drunk, and showering consists of a large plastic garbage bin filled with cold water and a scoop to throw it over yourself.

The people are so appreciative of the fact that we have left our country, family & friends to come all this way to visit them and for the ongoing support which has made so many positive changes. Thus, when one visits any group there is much welcoming, usually involving bowing & kissing of our hands & often singing and a meal presented.

When we visited the Catholic senior high school (Our Lady of Mt Carmel) the students, about 210, were all lined up, we were dressed in traditional clothes, and they sang and danced. We looked at the school including the “multi-media room” which consists of several battered desks, an old projector and 30 computers in plastic boxes, to protect from the dust, not connected to internet with a couple of old typing and very basic maths programs.

There is no science or other equipment at all, teaching is purely a teacher talking and chalk painting on a board. We had a big, and long, meeting (everyone likes meeting and many have their say in great detail….) about problems and what they would like LETS to provide next – all very practical.

We saw the small pig farm, 7 pigs, where there was a consultant from Dili who was giving the message that if you buy good feed and the pigs will grow better.

Various NGOs visit and organisations donate across the district eg heavy duty 4 wheel drives and small trucks. LETS has also purchased vehicles for them. There is a Belgian couple living at accommodation near us here as volunteers for 2 years who are school consultants trying to improve teaching methods. 

We were taken to a very remote village called Hatu-Lete nearly 2 hours further up in the mountains which was, for a significant part of the way, almost undrivable, so incredibly bumpy, eroded away, narrow and on edge of vertical drops into the valley. As we arrived people appeared, walking from the surrounding countryside and along the road. The chapel is the most solid building with maybe 20 houses spread randomly around, perhaps 150 people crowded  around to welcome us with big smiles and bowing and kissing hands.

We were taken into a house and served a mixture of foods, including fried root vegetables & of all things, popcorn. Coffee is always available & is kept in thermoses. The people are waited patiently outside the chapel. Having the priest come plus us is a special day and they always dress up for Mass. During Mass Georgina and I were presented with tais, traditional hand woven scarf like garments and thanked for coming to visit and the support of LETS for the kids to be able to attend school. LETS has supported 18 children from Hatu-Lete.

Our visit coincided with a couple of significant events. One was a large gathering of youth from the area to join together for faith-based activities and the other was the annual commemoration of the massacre of Timorese by Indonesian soldiers at Santa Cruze on 12/11/1991. The Papal Nuncio- who is the Pope’s representative for all of Oceania, and lives in Dili made his first trip to Letefoho to talk to the youth and also for the remembrance.

The evening the Nuncio arrived all the youth, plus villagers walked up to a "Cristo Rae" a giant statue of Christ the King … and I mean up, firstly way out of the village and then up a couple of hundred steep steps - with the altitude one is certainly huffing and puffing by the top. There are quite a number of crosses and chapels, always on top of steep hills, in the Letefoho region. A beautiful setting as you can see 360 degrees across the valleys and clusters of tiny villages linked by winding roads. Then to climb down the steps…

Sunday morning was a huge Mass, it was supposed to start maybe 8.30 or 9am but when it was about to start another official aid was to be coming so we all waited as he arrived & was offered coffee & food. This waiting around is a common occurrence. People walked hours to attend. The beautifully decorated Church was overflowing with the brightly dressed congregation. It seems to be a genetic trait everyone can, and does, sing beautifully, mostly unaccompanied. There were also various officials from the district - Government and local.

After the actual Mass the speeches began, and continued on and on - and of course at one stage Georgina and I, who were seated with the officials, had to be brought onto the altar with the Nuncio and presented with tais and thanked for all the contributions from LETS.

As it was an official service the Mass was in Portuguese (even though the Nuncio speaks Tetum) with the sermon translated by Fr Elio into Tetum, it was very long. The speeches were in Tetum. This all took about 3 hours and probably about 800 people stood or sat - the hundreds of kids on stone floor without noise or wriggling, women on one side men on the other. After the ceremony the officials went back and had a meal, served by nuns who waited around the edge of the room as you eat. First time in my life I have been served by nuns!

I had expected to just do an inspection of the girls’ boarding house but when we got there about 15 girls were lined up and sang to us in welcome. We were given tais & then had a meeting including asking them what they would like - comments included musical instruments and English lessons.

The boys & girls' boarding houses are built out of concrete - very simple including a large room with double bunks, sadly little maintenance so a number of bunks are broken in the room and left. Also, in the hall in the old part of the boys’ house the ceiling has half collapsed due to water leaking in during the very wet season. The new part is not damaged so all the bunks are there. Maintenance is also an issue in the bathrooms with some broken taps & doors.

The kitchen is a simple room with a bench which has sort of little fireplaces with a metal plate and big pots cooking mainly rice and very limited vegetables. The problem is a lot of the smoke and fumes just circulate and is inhaled. This along with the dust everywhere is poor health wise, especially combined with poor nutrition.

A big problem is the fact that after independence the Government decided Portuguese should be the official language but most kids don’t speak it only Tetum so the text books, which are way too hard, are in Portuguese and the kids in school struggle to understand, and many teachers have limited Portuguese. There is a real shortage of books written in Tetum for teenagers. The “library" in the girls boarding house, a dusty room with a collection of ancient, donated adult novels In English which I would struggle with plus other rubbish, eg old calendars and magazines. Very few of the kids or adults in the village spoke any English at all… a problem when they want to leave. The kids want to learn basic English, it’s just there is no one to teach them.

We visited another large village in the Letefofo parish, Eraulo, and saw the progress  of the very large chapel being built. It will be spectacular when the finished and has been constructed so far with thousands of hours of hard, manual labor. I was amazed by the size of the windows where the stained glass windows will be Stations of the Cross, bigger than anything I have seen.

It was a wonderful experience to be able to see how life really is and the important difference LETS is making in the area.

Maggy