Many Australians are going out of their way to volunteer in East Timor, writes Jock Cheetham.
School’s out and night has fallen, but 10 students are back in class to hear Domingos Ati explain his work in one of the poorest parts of the world. Ati was briefing the year 11 boys from Saint Ignatius’ College, Riverview, on what to expect when they visited East Timor in the school holidays.
Food is the main problem, Ati says, as photos of his work with farmers project onto the wall. The enclave of Oecussi, where Ati works, is a long way from these boys’ world, with their indoor pool and views across the harbour to the CBD. In Oecussi, the leprosy rate is shockingly high and lack of food can keep children from school.
“So many kids, they don’t have good education,” Ati says.
When Ati finishes, Don Gock, teacher and tour leader, reminds each student of his $300 fund-raising target to give to the schools they will visit. In East Timor they will also teach English and meet students at local schools.
These holidays, the teachers and students have joined the ranks of the thousands of Australians who have volunteered to work in East Timor since the country split from Indonesia in 1999. Some prominent East Timorese credit the Australian volunteers, who often stay for months and years, with delivering the most effective aid to the country.
While the volunteer approach has some problems, many Timorese prefer it to the high-cost international government aid programs, including some work by AusAID, the Australian government’s overseas aid body.
Jose Ramos-Horta sits in a conference room in his presidential building in Dili. Behind him, a painting depicts a rural woman in an orange head scarf.
“You see Australians doing great volunteer work around the country,” East Timor’s President says in his low-pitched, deliberate voice. “Very discreet. Very humble. But they’re very welcome to the receiving communities.”
In the past 10 years, Ramos-Horta says of these Australians, there’s been “literally thousands of them. Paying their own fares, their own accommodation, renting cars, our famous microlets, climbing on the rooftop, hanging out the windows, and off they go to some of the remote places.”
Ramos-Horta believes Australia spends too much aid money on highly paid consultants, albeit requested by the Timorese government. “The Australian government could look more at AVI,” he says.
Australian Volunteers International has placed almost 450 volunteers in East Timor, often with AusAID funding, over the past 11 years. AusAID has funded another 100 or so through other agencies. But many other Australian volunteers go self-funded and uncounted. Not even East Timor’s Immigration Department has a tally.
Back in the Riverview classroom, the boys welcome John Dowd, a former NSW attorney-general and Supreme Court judge. Dowd, in his customary dark suit, does not speak down to the boys.
“Colonising is a process to exploit the resources of poor nations,” he says, as he explains Timor’s Portuguese background.
The boys, in white shirts and blue ties, listen under the fluorescent light as Dowd explains the geopolitics – US and Indonesian fears in the early 1970s that the newly independent nation would become “a Cuba-style country”. This concern led to “Kissinger conspiring with the Indonesians to invade Timor-Leste” and an occupation between 1975 and 1999 during which “up to 200,000 people died – many by starvation, many by murder”.
Dowd exemplifies Australians’ voluntary effort, his work ranging from awareness-raising with the International Commission of Jurists through to support for constitution creation, elections and development projects. While Dowd’s contribution is remarkable, he is one of many Australians who have given time, money and sweat to East Timor.
Also in the room with Dowd, Ati and the boys that night at Riverview is Beryl Spechler, a member of Kiwanis, which works to help children around the world. Their fund-raising barbecues raise an average of $1500. They fund projects such as the Friends of Oecussi, a relationship between Manly and the East Timorese enclave, which in turn supports Ati’s agriculture development work.
Friends of Oecussi is one of 57 friendship groups linking communities from Australian local government areas with towns, cities or villages in Timor. Another such group, Friends of Maliana, links that town in the country’s west with the people from Leichhardt.
Maire Sheehan is a former mayor of Leichhardt who, in her soft Irish accent, says of the 10-year-old project: “It’s been successful. We have put solar panels in schools, rebuilt large buildings in Maliana. The difficulty is that you can’t just go in and make something happen in an instant. You have got to have patience and develop relationships.”
And it’s two steps forward, one step back, she says. A major part of Leichhardt’s effort has been rebuilding and refurbishing a library and community centre in Maliana that opened in 2000. But, in 2002, East Timor’s Department of Education made the building a base for teacher training.
“It was frustrating,” Sheehan recalls. “It’s not just about raising a pile of money and going in and doing something and leaving. It’s also about capacity building. It’s a long job. It’s a generational thing.”
This friendship network is itself the result of a friendship between Abel Guterres, now East Timor’s ambassador to Australia, and Rae Kingsbury. In the 1990s Kingsbury, then Rae Perry, was a councillor in Melbourne. She and Guterres, who became East Timor’s consul-general to Sydney, “decided to do something unique”, Guterres says.
“We wanted local, state and federal levels of government to each nurture this new democracy. We are neighbours, forever. A successful East Timor, politically and economically, is in Australia’s interests. If it fails, Australia picks up the pieces.”
But some parts of the aid community counsel caution. Paul O’Callaghan, a former chief executive of the Australian Council for International Development, says he tended to “discourage individuals or small groups going off and doing things. Sometimes it’s fine. Most often though, people get out of their depth. If you’re a donor, you want to be sure there’s proper accountability.”
Individuals work better through groups with local and development expertise, he says.
Corruption is less of a factor with volunteers than large aid projects, because there is less cash and more donated labour. But the Herald knows of some volunteers funding an East Timorese man who has made false reports and taken resources in the past.
Friendship groups, and other voluntary groups, supplement their private resources by sending volunteers through Australian Volunteers International. AVI’s manager of international strategy, Russell Hocking, credits AVI’s success to long-term relationships with East Timorese partners. And the volunteers’ long-term commitment – three to 36 months – allows them to learn cultural nuances and the language. This increases volunteers’ ability to transfer skills. But it’s a two-way street. The volunteers learn a great deal, with huge personal benefits.
Rotary has many volunteer-run projects in East Timor, and sometimes works with AVI. Norm Bruce has been with a Rotary project for seven years, and for three of those received AVI support. The project originated with a request by the former resistance leader Xanana Gusmao for Australian Rotary to help re-roof 185,000 buildings destroyed in the mayhem of the Indonesian departure in 1999.
In 2000, the Rotary clubs of Melbourne and Doncaster sent a corrugated metal rolling machine to East Timor. The Rotary club of Lilydale bought a second-hand truck. Rotarians drove it to Darwin, shipped it to Dili, and transported the first 20 tonnes of steel to the factory in Baucau, 120 kilometres from Dili along the pot-holed north coast road. And the re-roofing began.
Rotary also heard about a need for water tanks in schools and villages to help people through the long dry season. At a village’s request, the project builds a basketball court-sized concrete slab with a roof, useful for markets, weddings and meetings. Attached tanks catch the roof water, saving hours of walking each day, usually by girls who might miss school as a result.
And it’s not just charity groups or Catholics, such as the famous nuns from the Sydney-based Mary MacKillop East Timor, who pitch in. The Uniting Church and other denominations organise many projects. And surgeons, dentists, optometrists, other health professionals and groups such as the Alternative Technology Association support voluntary projects.
And the teachers and students – from Saint Ignatius’, MLC School, Sydney Senior College and many others. Don Gock returned late last week from the Saint Ignatius’ trip with another teacher and 10 students. Before they left, at the briefing night in Riverview, Gock told the boys: “Watch the ABC’s Compass program on Sunday night. That’s about East Timor’s sacrifice in World War II.” That sacrifice begot a debt that Australians are now repaying.
As Gock speaks, Saint Ignatius of Loyola watches from a painting on the classroom wall, a reminder of their spiritual inspiration. “We are teaching you to have a social conscience,” Gock tells the boys. “We are teaching you to think about the other guy.”
The boys thought about the other guy, and raised $6000, double their target, through means such as selling their families’ second-hand furniture on eBay. Their funds will help install solar panels at a school and provide scholarships to St Joseph’s College, Dili, which they visited last week.
“The boys have learnt so much about their culture, language and have an appreciation of what needs to be done,” Gock says of the boys’ visit. “So many of them want to go back to help in some way.”
At St Joseph’s, Father Eduard Ratu Dopo shows the Herald around the school of almost 600 senior secondary students. Life can be tough.
“Many don’t eat breakfast,” Father Edu says. “Maybe once a day they eat. From their appearance we can know. We call them and ask them what’s happened with you. Give money to buy food.”
The Sydney boys stepped into a different world. “Around this compound were tents and refugees in the 2006 crisis,” Father Edu says, pointing to the grounds. “Some children here have trauma from 2006.”
Domingos Ati works on the challenges every day in Oecussi – fighting the dry, training in water management, battling the lack of education and skills.
“To change community behaviour is not just about the money, but also your heart together with them,” Ati says. “To develop Oecussi, we need caring people who are working not just normal time eight to five. Also working Saturday, Sunday or weekend. Working with the heart.”
Ati believes he knows why Australians volunteer, and work with their hearts: “These people who help, it’s because they know East Timor’s relationship history with Australia.”
By: Jock Cheetham, 14 July 2010
Source: The Sydney Morning Herald