Well, after a very full two weeks here in East Timor, which followed two weeks spent in 3 Australian locations, and two weeks before that in the Solomon Islands, it’s time for this traveler to head home.  The suitcase is packed, I have a 5:30 AM taxi call at the hotel front desk, and I’m charging up my Kindle.

Every stop on this trip has been different.  And every stop has been strategic.  Here in East Timor, I feel like I could have easily spent another two weeks, with all that is going on.  The implementation team takes off in a couple of days to do teacher training in the three areas where the pilot project will be implemented.  There is still material that needs to be polished up and finished.  (it will probably be printed ‘as is’ and polished over the next couple of months.)  But we got a lot done.  And I feel that my being here made it possible for them to at least be minimally ready to start classes when the school year begins in January.

I’m so glad I came.  But it will be good to get home too.

As with many hotels these days, the hotel where I am staying here in Dili, East Timor serves a complimentary breakfast.  Now East Timor is at a crossroads between Asia, the Pacific and Australia, and the hotel restaurant is run by ethnic Chinese.  So what would they serve for breakfast?

Well as is typical, it’s a breakfast buffet.  And there is bread (and a toaster), margarine, jam and peanut butter for those who like that.

There are also corn flakes and milk.

And on my plate you can see the following:

scrambled eggs

fried rice (with some egg and vegetables)

stir-fry fish and vegetables (sometimes it’s a different stir fry meat, other times it’s been cut up chicken breast patties, or battered chicken wings)

stir fry chinese cabbage (or some other similar vegetable)

stir fry bacon and vegetables

a small spring roll

and what is supposed to substitute for sausage, which is more like a hot dog.

In addition there was stiff fry tofu in a sauce

and various fruit pieces (orange, banana, apple today)

And the coffee is excellent.  With East Timor’s Portuguese heritage, they serve excellent coffee here.

Anyone for breakfast?

Over the past couple of days, the team has been working very hard to write small story books for children just learning to read.  The goal is to get as many as 80 small books produced in each of the three languages of the pilot project!

I have been helping them to understand more clearly what makes a good small story book, the type of story needed, the type of wording needed, the type of illustrations needed.  With people from the three languages working together, they can often share story books between them, adjusting the wording or illustrations slightly to fit their specific situation.  Over the past two days, they have prepared drafts of over 30 stories so far, to add to the more than 20 that they already had!

from Tim…

On Wednesday of last week, the multilingual education team held a stakeholders meeting to report on the project so far, share implementation plans, and present important multilingual education concepts.  People from various non-government organizations attended, as well as educators and representatives from the Ministry of Education.

Ester explains a foundational concept to the group.

I had been working with them all of Monday and Tuesday to finalize the program and help various prepare their presentations and practice them.  And they all did very well.  All of the presentations and conversation was held in Tetun, one of the official languages of East Timor, so I was very much the outsider for the day.  I was able to have some of the discussion translated for me so I could follow some of it and occasionally contribute to the discussion.  But the day very much belonged to the team.

Ana does a teaching demonstration.

Afterward, I heard reports that several of the participants felt they had learned a lot, saying that they had not understood before what the multilingual education program was all about.  But having learned more, they now feel it is a good idea!

Now we just have to get everything ready for classes to start early next year…

It’s hard to believe tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  It’s supposed to reach an unseasonable 80 degrees today and truthfully, I wish it was a bit cooler, but this is Texas.  At 53 years of age, this year will be my first time to prepare a turkey.  The job usually falls to Tim, but he is in East Timor.  As my grandfather would have said, “You won’t learn any younger.”

A couple of months ago Tim was planning his trip to the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea and was ready to tell the travel agent, ‘book it’, when he got an email from his supervisor, “What are you doing the last half of November?  The workshop in Timor is going to happen and there are sufficient funds for you to come help. Can you do that?

As we pondered extending Tim’s three week tour to six, and Tim missing being here for Thanksgiving, we wondered what to do.  In the end, we decided the workshop and experience of working with his supervisor and her husband were worth the sacrifice and added the extra leg to his trip.

Shortly before Tim was to travel to East Timor, his supervisor contracted pneumonia and became seriously ill and was admitted to a hospital in Bangkok.  She wasn’t going anywhere soon and we wondered if Tim should cancel that part of the trip and head home.   We decided the opportunity to see what was happening in East Timor, meet the people involved in multilingual education and help out where he could made the trip still worthwhile.

So this Thanksgiving, while it would be nice to have Tim here, I am thankful for this opportunity for him to be a part of an important initiative in East Timor.  I’m also thankful for God’s healing hand on Tim’s supervisor who continues to surprise her doctor’s with her progress. Tim returns to Dallas on December 2nd which will be another day to give thanks.

I’ve been meeting for the past two days with the national team who is responsible for implementing the multilingual education pilot program here in East Timor.  They are quality people and it has been a pleasure to work with them.

Our focus these past two days has been to prepare for a stakeholders meeting that we are holding on Wednesday.  At that meeting, the team will be presenting an overview of multilingual education and what has been accomplished so far in the project.  They will also present various aspects of the program, including sample lessons on literacy and 2nd language learning.

It was fun to be able to help some of the team members to more fully understand how the lessons were based upon sound learning theories and to see their excitement when they understood the connections and felt like they had a more solid understanding of what they were doing.

from Tim

Well, I’m now on the last phase of my trip, a two week stay in East Timor.  I’m in the capitol city, Dili, which as you can see is right on the coast.

During my stay here, I’ll be working with a team of people from a local organization who are developing a multilingual education pilot program in three of this country’s 19 different languages.  Classes are scheduled to start with the new school year in January and there is still a lot of work to do to get ready.  So it is going to be a busy two weeks.

From Martha: Today I flew from our SIL center in the highlands to the coastal town of Madang. We were picked up at the guesthouse at 6 am for a 7:30 departure. It was cool and foggy. At the hangar we got weighed along with the cargo and we sat down to wait for the pilots to prepare the plane and load the cargo. It was closer to 7:45 when we finally were buckled in and ready to fly.

The highlands have beautiful mountainsides covered with trees and patchworked with gardens. Some of the mountains looked like they were covered with bright green velvet. As we climbed higher to cross over the mountains, we were surrounded by clouds and then we began our descent down to the coast. The scenery gave way to the Pacific Oceans and villages perched along the coastline and on islands.

As a newly married couple we lived in Madang from 1991-95 at the Pacific Orientation Course where we served as school teachers. At the top of a long winding muddy road, the grounds sit on mountain overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It’s a million dollar view, but the trip up is not for the faint of heart.

This stop was not on my itinerary, but my flight from the highlands to the capital city of Port Moresby was cancelled for Wednesday morning since I was the only passenger. The pilots were bringing others to Madang this morning and from here I can catch a commercial flight to Port Moresby tomorrow.

It is amazing to be back in this place and see our Papua New Guinean friends who have served the course for years. There were big hugs and smiles as we greeted each other. And there was sad news. The office manager who served with us was in a tragic accident in July and was killed. The man’s father has served as a Tok Pisin teacher for years and lives in a nearby village.

After consulting with a PNG friend as the appropriate thing to do to express our family’s sorrow at the news, I purchased tea, sugar, milk, biscuits and coffee and headed down to see the father and widow of David. When I arrived at the house, a family member went and told Amat, David’s father, that a ‘white woman’ was there to see him.

At first Amat did not recognize me and truth be told, I wouldn’t have recognized this thin man with a graying beard and glasses. When he heard my voice, a smile broke on his face and we stood holding hands and he soon told me that David had left them. I told him how sorry we were and we just stood there sharing in moment of sorrow together. I told him that I had brought tea and biscuits so we could sit and ‘story’.

A granddaugther was sent to boil water and we began talking about the family as I updated him with photos on my iPad. He was delighted to see each family member. Later Amat recorded a message to Tim on the iPad – I think he thought Tim would be able to view it immediately.

Later David’s widow, Elizabeth came to the house. We hugged and talked of David and then moved on to catching up on each other’s families. A tropical downpour pounded the tin roof and rivlets of water streamed on the ground outside the covered area where we sat enjoying our coffee and stories. Darkness fell on the village and the rain stopped.

My friend Hetty and her daugther walked me up the mountain back to the camp. What a treat to have a few hours with friends I haven’t been with in years. It was an unexpected detour on my trip and a gift to be sure.Tomorrow I travel on to Port Moresby where I will overnight in a mission guesthouse before boarding a plane to Brisbane, Australia on Thursday. After a flight to Sydney, I will board the non-stop 16 hour flight to DFW arriving before the time that I left Sydney. I’m ready to be home.

from Tim

For the past few days I’ve been staying at Kangaroo Ground, where Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia is located.  You can see here how the area got its name.

The kangaroos are regular visitors to the meadow at the edge of the property and to the locals, they are just part of the background.  But this American found them quite interesting.

While I’ve been here, I’ve had the chance to connect with various people who relate in some way to our work in the Pacific region; providing training at the graduate school here, or working in recruitment and resource development, or in managing finance systems and funding for projects, and even in helping to develop literacy materials in the Solomon Islands.

It’s been a good visit and I’ve enjoyed the chance to reconnect with some people I’ve known for years and get to know others whose names I’d only seen on emails.

Tomorrow I head off to Darwin, Australia, to visit a field office there, reconnect with colleagues there and hopefully have the chance to talk a bit about linguistic issues in East Timorese languages.

The pacific tour continues…

from Tim

While Martha has been hanging out in Papua New Guinea, I’ve been spending a few days near Melbourne, Australia. I’m here getting acquainted with colleagues in partner organizations here. And I’ve also had opportunity to catch up with some friends I haven’t seen in a while.

This past weekend I spent some time with Gerry and Melinda Beimers. Gerry was the director of our work in the Solomon Islands when we first went there back in 1998. And Martha and I had taught their three oldest daughters when we were all in Papua New Guinea back in the early 90s. So it was fun to see them again and catch up.

We had a nice time together, not only reconnecting, but getting a chance to see of the the beautiful countryside outside of Melbourne.

Thanks Gerry and Melinda for a nice weekend.