Judy Blackman’s Story: Her Return Visit To East Timor (cont’d)

I’m loving Judy’s story about her recent return visit to East Timor with her grandson, Tim. I feel as if I’m driving from Dili to Fatuberliu with them, observing the landscape and hoping we miss the pigs, goats and chickens on the road.

It’s obvious that East Timor is a Catholic country and that the religious orders are the providers of education, and probably many other vital services too. Tim must be one of very few teenage boys who has stayed in a convent with doting nuns!

After travelling with Br. Nico and his brother, Boni, taking some eight hours over the magnificent mountains (and pretty shocking, very windy roads), we arrived at the village of Fatuberliu.

On the way we had stopped at Alleu for lunch, Maubisse to look at the incredible view and Same to buy vegetables at the market.  We saw paddy fields, dry riverbeds that were enormous, pack ponies carrying all sorts of things, women walking along the road with tall loads on their heads, markets, the humblest of dwellings as well as pigs, goats and chickens scurrying across the road in front of us.

The road is mostly single lane and there were many ‘near misses’ but no-one seemed to get flustered and there was certainly no road rage, finger gesturing or horn honking.  Boni was good company and spoke very good English.  We chatted all the way.  He works at the American Embassy and has worked in England and Washington. However, he much prefers East Timor because ‘in England people live to work -  in East Timor we work to live.’ This notion sounded pretty good to me.

Tim and I thought we would be staying in very basic accommodation in Fatuberliu, eating the local food and just fitting in with the students’ normal school week, assisting them where possible with their English.  How wrong we were!

We were accommodated in a beautiful, brand new convent with six Catholic nuns who are not only superb human beings but loads of fun.  They adored Tim and couldn’t do enough to make our stay pleasant; cooking lovely meals for us and insisting on doing our washing despite the fact that their day began at 4.30am!  We would hear them singing in the chapel early each morning, and late at night, along with prayers at other times.  Conversation at meal times was hilarious and I have never been in a happier home.  I even played table tennis with the sisters and the priest, who looked like Friar Tuck in his brown robes.

The differences between Catholic and Protestant, black and white, Australian and Timorese were of total insignificance as we enjoyed a unity that transcended all those things.  Even discussions on diet were fun.  After all, why don’t we eat dog, monkey, rat or horse?  Apparently their meat is so good, but as Sister Wilhelmia assured us, it is only the big monkeys that she would eat, not the little ones that were in profusion in the jungle behind the school and which we saw the boys feeding!

In her next (and last) post Judy describes some hilarious moments as she and Tim ‘were greeted and treated like the Queen and Prince Philip’ - although I’m sure the Queen has never been asked - ‘out of the blue’ - to sing a song in front of a large audience!

I’ll post Judy’s final report in the next few days, maybe over the long weekend when you’ll have time to relax and enjoy the conclusion to her wonderful story.

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