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Homescape’s Rhonda Sutton and three friends from Echuca left the comforts of home to travel to East Timor. They formed friendships that will last a life-time.
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We jolted down the precipitous side of a mountain, completely lost, heading to a village which sees few outsiders and where most people travel by foot. Pauline tried the phone but there was no reception. We hadn’t any water but luckily Judie is a resourceful country woman and pulled some gin and tonic out of a bag. ‘It’ll be good malaria protection!’ joked Dianne.
What were four ladies from Echuca doing on a remote hill top in East Timor?
Pauline, Judie, Dianne and I were travelling to our local shire’s friendship district of Lequidoe. Pauline teaches at Echuca West Primary, which has a friendship relationship with a school there. For many years Judie taught senior students about East Timor’s struggle for independence. Whilst it was Judie and Pauline’s first visit Diane had been there before. On her last trip she helped Rotary re-build a school.
I first came to Timor in 2003, after a girlfriend cajoled me into it. My friend was visiting Dili on behalf of Soroptomists, a women’s group in Bendigo. Whilst in Dili we met with Kirsty Sword Gusmao. Kirsty grew up in Bendigo but had recently become East Timor’s First Lady, married to the then President Xanana Gusmao. Many women have been inspired to journey to East Timor after hearing Kirsty’s story and learning the plight of this impoverished nation.
When Mavis Taylor made her first overseas trip, at age 85, to a devastated East Timor, her nine children were anxious. Mavis went to Timor to supervise the distribution of some of the twenty containers of donated goods, including sewing machines and fabric, she had collected in her home town of Yarrawonga. Mavis’s daughter, Elwyn, loyally supported her mother, spending three years training Timorese women to sew.
Mavis remembered that thousands of East Timorese died in World War Two after helping stop the Japanese from invading Australia. Australian soldiers left messages to the East Timorese, saying our country would never forget them. The feisty grandmother was angry we didn’t assist East Timorese people during the years of Indonesia’s brutal occupation of their country, when over 200,000 died. Mavis was named ‘Australian Living Treasure’ for her work, alongside Nicole Kidman, Pat Rafter and others.
Mary and George Heneghan, from Shepparton, visited their son when he volunteered in East Timor. Overwhelmed by the poverty they observed, George and Mary started SETAG, one of fifty Friendship associations across Australia helping the struggling nation. The Shepparton East Timor Assistance Group has raised funds towards a community rehabilitation centre in Baucau which will soon provide therapy and education for disabled kids.
Our Echuca based group has supported several ventures in our friendship region and this year we organized a trip there to see first hand what we’ve achieved and what more needs to be done.
When our group was allocated a friendship district we were initially shocked that it was so difficult to reach. We certainly discovered that when we became lost on our way there. But we eventually found reception and made contact with Chris Adams, who guided us to Lequidoe. Chris is an Australian Volunteer, who lives in the community and assists the locals with project management.
Chris had arranged accommodation in a ramshackle hut, perched on the top of a long mountain ridge. It was the family home of a student we support to study law in Dili. That night we cooked as villagers do, on a smoky open fire. Choking and with watery eyes, we became even more determined to garner support for a project to build fuel efficient stoves in these homes! Fuel efficient stoves have a flue, so help prevent illness from respiratory disease. They also reduce deforestation because they use a third less wood. We went to bed, trying to make ourselves comfortable on lumpy mattresses and attempting to ignore the soft scratching noises above.
The warm welcomes we received the next day whilst touring the impoverished area made our shocking night’s sleep and all our work back home feel well worth the effort. Now we realize it’s a privilege to help this isolated region, as even small things can make a huge difference there.
We inspected the solar panels and wind turbine our group installed for lighting at the health centre and administration building. There is no electricity supply in Lequidoe.
The school will treasure the resources Pauline brought with her – a manual typewriter, exercise books, pencils and teaching aides. The principal explained their biggest problem is that senior students can’t study at night time.
We returned to Dili to attend a Friendship Group conference and heard amazing stories of how people from across Australia have helped change lives in East Timor.
In Echuca- Moama our small group continues to seek funds for East Timor. The local community was recently inspired by young East Timorese who visited us for World Youth Day. With support from Echuca West Primary and St Josephs College we’ll install solar power for lighting at our friendship school. We’d like to give them a lap top computer. As Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao told us in Dili, ‘Governments change but ordinary people and their friendships last.’
by Rhonda
END OF STORYContacts: Shepparton East Timor Assistance Group (SETAG) George and Mary Heneghan -5831 6997
Campaspe East Timor Association in Friendship (CETAF) Dianne Holland diannechris@hotmail.com 54826492
Caption [for a photo in original Homescape article]: East Timorese people treat Australia not just as a neighbor but as a friend. They were there for us during World War Two. We sent our peace keepers in 1999 and again in 2006. Friendship groups are part of our shared history
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