What do you write about a place that has made your heart flutter, stimulated your mind, widened your eyes, and given your feet wings? A place that became my home. Where there was a friend in most places, or a friend of a friend to meet. Well i am a little lost for words, and anything that i write will just sound like a big pink fluff ball, i apologise in advance.
Living Los Palos
This experience was about the people. The place is beautiful, but for me the people are what made me fall for this place.
CTKDS is a womens cooperative in Los Palos, they do a range of activities with the community. there is a womens weaving group and shop selling locally made tais. They arrange community meetings, hold functions, practice permaculture, and teach english to local school students weekly.
This is a great place where a lot of ideas are constantly being tossed around, thrown up, pushed out broardened on, and hopefully in the near future a big sustainability community center will be built! the plans look amazing! CTKDS has ties with another locally formed community group called Veru-pupuk which means grassroots in fataluku ( the local dialect). The men and women involved in this are amazing, very forward thinking and really want a revolution! Pro Fretelin and Timor Leste independence!
It was beautiful to hang out with such passionate people.
However it did become apparent that in a place with such little resources, it can be really REALLY impossible to get anything off the ground. There are a lot of cultural aesthetics and rules that can make it really difficult and confusing to work with.
In the first month of travelling timor leste i was beginning to think that i somewhat understood the culture, the weird mash of catholicism and animist beliefs, or at least was beginning to have a grasp of.
Now i realise that i will never understand this place it changes day to day, district to district, family to family, and i shouldnt try to, it is beautiful in what it is, and observing, respecting, abiding is all i can do.
While staying here with dibby Deb and mana Meg a lot of fun was had. Meg is a champion, and hanging out with her was a pleasure, long conversations, and a very active passionate beautiful soul. We had a few days of jewellery making, where i shared some knot tying techniques and after a week a lot of people were walking around wearing seemingly latin american stone necelaces, then we experimented with tais material to make some funky jewellery. We worked in the garden, split bamboo in an attempt to make blinds, and painted some great table tops for the verandah. Things moved really slowly though, and if i was to volunteer again, i would want to come in when an established project was being undertaken.
Beautiful Dibby Deb, wonderful woman that runs the CTKDS development program
Natural dying of local cottons is practiced here and the coulours you can get out of the plants are just amazing, using not only plants, but spices, mud, mmmmmm they looked beautiful.
One of the table tops we painted together.
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Grass roots, the boys of this place kept my ears dancing for days on end. We could share little conversation, but cards, music, creative activities, fishing, and dancing are great mediators, by the end i feel like i have friends and smiles that i will never forget.
PAPOOORA!
My last weeks in Timor were spent in Los Palos, creating, conversating and conceptualising. Observing the loving and sharing nature of the people and having it also gifted to me.
Stories of the Lautem areas history were told, and i found one in particular very interesting, it is about water.
This story was told by Jardine a boy that lived next door who i had many taikwando fights with. He was great company and gave me the nick name mana hellicopter!! because the word ellie in fataluku means hellicopter, and whenever he sees one he syas that it will be me checking up on him.
he is pretty good with english but the story had to be retold to me by daniella who can speak both tetun and english( she is from portugal)
The lady in the lake
It is said that the Lautem region never had water, and that the women had to travel large distances to bring water back to their families.One lady had a dog that returned sometimes wet in the afternoons. After this occurring several times the lady decided to follow the dog to find the place that he was getting wet. The dog led her to a lake, where she met a man from the lake. They fell in love and she entered the water never to return to her village. Because of this sacrafice of her life, a giant wave evolved and washed water up rivers into the lautem region. This created water for many regions, and brought the lulic crocodile to regions it had never been before..
Street graffiti by 5 different Los Palos artists in main street.
the old galaxy palace!
Edi chillin at Veru-pupuk
Musica Barrak for everyone!
IKU an amazing artist, that does some dam funky paintings around the place and sneaky little sketches that he hides in corners. great to work alongside creating.. iku is funnny.
Juvi to the left pulling a face, one of the hardest workers i have met, will always help you with anything, has a real beauty about him. Not strange to see him carrying half a coconut tree down the street for a friends new house construction, crazy!
Dhomi, i wont forget your smiles, your music, your presence.
Sennyl! lala pulsa, which means spider, because they are everywhere all around the world, this boy is special!
"disculpa! hau la hatenne tetun!"
The guys playing music (every night occurence) they were entertaining us as i painted a mural at veru-pupuk.
One tradition that these boys carry out is beautiful. if you are leaving, whether it be for 3 years 3 months 3 days, they will stay up all night on your last night until you hop the bus, or car ride out of town, playing music and singing, drinking rediculous amounts of coffee and smoking a truck full of cigarettes.
picture the best jamming session you've ever had and then times it by one thousand!
This photo just makes me laugh. the boys crazy nature, but cultural obsession with catholicism. (he is standing outside a church)
on a mission to go fishin'
Last night mischief, music, halimar
They survive with a government now that to me has silly expectations and abstract ways at getting things done, they think big buisness and big money, but i dont think that this brings happiness let alone evenly spread wealth. They put up powerpoles to the smallest of villages, but the roads are almost inexcessible in points. These people have lived for centuries without power, but they cant live without food, the roads need to be a maintained. They built a hideous plaza in the centre of dili kicking many locals off their land, the plaza aimed toward tourists and expats, but what happens when the UN leave next year.
Work possibilities and education seem to be only available in dili, an overpopulated unhealthy city, and many are forced to leave their families to find work. There are so many other problems that i have, and that others share about development in timor, but i dont want to rant on.
There are so many funny little things, big moments or small that i will remember.
Toward the end i could half understand (maybe less than half) a conversation in tetun, and say small replies, which i found really great as ive nerver really tried to learn a language before.
the generosity, sharing everything
fishing, cooking, going to the market, playing, singing, speaking in broken english/ tetun.
Buka o nia Klamar
Hau buka haluha tanis
Hau buka haluha triste
Hau buka haluha kilat nia lian
Maibe susar haluho o
O nia mundu mak ne'e
Hadomi deit bele senti
Lalehan no tasi sei toba diskansa
Tamba o mak rai nain lalehan
Dame lakon nia sentidu
Loron lakon nia manas
Mundu tanis buka lalehan
Hau sei buka o nia klamar
Kalan lakon nia fitun
Fulon lakon nia naroman
Mundu tanis buka lalehan
Hau sei buka o nia klamar
Hau sei buka o nia klamar
Hodi hein o nia lelata
Rai naben mos sei la oho
Hau sei buka o nia klamar...
HAU HADOMI TIMORE LESTE
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