Majura Primary School presented President Russell with this certificate of appreciation at the Year 6 final assembly last year. The School’s values are shown at the bottom of the certificate.
Besi Pae and beyond – Part 1
Following is an article written by Member Juris in late 1996, providing an account of a day observing the work of the Nusa Tenggara Association (NTA) in West Timor. As it’s quite long, it will be provided in two instalments, with the second one in next week’s Bulletin.
Shortly after dawn in the torpid heat two men whisked me away in a minibus. A third took over the driving a short while later as I was escorted out of town into the distant hills. Pak Colin Barlow and Pak Niander spoke to each other in a language I mostly did not understand.
My spine tingled with excitement. So this was to be my fate. I smiled, remembering my disorienting and sleepless night, punctuated by the comic relief of a hotel breakfast worthy of a Fawlty Towers script.
Such was my introduction to West Timor. Kupang, the administrative capital for 26 million people, is itself larger than Darwin. It had welcomed me the previous evening at an airport I could have mistaken for Tennant Creek.
To unaccustomed senses, Kupang has a tangy flavour. The mildly tart background noise of buses, motorcycles and horns blends well with the colour and variety of the expressive and engaging faces and the often-worn skirt-like male sarong. The narrow, winding streets with plain concrete block buildings or Mediterranean-looking suburban housing add spice alike to broad avenues with modern-looking administrative buildings, or to rough tracks, simple comfortable houses and earthen floor working class huts with such mod-cons as concrete brick walls and corrugated iron roofing. Beyond the senses, the town boasts a university, research facilities, and a sophisticated, highly educated and socially motivated business elite. There is also a hierarchical administrative system which meshes with the traditional. I am told there has been tremendous progress in the Kupang region in recent years.
After crossing a plain where Australian and Japanese corpses once rotted in their hundreds, dying in a seemingly irrelevant war, the mini-bus wound its way up a narrow, paved road into mountainous country, green but sparse. Between the ubiquitous hamlets there were wild areas. Trees ranged over an open, leafy forest floor. Low stone walls, breath-taking vistas, children playing at a rock-fall, then descent to a wide, stony river reminiscent of the Murrumbidgee, and a grinding halt in what seemed like the mother of all traffic jams at a village market thronging with trucks, chooks, vegetables, people and wares of all kinds.
Though hostage, I was not blindfolded or unwilling. I had paid my way to get to Indonesia. Besi Pae, a village three hours’ drive from Kupang, likely to be missed by the untrained eye, waited for us patiently.
I talk to Colin about what it means to provide aid to these people. How does one engage in village politics and low-key Australian aid for self-help projects? He is disarmingly unassuming. I get no lecture. I get snippets of information which build up a picture. He sparkles with enthusiasm and drive one could mistake for the fanatical. But Colin is involved in many projects and academic undertakings around the world. The NTA is only one of them. He welcomes the help of others. He wants his shoes to be fillable. The projects must go on should something happen to him.
The whole Nusa Tenggara region, located to the east of Java and Bali, has almost twice the population of Australia. It too suffers from low rainfall. To some extent there is also an economic and administrative lag - the more remote, the less pressing are the problems for a central government beset by the problems of 200 million people, of which 90 million live in Java. Virtual subsistence farming and poverty we would view as abject is often the way of life in Nusa Tenggara.
We come upon Besi Pae suddenly and stop at the local administrative centre. It is a large shed with a concrete floor. Local male villagers with a say in matters affecting them and their families sit on chairs lining the walls closer to the end where there is a table. There is a sense of being dwarfed by the scale and emptiness of the building. We join the villagers after courtesies. Slow-paced discussions begin. We have come to see the toilets.
Some of the toilets are half-finished, some are just begun. We get up and walk around the village inspecting a few. The project is well underway. An entourage including betel-nut chewing men in long sarongs accompanies us as excited children crowd us and busy women in the shade of awnings take an avid interest in our comings and goings. Colin takes notes. How many done half way? How many finished? There is lively discussion. Sometimes I pick up the drift.
Pak Niander is the conduit for much of the discussion. He is well liked and respected here. Pak Markus, the elected village headman and government appointee, has an easy, friendly, charismatic manner. There is obvious trust and liking for Colin. Colin tells me later that it took three years of regular visits from Australia before the villagers opened up towards him. Now members of the NTA are greeted as family.
Around midday we inspect a dam built with good intentions some ten years ago under other foreign aid auspices. I am told that at the time, the finished project was hailed for the benefits it would bring to the area. Indeed for a time this has been so, but disaster is looming. The Indonesian government is now picking up the tab for repairing the spillway which was threatening collapse. The depth of the dam is seven metres mud and one of water. Draining it would leave a large village without water for a year. In hindsight, this has been inappropriate technology providing unsustainable benefits, given the lack of local infrastructure.
We hitch a ride on a truck from the dam site in the direction of a remote village, Mio desa, along a roughly surfaced, often steep, narrow and winding road. Colin and Pak Niander, who represents the NTA in Kupang, want to inspect a spring. Shortage of water is a constant problem here. We would have walked the distance, but the truck would save us time. Two years of discussing the problem with the local community had brought us this far.
To be continued.
