Guest speak Laura with Member Monica (who nominated Laura to attend RYLA)
Last Thursday we heard from Laura Cox, who the Club sponsored for the January 2025 Rotary Youth Leadership Awards (RYLA). Laura kindly shared her learnings from this program for publication in the Bulletin, which are:
- Vulnerability can be a strength.
- You can be a leader in your daily life.
- Team members often have different perspectives, and that diversity strengthens the team.
- Trust and creating a safe environment for everyone to feel heard and seen are crucial.
- As a leader I need to be aware of my own bias and help educate others on it too
Next meeting: back to the Golf Club
Our next Club meeting will be held on Thursday at the Royal Canberra Golf Club. President Russell will be speaking on the topic of “Why bushrangers did not wear sunglasses”.
Besi Pae and beyond – Part 2
Following is the second part of 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. The first part was in last week’s Bulletin.
The deluge persists for half an hour. As it eases we take off on foot in the early afternoon, through heavily clinging mud, sporting one umbrella between the four of us, loaned by the old man. Huts, some fifty metres apart, line the road. Sometimes they thin to two or three hundred metres. There is a continuous conversation between the walkers and the people living in the roadside houses. Men, women, children appear from them, sometimes hastily wrapping themselves in a sarong, to inspect us. The rain continues, gets heavier. Pak Markus keeps disappearing into hut after hut looking for an umbrella. Both he and the other local leader are barefoot by choice. On such a surface, at this pace, my feet would be bloodied within ten minutes. How long shall we be walking? Possibly twenty kilometres out and back to the main road, comes the calm reply. We had stopped at an eating house for simple rice meals before reaching Besi Pae. But the proposed distance now, one would think, is excessive, given that we carry no water in the muggy heat.
Half an hour goes by before a second umbrella is found. It is for me. Colin has one too. The two locals go without. The going is heavy, slipping on rocks and sticking in mud, lightning and thunder bursting around us. Another half hour and the rain stops. The ridge twists and climbs steadily. The conversations with people in their huts and those we meet continue. Everyone knows Pak Markus, the headman. From four we have grown to six, eight - oh, too many now to count. Everyone is barefoot, except for the two white men from Mars. Colin sensibly wears sandals. I wear shoes. We attract enormous interest from everyone we pass.
The hillsides are steep. Corn, interspersed with peanuts, struggles from the ground. Banana trees dot the landscape. A woman here or there, in traditional dress, tends individual plants, digging stick in hand. Dogs, ribs on legs, compete with piglets for the attention of barefoot children, but are often treated like - well - dogs.
At the second hamlet we are taken to a hut where we are treated to coffee. The hospitality is touching to the core. At the third hamlet we pass a school on a prominent hillside. It is a long roof on poles, with partial panels in between. It is grandiose in comparison with the surrounding architecture.
We must be near the fourth hamlet as we are led away from the road to a small meeting-hut. Even out here, President Suharto’s photo adorns the wall. The small, earthen floor room is packed. Earnest discussions, elaborate courtesies, walls of eyes straining with wonder, welcoming, smiling gestures, betel-nut powder proffered to the men, dripping heat, mounting tiredness. Presently we rise and a line of men and boys leads us away. We follow a wide, mainly dry river bed, crossing the narrow stream several times. I am a source of amusement for trying to keep my feet dry.
We seem to go on for another couple of kilometres, leaving the riverbed, crossing fences, following the courses of streams uphill along several gullies, and suddenly we are there. All this effort to look at a trickle of water from the ground. We stand around on the steep, slippery surface under the shade of trees, discussing flow-rates, concreting requirements, piping possibilities. This all happens with full participation of the adult male villagers. Yes, an engineer will be sent to inspect the site and explore the options. It is now late afternoon, some four hours after we set off on our frivolous jaunt.
We all turn around and head back, along a shorter route to the road, without the need to return to the meeting house. Eventually the course follows the river-bed again, but much further along it, crossing it many times. To my own amazement and the approval of the villagers, who help me from time to time, I keep my feet dry. “Why do they need to tap a spring when there is water in the river?” I ask. “Because it runs dry when the rains stop”, comes the obvious answer.
We are back on the road. There are goodbyes to many, but others continue with us along the way to return to their homes. I am told the villagers have really appreciated our visit. The responsible government officials never visit such remote locations.
Around nightfall we return to the house where we had coffee on the way in. There are more people here now. A meal of rice and meat has been prepared for us. The staple diet here is corn. We are being treated like royalty. We can stay the night, we are told. Politely, we refuse. Pak Niander, who suffers from a long-standing leg injury and therefore could not accompany us, is waiting for us where the road joins the highway. As a parting gift, in a touching ritual, two men on their knees present us with tightly woven shawls, one for each of the two Australians. After a speech, the shawls are placed around our necks. They symbolise brotherhood.
Torches have been scrounged. We stumble away in a black, starlit night. Colin and I draw away from the other two, who are still barefoot. Negotiating the stones in the dark is hard work. The majestic stillness of the night surrounds us. The dim lights of home-made kerosene lanterns shine from open windows and doorways. There is an occasional greeting, the sound of a squealing piglet, a child crying. We are ghosts from another world touching this landscape for only an instant. This is where people live out the allotted years of their lives.
We reach the highway after three hours of walking in the dark. It is close to midnight before I reach the refuge of my hotel room. The room I had earlier disparaged as quaint and unserviceable now seems palatial.
Juris Jakovics
