A welcome Change

A quaint little village vista...
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Some days the experiences of travel are too new and too fresh for words. Still, not to find the words is to risk having the experience and missing the meaning. So I sit here in the priest's cottage in Aileu at the start of a three week journey searching for words.

The whole experience so far has been a bit surreal. Despite, my many years of travel, my burgeoning skills in Indonesian and increased confidence dealing with locals in often tricky environments, I can still cave in at the best of times, running back to my room to seek the solace of the iPod, novel or laptop.

With a fragile sense of purpose, I know it's time to step outside and live life.

A Fretlin flag hangs in the breeze at sunset...
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Even my thoughts on travel are often insular and introverted, looping over like some grand interior monologue without an audience. With the peace and quiet of this place it's all too easy to become just a little self-obsessed.

The real challenge is, however to broaden the horizons and start to focus more on others - their thoughts, words and experiences. This is what I'm here to do this time, I tell myself with the conviction of hastily scribbled lines in my flimsy, dog-eared notebook.

Views of Dili on the way up the mountains...
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So with my senses I begin to take in the scene. Up on the second floor, past the balcony walls of the priest's cottage, the small town of Aileu stretches across a greenish-brown plain, nestled neatly between the gnarled mountains, atop the back of giant crocodile of Timor.

Yesterday, having wound our labyrinthine way through the long climb up from Dili, we arrived with nine boxes of teaching resources, along with a three week supply of long-life milk, Special K and toilet paper.

We were met by the Mary Knoll nuns, a group of gregarious New Yorkers whose vibrance and enthusiasm for life remains undampened  by age. Most of these women have made this place their home for the last eighteen years.

A rude rooster who starts crowing every hour on the hour from 2am...
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Over afternoon cheese and crackers, we asked the sisters about everything from the legacies of Indonesian occupation, to how one should effectively go about exchanging pleasantries with Padre Hermenio, our gruff but otherwise personable priest in residence. In a place like this I find it hard not to place considerable stock in simply living through such overwhelming change, upheaval and uncertainty while spiritually guiding those around you.

Later that day, Kel and I found ourselves at the end of a rickety table at the local Ministry of Education. At the other end was the Isac, the ministry superintendent - a forty-something man of slight build with a dainty Asian beard not unlike the product my own efforts of blade abstinence for the past week. To our surprise, the good signor spoke precious little English and I strained my memory and linguistic skills through thirty-five minutes of broken Indonesian. We managed at last to confirm that next week our inservice will go ahead with the ministry's blessing and the commitment of fifty local teachers.

WW2 Museum on way from Dili to Aileu
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Today, with a sense of relief for all that has passed, I'm feeling the welcome change of the cool maintain air blowing through the French doors of the balcony and lapping at my fleabite-riddled bare feet. Outside, over the walls of the balcony, life, hitherto unknown to me, buzzes endlessly through the smokey mountain air, the crowing of proud roosters and delighted shrieks of children playing.

With a fragile sense of purpose, I know it's time to step outside and live life.