Thread: Employment Opportunities

great stuff mate

East Timor has a serious number of long weekends and because the soldiers all used to be paid in cash, once a month, following a friday payday, all the soldiers would disappear to get their salary to their families...and then not re-appear until sometime on the following monday...so, we were assured of a long weekend at least once a month...cool.

In making friends with the Timorese soldiers, almost every payday long weekend, we would pick a location we had not been to, and then plan a trip to ferry a couple of soldiers home. It was great. They would get home early, and we had a set of guides to show us the best of their country, and we were treated to the best of Timorese culture and hospitality. Here was one such excursion:







Each house was simply overflowing with kids. Such a boisterous, happy environment, particularly here, because these two cousins had regular income, and the family were doing OK.

Life is lived communally with housing in clusters, so there is a lot of shared work and everyone benefits from any spare capacity. The care for each other runs up and own the generations. It makes our existence seem bland and lifeless in comparison with the sheer humanity of their family lives.

Very interesting post BBC and especially the photos and observations.

A pommy mate of mine was an inspector with Scotland Yard and when he retired he did security work for mainly the UN. Was 2 years in Libya, very peaceful and while America and Libya were not really on speaking terms there were no problems for the English and other nationalities working there. Did 2 years for an oil company in Nigeria, very unstable partly due to the wealth going into the wrong pockets, then 2 years for UN in Thailand at a border/refugee camp near Cambodia, that would have been around 1995. Khartoum was the unsafest place he had worked in, only for a short time and also Bosinia. Pity but he didn't take any photos of his work, only the trips he could do from these places as he liked travelling.
We do have a lot of Timorese here in Darwin, some connections go back to the early days of the settlement then there was a rush of refugees when Indonesia moved in, then a smaller rush at Independence. Several Chinese families from Timor have done very well here, Jape who still has business connections back there and the owners of the Happy Gardens, for years that was the best place in town for a large filling meal, excellent cooking and cheap. Started with a very small shop.
You mentioned about the connection between Mozambique and Timor. About 20 years ago we knew quite well a Mozambique family from Timor who came here around 1975. Forget whether it was him or his father who were deported from Mozambique for pushing for independence for Mozambique, to Timor. Well educated and literate in several languages. Don't know where they have gone to now.

Keep up the articles.

Originally Posted by LSBob

Very interesting post BBC and especially the photos and observations.

A pommy mate of mine was an inspector with Scotland Yard and when he retired he did security work for mainly the UN. Was 2 years in Libya, very peaceful and while America and Libya were not really on speaking terms there were no problems for the English and other nationalities working there. Did 2 years for an oil company in Nigeria, very unstable partly due to the wealth going into the wrong pockets, then 2 years for UN in Thailand at a border/refugee camp near Cambodia, that would have been around 1995. Khartoum was the unsafest place he had worked in, only for a short time and also Bosinia. Pity but he didn't take any photos of his work, only the trips he could do from these places as he liked travelling.
We do have a lot of Timorese here in Darwin, some connections go back to the early days of the settlement then there was a rush of refugees when Indonesia moved in, then a smaller rush at Independence. Several Chinese families from Timor have done very well here, Jape who still has business connections back there and the owners of the Happy Gardens, for years that was the best place in town for a large filling meal, excellent cooking and cheap. Started with a very small shop.
You mentioned about the connection between Mozambique and Timor. About 20 years ago we knew quite well a Mozambique family from Timor who came here around 1975. Forget whether it was him or his father who were deported from Mozambique for pushing for independence for Mozambique, to Timor. Well educated and literate in several languages. Don't know where they have gone to now.

Keep up the articles.

LSBob

It is a pity your friend did not take photos...I know I have to push myself to do so.

Regarding the Chinese presence in East Timor, the Chinese have been there forever, trading and doing business. The first reason, which also influenced the Portuguese, was sandalwood. It was used for the manufacture of perfumes and essence. Not much left now.

We are very restrained by the conditioning that our view of European history gives us. The Chinese had been trading right across the Indian Ocean before the Europeans had mastered sailing against the wind. The Chinese were trading right down the East African coast, and reputedly right around to Angola, before Vasco da Gama. Their ceramic shards were found in the ancient stone buildings in Zimbabwe, and still today, the same shards are to be found washed ashore after cyclones down the Mozambican coastline. The Chinese have been doing the business far longer than we europeans can claim memory for.

I would love to be able to connect with that Mozambican family. There is so much personal history, which has come about because of world history, that goes unrecorded. You speak of his language abilities...it is not uncommon.

A number of the Supervisors we had working for us in the Demining Program were outcomes of training in Russia, East Germany, China, Nth Korea, and Cuba...and many of them were quite fluent in a number of those languages...plus, Portuguese, and at least one tribal language. Standing amongst them made me feel a little poor for experience...and language. Hence my pushing myself to earn Portuguese at 40.

In one of our northern demining sites I visited, I found a truck driver. He had some broken English. When he found out I was from Australia he set into me..."Senhor, Senhor...you are from Australia...you know James Morrison?"

'James Morrison' I knew, was an Australian jazz musician. I am not a jazz fancier. This man put it on me to see if I could get him some James Morrison cassette tapes so he could play the music in his truck.

I asked of the background of them driver. He had worked in East Germany, where he had developed a love for jazz. When the 'wall' came down he was no longer able to stay in East Germany, and he had to return to Mozambique, where the best work he could find was driving a truck in our program. His previous employer was...........
the East German Space Program....he was a Professor of Physics!

It always amuses me why there is so much fiction written in this world; fact is far stranger!

If Afghanistan has it's camels, and Mozambique has it's prawns, then Timor Leste has it's pigs...They are everywhere, and there is nothing shy about them.

They are the active part of the recycling system in town, and they get first, second and third 'dibs' at the garbage that can fill the streets, especially in Dili:



















These two are both cute...in different ways.

I'd like to know more about Timor. For instance; what is the unrest since independence all about? The only info we get is what the News services tell us. And we all know that's only what they think will get ratings or sell papers.

And thanks for sharing your life with us. You're helping to broaden our horizons and gain a better understanding of other people and places.

Danny

Yes the Chinese did travel widely before the European explorers. In the early days of Darwin a stone statue was found under a banyan tree which has been dated to 1400. http://www.ntl.nt.gov.au/__data/asse.../occpaper3.pdf

This was before the Europeans bought Chinese in to work as labourers on the gold mines.

Gavin Menzies has written a book "1421 The Year China Discovered the World" the American version replace "World" with "America", which looks at the exploration of the Chinese under Admiral Zheng but some accidemics have severly criticised his theories and evidence. An interesting read though. He also mentions that kangaroos were taken back to China and exhibited there.

Also you forgot to mentioned tha to India has cows as the garbage cleaners!!

Originally Posted by kaa45

I'd like to know more about Timor. For instance; what is the unrest since independence all about? The only info we get is what the News services tell us. And we all know that's only what they think will get ratings or sell papers.

And thanks for sharing your life with us. You're helping to broaden our horizons and gain a better understanding of other people and places.

Danny

Danny,

I feel like I am walking into quicksand while looking at the issues surrounding the unrest post-independence. The unrest of Timor extends from well before Independence, well before the Indonesian invasion, well before the Portuguese.

Don't look for simple answers in a country of such complexity. Firstly, look at the ethnolinguistic map of the place:



Then, what needs to be understood are, the different political movements that arose after the Portuguese withdrew.

Then there are the individuals, and you must understand the formative experiences and alliances they each had according to what each them went through under Indonesian rule. Maybe we could take some time to look in some detail at each of these aspects.......