Hand of friendship from suburban Sydney to Timor Leste

What are friends for, if not to help?

By Brian Davies

19 May, 2013

COMING BACK: Mike Skippington, Christine Mooney,
Leo Ward and some of their friends in the Alas district ...
“we can’t turn our backs on them”.

The bonds linking a remote corner of Timor-Leste, the Alas district, with the Australian parish of Frenchs Forest and its parishioners are a striking example of what one parish can do and the difference it can make. 

The Friends of Alas from Frenchs Forest parish “adopted” the Alas district seven years ago as a community they would help, “but strictly on the basis of what the people themselves wanted, not that sometimes Western trick of deciding what the needs were and what was good for them”, said Leo Ward of the Friends of Alas. 

Leo and two other parishioners, Mike Skippington and Christine Mooney, made the Friends’ annual visit to Alas so they could report back to Frenchs Forest on how things had gone went over there during 2012. 

“Apart from their considerable thanks, from the Alas point of view it’s also an important response to their yearly farewell anxiety: ‘You will come back, won’t you?’,” Leo said. 

“And we will. We can’t turn our backs on them. It’s a friendship with no time limit, until one day we won’t be needed. That’s at the heart of the friendship.” 

The Friends agreed in 2010 that with only very basic primary education in Alas, they would sponsor six children each year to become boarders at the Franciscan-run St Francis of Assisi Senior High School, a 1½-hour drive from Alas over very rough roads. 

They now have 18 students at the high school plus two at university in Dili. The arrangement is a continuous one. Next year another six youngsters will start at the boarding school. The Friends meet all the costs and the boarding school fees of $A350 a year for each student. 

“The Franciscan connection is an important one, not only at the school but Fr Eugenio is a magnet holding and guiding the Alas community together, with cross-section support from the whole community,” Leo said. 

“It was only after he’d driven us to the high school, at Fatuberliu, that I learnt he was not only the Alas parish priest, so to speak, but was, in fact, the Franciscan superior in Timor. 

“That drive was a somewhat hair-raising journey, in a four-wheel drive. 

“Before we took off Fr Eugenio prayed for a safe journey for 10 minutes. I’d also noticed a crucifix on the dashboard, but with the image turned away, and a few kms into the trip – ‘airborne’ most of the way – I came to understand why the crucifix faced outwards … someone had to watch the road and it certainly wasn’t Fr Eugenio. 

“There were half a dozen youngsters on the open tray at the back bouncing around as if on a trampoline … terrifying. We arrived, however, in one piece and with me convinced, if I needed to be, how huge the power of prayer is!” 

As well as the education initiative, in 2009 the Friends of Alas also met one of the community’s most pressing needs, financing and overseeing the completion of an eight-kilometre piped water system to the village, thus elim­inating a long walk to and heavily–laden trip back from the village water supply – a distant spring in the mountains. 

In 2010 it was also decided during a Friends’ visit to supply $5000 start-up finance for a carpentry shop which now employs two local carpenters and offers young villagers apprenticeships. 

“It’s not a conventional village,” Leo said. “There’re about a thousand people living in a scattered arrangement along an area of about two kilometres, while the district itself has a population of roughly 6000; and we are also funding an agriculture consultant to help improve the local farming techniques. 

“Dili and its ports are recognisably a busy metropolitan place with all the things associated with modern city life, but it’s in sharp contrast with the rural areas, so distant from it because of the terrain,” he said. 

“For the first time we flew in a six-seater plane from Dili to get to the Alas district – 25 minutes instead of six hours in a 4WD.” 

“From 5000ft (1524 metres) up you really appreciate just how rugged and amazing the terrain is,” said Christine, “and you get an understanding of what the people went through during WorldWar II and the Indonesian occupation.” 

Yet with each visit the three Friends’ representatives note the things that are improving. 

Mike said that all over the country roads are being upgraded, opening up access to isolated communities like Alas. “Infrastructure is being built and people are developing more confidence. There seems to be a sense of positivity everywhere,” he says. 

Leo said: “That’s another important element of the friendship. 

“Given their history of control by the Portuguese and then Indonesians, who stripped Timor-Leste of what could be carried away – and the rest burnt, the people of Timor Leste are now in control of their own lives, although still a bit tentative about making their own decisions, but making them they are.” 

Leo said the preferred memory the three of them shared was that of a four-year-old boy in a group of children of the same age who stepped out, initiated a handshake, looked me in the eye and said ‘Bondia’ (good morning) – “mischief oozing from his every muscle and a smile that would melt an iceberg.” 

“We saw hundreds of such beautiful children,” Leo said, “boys and girls, whose laughter and energy are the future of Timor.”

Published: May 16, 2013
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