The Peter Trust
Secretary’s Report to the Trustees
Report on Recent Visit to East Timor, August 2014

I make this Appeal immediately after my return from that country in which I spent most of August, travelling extensively, seeing all the projects in health and education which we are enabling or supporting at the present time. Another purpose of my visit on this occasion was to do what I could to set up a preparation programme in East Timor for the many young people who are now emigrating to Britain to find work here so as to provide for their impoverished families.

The tropical heat and humidity of East Timor makes its impact the moment you step out of the aircraft on to the tarmac, hitting you in the face!

The next thing that strikes you is the youthfulness of the population: there are just over a million people in all - and 50% of them are under 21 years of age, 50% of them being under 15! Walking about seems like being in a sea of youngsters. In fact there are 20,000 young people leaving school each year and job opportunities are very limited. This is why so many are now emigrating in the hope of employment abroad.

Another significant feature is the proliferation of mobile phones. Land line connections are very few indeed but satellite technology has enabled communication nation-wide and cell phones can be obtained very cheaply – second or third hand from Indonesia or China.

During the past two years electricity has been provided to the remotest villages by overhead pylons and masts along roadsides and tracks. This is a significant development with obvious benefits for everyone, including the many owners of mobile phones.

But regrettably it is the only evident improvement to infrastructure. The roads, where they exist at all, are in a dreadful condition, worse than ever! Travelling about from place to place takes many hours and is quite gruelling. 

Health care is still very inadequate and educational provision very poor – which is why the main focus of The Peter Trust projects is on these areas. 

I visited Klibur Domin, an institution established by the Ryder – Cheshire Foundation for the prevention and treatment of TB – a disease which is endemic in East Timor. We are currently supporting the establishment of a new programme of care of for patients in the township of Liquica to the west of the Capital city of Dili, being furthered by Target TB – another British charity. The Trust also funds similar work being undertaken in the town and district of Suai on the south coast under the auspices of the community of the Sisters of St Paul of Chartres.

This religious congregation also provides virtually the only medical care in the villages in that vicinity. I travelled with their mobile clinic to the most recent location for this service in the hamlet of Lalalua, way up in the hills, where the morning was spent in diagnosis, treatments, and the provision of medication.
The Peter Trust provides all the medicines for the programme in these distant villages, responding each week to the needs of several hundred people. The Trust also pays the wages of the Timorese nurses and the salaries of the Filipino doctor and the laboratory technician who accompany the Sisters to these outposts throughout the year.

Specialist care for children and young people with physical disabilities or learning difficulties is being provided with our help by the ALMA Sisters, another religious congregation, who specialise in this field of work.

I visited their hostel in Dili and had lunch with some of the children and families who had gathered for treatment and for guidance. The Peter Trust has supported these religious in their endeavours since the first two of them arrived in East Timor in 2004.There are now five Sisters and a number of lay helpers engaged in this work which has steadily expanded during the past decade.

I also spent time at the residential facility set up by Fr Adri Ola, a Dili diocesan priest, for the benefit of older young people with disability. The residents in this institution engage in shoe making and repair, offer tuition in information technology to able-bodied students, run a small shop for those living locally, make Holy Communion wafers for use in local churches and tend a small kitchen garden to help meet their own needs. Some of them also attend courses in further education and an appeal was made to the Peter Trust to assist in meeting the college fees.

In the hills to the south of Dili The Peter Trust has been sponsoring the secondary education of successive cohorts of teenagers whose families are the poorest among the poor in the local villages. I met with the current group of twenty young people benefiting from the provision of the well-managed Jesuit high school at Railaku. I heard very positive reports of their progress from the school Principal and their tutors, and an account of the further education being successfully undertaken by previous groups the Trust has sponsored.

In the same region, although at some distance, is the township of Ermera where The Peter Trust has been assisting with the Primary Education of about 140 youngsters in the parish school. During the past year our funding has enabled significant improvements to a section of the school premises, including the provision of better sanitation. I met all the children, and then spent time with the teaching staff. An appeal was made to us for help with material resources for teaching and learning – which are at present minimal. The recent arrival of electric power will now enable photocopying, and the installation and use of a computer – for the head teacher and his secretary! Such technology for the pupils is a dream for the future: for now it would be a blessing for them to have desks or tables to sit at, books and writing materials. We were asked to help provide these basics as well as continue to support the renovation of the building. A direct link between our local primary schools and theirs was discussed.

For a decade and more The Peter Trust has been helping with the care of orphans by supporting this work undertaken by the Dominican Sisters at the residential institution in Dili. During the last few years the Trust has also given significant help with the establishment of a large kitchen garden and with the raising of livestock on land at Hera, a location some 30 minutes drive east of the city. This project has reached a new phase of development as most of the older residents, now in their mid twenties, have recently moved out to live independently. A younger group of orphans aged 14-18 are currently being trained in the maintenance of the garden (which provides fruit and vegetables for the orphanage) and the rearing of pigs, chickens and ducks as a means of income generation as well as for their own nutrition. The Peter Trust has been asked to provide funds for this animal husbandry: purchase of livestock, fencing, feed, irrigation, etc.  

As you know, The Peter Trust has previously funded the building and furnishing of a boarding facility in the enclave of Oecussi to enable young people living in distant villages to attend high school. This project has been successfully completed and has now been in operation for several years. The priest who headed up that project, Fr Richard Pasang SVD, asked for our help to establish a similar hostel in Uatolari in the SE of East Timor and I was able to visit the nearly-completed premises. It is hoped that about twenty teenage girls will be able to move in before Christmas under the care of the religious community of Holy Spirit Sisters, a Timorese congregation whose convent is adjacent.  

There is much more that could be said about the current health and education provision in East Timor, and about the continuing need of our help – which is much appreciated. The tais [traditional woven items] here for you to see are tokens of the gratitude expressed by the recipients in each place I visited where the same message was repeated: without The Peter Trust we would not be able to do this work, which is needed so much.

The lasting memory I have is, that despite all the obvious and widespread impoverishment, and the evident daily struggle of the great majority of the people, there is an underlying pride and joy in being a free people – able to come and go around (and even beyond) their own country without restraint or fear - and a real gratitude for whatever we are able to give towards their welfare.                                                                                            
Fr Pat Smythe, September 2014.