Feriadu Mak Rame

Hey Everybody,

It's been a little over a month since I posted and that's due to partially to procrastination and partially to the holidays. Regardless of that, I've been up to quite a bit that I will try to recap here.  Today we are filtering the wine we've been fermenting for the last 2 weeks, unfortunately, the jug in my host family's kitchen went a bit sour because they were apparently breaking the seal on the airlock and letting air enter which oxidized the wine a bit. This is a good lesson because it shows us how important it is to follow instructions when trying something new. Never the less it is definitely alcohol (even if half of it tastes vinegary... not that I'm salty or anything). They want it ready for tomorrow which it should be after we filter it in an hour or so.

The holiday season has been pretty busy with parties and celebrations galore. One of the parties was ruined for me though after waking up in the morning to them slowly beating a goat to death with a stick. That sound will stick with me for a while and honestly left me feeling nauseous for the day.  The holidays here are a bit of a letdown since they hype up the season a lot and then don't really do much to celebrate it (at least compared to American culture), besides long masses and formal parties.

Let's see... during Thanksgiving, I celebrated with the other volunteers, which was a blast and has me excited for MST at the end of January.  During that week in Dili, I also taught a class to the new TL'10's during one of their PST training sessions. I was also able to be there to see them all get assigned to their sites, which was an honor and reminded me a lot of when I went through the same process a year ago.  A week after that I had to revisit Dili and attended their swearing-in ceremony where the TL'9's presented our site projects and watched as the new group joined the Peace Corps Timor-Leste family! The ceremony was preceded the day before by a dinner with the director of the PC as well as the regional director of PC Asia. We have received 4 new volunteers in Baucau, which feels good to have after sending off the TL8 group.

That's mostly it, and honestly, I've been focusing a lot on personal growth as this year comes to an end. I'm working on my programming skills and attempting to provide what knowledge I do have to the people who are truly interested in learning it. Living here, it can be easy to only see people who don't want to work towards change, but when I really think about it there are plenty of people I know in the US who don't want to make the effort to develop themselves personally. What's different here is that I haven't grown up with these people.

So as my challenge for all of you who read this, I encourage you to look at yourself and those around you and see if there is something that is missing. Is there a new skill you want to learn? Maybe a loved one is having trouble getting motivated to study a new subject or overcome an issue that's been plaguing them for a while now. See what you might be able to help push them, or yourself, in the right direction. Nobodies perfect, which is why mindfulness is so powerful and gives us the ability to look at the things in our lives that have become normal and find a way to change them to benefit us. I'll make sure to also keep this challenge to heart myself whenever I'm at site, so I hope you can join me in this resolution.

I should be coding a timer so you can see where I am in my journey, so keep your eyes posted for that! Until then I wish all of you a Happy New Year and hope you had a Merry Christmas or any other holiday you might celebrate during this season of reflection. Also, I'll leave you with this!

Learning without reflection is a waste. Reflection without learning is dangerous.

~Confucius

Much Love,

~BW

P.S. It's Finally Raining!!!!

Let's, "Lao Hamutuk"

Hey Everyone,

Apologies for the late update, but honestly things have been pretty slow.  The compost project has been going pretty well and besides having a little cold for a while I've been fine as well. That's honestly a big thing I've found with Peace Corps service, sometimes things go slowly. However, that's also partially because of the nature of living in Timor-Leste.  Things start to slow down around this time of year and the rainy season starts to approach. After thinking about what to talk about in this post I decided to make it a post about changing expectations.

Coming here the first thing I was asked to help with was teaching English (I know big shocker, right).  However, after teaching my first few classes I had an issue with people not attending, to the point where I would literally not have a single person in the class, to the point where I eventually stopped the classes at my organization. After this, I discussed the idea of building a server for CDB with the idea of lessening the workload created from people having to manually type up all the reports into excel sheets stored locally on one computer.  While this is still a huge issue I want to tackle, I thought back to the English classes and made the call that I would like to determine a better way of implementing this server so as to have it thrive as opposed to dying immediately after I leave.

This was one of the big reasons for creating recycling and composting programs and this was a moment where I learned a very important lesson.  Just because something is good for everyone and even if it is made as easy as possible, that does not mean that people will help to make the change required for it to be successful.  The only reason the compost project is still running today is that I went around to everyone in my Org and asked them to sign up for a month to help. This was exactly what I wanted to avoid, but after a month of waiting for people to sign up to volunteer, I decided to take matters into my own hand.  I do however fully believe people signed up (at least most of them) mostly because I asked them, and as a Malae it would be rude for them to not say yes.

At this part of the post, you may be thinking, "Wait, did he just suggest I force people to volunteer?" What I haven't expressed yet is what I believe would be a better option, because even though I, "voluntold" them to help, it won't be a sustainable project unless they truly want to continue after I leave.  My hope with this experiment is that I will be able to show people the benefits of this comporting method first hand, mostly with experience and results that I was unable to physically show them in the class previous to building the pit.  Instead, I would like to have more projects that work like my experiment in making fruit wine. My fruit wine has been very popular with people and is something that some of my neighbors would like to learn how to make and sell. The reason it worked, at least in my opinion, is because I had the physical change in my hand and it wasn't a risk for them to try what I already did.

So now what? Well, I have a plan to help develop some better management techniques, but I have to find a way to make them as easy to start as making fruit wine. I wish I could tell you all how I plan to do this, but it's honestly something I'm still trying to plan out myself. What you can look forward to is reading about it in a future post where I can only hope that this attempt will go as well as I'd like it to.  At the end of the day changes need to be made hand in hand with the people we are working with, and that's why I titled this post as I did. I don't know the specifics, but whatever project I start in the future will be me and the stakeholders walking hand in hand. Unfortunately, that's where I leave you, but until then, I'll leave you with this!

“Mom always told me, "People will do what they want to do-always. If you don't like how someone is acting or what they are doing, no matter how much you scream yell or cry, you won't change them unless they really want to change.”

~Alison Caiola (The Seeds of a Daisy)

Much Love,

~BW

One Year Down, A Lifetime to Go

Hey Everyone!

So today is an exciting day, if you couldn't already tell from the day counter near the title, today is the 1 year anniversary of my group arriving in Timor-Leste! It's been a fairly good year and I'd say I've learned a lot of lessons on how to work with people and how to adapt to different cultural settings.  I've had a bit of trouble trying to decide what to do for this post, but after thinking about it for a little while I think I'll write a list below of the things I've learned from the last year. So here it goes:

1. Make friends with your group, and don't forget to foster those relationships.
• By this I mean make friends in your Peace corps group, but also make friends at site. It may seem obvious, but making friends is one of the best ways to fulfill goal 2 of the Peace Corps!
2. Have someone to confide in. 
• If you're facing drama or just riding that emotional rollercoaster, then you'll want a buddy to talk about it with.
3. Reach out to others. 
• Especially for the more introverted folks, it can be easy to expect others to start the conversation, but if everyone thought that then nothing would ever get done.
4. Take care of yourself mentally and emotionally.
• You are the only one who knows what you're feeling, so if you are starting to feel burnt out then don't feel afraid of taking time for yourself. Just make sure to plan that time out so it doesn't become an excuse to avoid others.
5. People lie, and it's not always because they are trying to be malicious or confusing.
• In many cultures, and even in Timor, you may have people agree with or express interest in a project, but when the time comes they may not actually want to (or may not be able to) participate in the work required to make it a reality. The best method I've found for finding the real interest in a project is to consult your Core Group, which transitions nicely into my next point.
6. Find your Core Group.
• I used to call it my Core 5, but then the group grew larger, which is great! The basic concept here is to find likeminded people who are motivated and passionate about change. The things I've found to be the same with all of the people in my core group are; they are willing to give counterpoints or straight up disagree with ideas, they will give reasons for their thoughts when asked, they have goals that they are passionate about, and they are critical thinkers (at least sometimes 😅). These people will be the gatekeepers between your new ideas and the rest of your community, so make sure they're on your side.
7. Do and don't see this as a job.
• This is a complicated one because even though as a PCV I'm expected to be professional and on the job 24/7, I'm also living with the people I serve. So, realize the scope of what you are doing and learn when it's important to be professional, but also when it's important to be real (even if the real you if a goofy meme lord like me 😆).
8. Ask for help.
• This suggestion isn't some sort of PSA, but more of a tool.  When you ask someone to help you, you make them feel important. What I've found is that as a volunteer it's easy to help others when they ask, but I've been hesitant to accept help from others because I don't want to be a bother. However, this kind of behavior will easily stunt relationships and make you seem more like a malae (foreigner), and less like a person who is here to help, so don't make that same mistake like I did.
9. Make mistakes, and make them fast.
• Now by this, I obviously don't mean for people to go around acting like a courtroom jester and make a fool of themselves, but instead, I mean to be humble when you are unsure of or don't know something. A great example is the compost project that I've been working on! I fell into the trap in number 5 of thinking that when people say they like an idea, that they also wanted to participate in the idea. Now that I've learned from that mistake I can grow from it. So use your mistakes to fuel your successes, and do it faster than I did.
10. Don't feel bad about saying no or setting boundaries.
• This one can be a little controversial because the first 3 months at site we are encouraged to say yes to most things, and this is great for creating better relationships and getting experiences under your belt. What I'm talking about though are things that you are truly against or feel uncomfortable with. In those circumstances, it is important to speak up and let others know that you feel uncomfortable.  A good example of this is when I was invited to my first outing to another community. Everything was going well except for the fact that they forgot to let me know that we were going to be sleeping on a concrete floor for a week. Now I would have been fine doing this for a day, but after the 4th day I was pretty tired of it and as a result, I was starting to let it affect my interactions with others. So I let me CP know that in the future I would like them to let me know a bit more about the sleeping arrangments so that I can at least bring a sleeping bag if we were going to sleep on the floor like that again. It wasn't anyone's fault, but now in the future, I have set that boundary already and will be able to appreciate those trips better because of the boundaries I set. Don't feel like you are being a burden by saying no to something that is truly uncomfortable, but at the same time be willing to say yes to things that are new.

Okay so this turned into more of a Top 10 than anything, but I still had fun writing all this out. If you are a PCV or RPCV and disagree or want to add something to this list (or future lists) let me know in the comments or WhatsApp me if you have that number. Otherwise, this has been a great year an I look forward to sharing the next year with you all. If you have any friends who are joining the Peace Corps or going to Timor-Leste in general share this blog with them. Also, let me know what you want to see in the next post and what kind of stuff you be interested in me writing about. So with that, I'll see you next time and until then I'll leave you with this. 

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind. 

~Nathaniel Hawthorne

P.S. A lot of the pictures below are from my trip to Lautem, so I hope you enjoy the "change" of scenery. 

Learning to Fly

Hey Everyone!

So the past few weeks have had highs and lows, and I feel like kinda summing them up here for y'all. I'm going to try and make it sound the way I feel about it now, and not at the moment. This is a good practice for when we feel frustrated with something in life and know we will fly off the handle if we address the issue at the moment. Time allows us to gain perspective, and while drastic actions at the moment may have a big impact, they can also cause more damage than good. As a Peace Corps Volunteer one of my main responsibilities is to do no harm, and sometimes it is important to take problems on the chin and deal with them in a more planned out and precise manner.

So starting off the Electronic Repair class I've started has been a lot of fun! So much so that in the first class I went over the 1 hour class time and continued teaching until it was almost dark. I love seeing people who are motivated and want to grow and share in the learning process. Thankfully the people in that class are super motivated to learn how to think critically about the repair process and I am so proud of their passion. On the other hand, I got a good old dose of reality after coming back from Dili a couple weeks ago and finding out that the kids in my English class skipped out on the course I had planned for them. I had taken the time to find someone to replace me for that week, and so the next week I had the person I asked to do the class teach the same lesson in front of me while I watched. It is extremely important to practice and one of the best ways to practice is to teach and share the knowledge you have. Unfortunately, bad habits that are learned from a young age are some of the hardest to change. I can only hope that they can start to understand the importance of practice and will take that into their teen and adult years.

More of a personal accomplishment was the recipes I tried recently! I have made cheese with my host family, and although not all of them ate it (there is a huge fear of trying new things from what I've experienced) my host niece loves it! Along with that, I have currently started to attempt winemaking! I'm super excited and hopeful that this recipe turns out well. Not only that, but my host father and brother want to learn the process (which I'm also trying out for the first time). I'll keep you all updated on it, but after seeing the amount of CO2 this thing is spitting out, I'm very hopeful.

Aside from that, the compost project has hit a little bit of a snag. A few weeks ago I put up a signup sheet for people to choose which month they want to help turn over and water the compost. Unfortunately, after checking about a minute ago approximately 0 people have signed up. This has been disheartening because of the amount of effort and planning we went through to get this project started. This is also paired with the discovery that even after the training we hosted there is a lot of litter that is around the office. This is after the literal blood, sweat and tears I've put into these projects, and had I known that nobody really wanted this then I could have saved time digging out the pit and cleaning up all the trash on the property. The unfortunate part is that I was told the opposite, I had a lot of excitement and support for the project, just to have it stagnate because nobody wants to contribute. These are the moments where ignorance would make understanding this issue a lot easier because I could just tell myself that the people here like living in filth. For critical thinkers though, this kind of assumption feels empty because it would be easy and obviously false. So here I am wondering where I went wrong and trying to reevaluate my projects before I sink the same amount of effort into them just to have little to no participation.

I know there is a reason for this, and I suppose my next post will address that (hopefully). However, I think this is a good lesson for us all to share because even though I have rarely experienced this issue before, Expectations are always a struggle to manage when reality rears its ugly head. Things often seem a lot better or a lot worse in our minds because we are wired for extremes. Just like when our ancestors had to be wary of the tiger in the brush, or find the motivation to make discoveries we too are programmed to hype up the highs and exaggerate the lows. I am no exception to this rule, so the way I will handle this will be flawed and misconstrued in some way. The biggest difference I see in people are the ones who take their failures and learn from them so that they can tweak their future attempts and those that use their failures to reinforce their fear to attempt something again. I know which option I try to take, and I only hope that I can use my opportunities to fail in order to shine hope on those that are instead afraid of their mistakes. So with that being said, I'll talk to you soon, and until then I'll leave you with this.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently. 

~Henry Ford

Much Love,

~BW

Cannibal Chicken!!

Hey Everyone,

So the past few weeks have had a lot of things happen, thereby making it difficult to choose which photos to include. I have more photos then what are below, but I chose these because I think they tell the story pretty well. On top of that, I would like to thank all the people who follow me here, this blog is not only a tool for future PCV's to use but also this platform allows me to keep track of my journey here. So thank you again, and let's move onto what happened in the last couple of weeks.

The first picture is of a church near to a potential future site here in Baucau that was really interesting to visit. The school is requesting an education volunteer and have a lot of opportunities for that volunteer to build capacity and help make some real improvements. The thing about any community is that any action needs to be 50% on the volunteer and 50% on the community members involved. However, often change can only get started with a big push from the volunteer, kinda like how a candle needs to be lit before it can provide light. I had to do most of the work when lighting the candle, but after it was lit the candle kept on burning. In this way, many projects start around 80/20 and then slowly make their way to the community taking 100% initiative. This is, of course, dependant on the project and the willingness of the community members to try something new.

That juxtaposes easily into my update on the compost project from the last post! The compost is going strong and making a really nice amount of heat and progress which is visible in the 2nd and 3rd photos. The pile has shrunk by a large margin and therefore has more room for new material to be added. I have put a pause on some of my other projects for the last few weeks to make sure that the compost pit will be able to have beautiful soil by the time we start planting again in the research garden. In a couple weeks, I plan on visiting Dili and will be visiting an agricultural store the purportedly has a compost thermometer and some other cool tools that I hope to use to make this project successful!

However, projects here require participation from the people in the office, and so this initiative depends solely on how well my coworkers adapt to this new responsibility in their office. This is best seen in the other part of this initiative to clean up the streets of Baucau, the recycling project. Operation "Usa Fali" is our attempt to get the office to recycle their trash as opposed to just tossing it on the ground, which seems to be the norm for many Timorese. In the photos below you can see some of the trash that we were able to clean up from the ground, but what really gave me hope for this project is when the office was willing to sort the trash with me! We have also begun construction of 4 garbage bins which will be for plastic, glass, metal, and paper. The hard part of recycling here in East Timor is that there isn't anywhere to bring a lot of this trash for it to be processed, and so it rests on our shoulders to find a way to reuse and correctly dispose of the unnatural waste we create. Thankfully for a lot of this waste, we can use our compost pit to create new soil for the corn we will be planting in a few months. I hope that people will be more invested in this process once they see the difference that making your own fertilizer can make have on the cost and yield of farming.

Lastly, are a few cool things that happened apart from my projects here.  I went on a hike with the other PCV's in Baucau to Foho Ariana and took some amazing photos that were honestly breathtaking. We had a blast, and it makes me excited to see the new group come in, even though I'm also sad to see my friends in this group leave. I wish you all the best of luck and look forward to seeing the majority of you at creativity night!! Apart from that sweet trip, I also met a chicken who likes to eat chicken. Although I appreciate his taste in meats, I probably won't be associating with him in the future due to the whole cannibal thing. I suppose that's pretty much it, so I look forward to seeing you all next week and until then I'll leave you with this!

Life begins at the end of your comfort zone. 

~Neale Donald Walsch

Much Love,

~BW

Compost Haven

Hello Everyone!

So this last week has been pretty eventful for a few different reasons!  Fist off my host family and I went to the beach and had a great time.  With the sand between our toes and the feeling of the tide as it slowly abates the land we walk upon, made the day a holistic practice in the balance between work and relaxation. The thing that burns out a lot of people is getting to wrapped up in work and being unable to relax, which in turn lessons our ability to be effective and resilient when handling the ebbs and flows of life.  We finished the trip to the beach by doing a little fishing and having our lunch on the beach, it was an awesome trip and honestly much needed. The pictures below show some of the awesome views that we were able to see, and even though you weren't there, I hope they can help your day go smoothly.

The other pictures down below are about from the newest project I've been working on. You've probably already deduced the project, but I'll start form the beginning anyways to catch you all up.  So I'm walking out the  of the office and I look around at all the garbage that is just littered on the ground. You see, because Timor-leste doesn't yet have a waste management system in place, there is a lot of negative ways that trash is dealt with. Most people will burn their trash, along with most anything else that is thrown away, and often times here in the Villa people don't tend to bring their trash back home with them. So most times trash is just thrown on the streets and stays there because very few people want to deal with it.

I began thinking of how we could deal with the waste in the office and hopefully make a new model for waste management around the community so I proposed the idea of cleaning up the trash in the office to my counter part who loved the idea. along with this we decided to start a compost pit to take care of all the biodegradable things that would often be wither burned of littered. With that we set out to clean up the office, and after 2 days and 6-7 bags of trash later we finally have a relatively clean office, and although changing the habit of littering will take a while, I believe we can make a difference!  Along with that the compost pit was a fun way of not only getting everyone involved in recycling, but will also serve as a great tool for the communities that CDB works with. Below is a video that shows a lot of the recent progress we have made on the compost area and notes the places people will be able to leave their green and brown waste.

The idea for this pit came from the RED Gardens you tube channel, so shout out to them for inspiring me to start this project.  The main issue is getting people to adopt a foreign idea, so I am hoping that the simple rule of, "Anything that was Previously Alive" (Buat ruma uluk moris) will allow people to have an easier time of adopting this method. Along with that I have been talking to a lot of co-workers about the belief that, since God blessed us with this land, we in turn should respect it and treat it life the gift it is.  This I feel has been effective in getting people to understand where I'm coming from when I talk about how important recycling and composting is to keeping Timor-leste the beautiful island paradise it can be!

So yeah, things have been exciting and I look forward to getting back to building the server! However, seeing the rebirth that comes from the compost pit in the form of nutrient rich soil will be a good driver for the days when I question how much I'm really doing here. Like I said at the beginning of this post, having that balance of work and relaxation if important so as not to get burnt out. So for any prospective Peace Corps volunteers I have this advice, look after yourself and in turn you will be better able to look after those you care about. I've been blathering on enough, so I'll just leave you with this until next time!

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence. ~Helen Keller

Much love,

~BW

P.S. The last picture is of a huge spider we saw at Amalia's in Baucau, the thing was bigger than my hand!! It's called a Giant Golden Orb Weaver, so click the link if you're not afraid of huge spiders!!

Getting Things Organized

Hey Everyone,

So it's been a couple weeks since my last post and for the most part not much has changed. I was able to get the VRF, AVS and Living Allowance Survey done which was a big relief. I'm still working on the server of course since it will be taking a lot of time to code alone. However I have recently been working with one of my coworkers on learning how to upkeep the server when I'm gone. This has been a lot of fun because within my lessons with him we are covering the basics of HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript and SQL (using MySQL). Like most things the amount to which we practice alone will determine the speed to which we pick up these skills. So to help facilitate his practice I've turned him onto a few tools including one I would recommend for anyone who is new to and interested in coding, and that is FreeCodeCamp. Not only is the learning hands on, but it also allows you the opportunity to become certified in the language your trying to learn for the extremely high price of $0.00. So obviously I recommend you check that out if you have some free time, even if you're only mildly interested in programming.

The pictures below were from yesterday when we celebrated the 20th anniversary of Caritas Diocesana de Baucau! We had mass in the morning (Wooo!), and then had a festa in the afternoon with plenty of dancing, drinking (oituan deit) and good times.  Having that time of reflection and celebration was just the thing to get everyone motivated and proud of their work, so props to my counterpart for that idea!

Beyond that I've been trying to take the initiative to organize my life here a little better. I've been setting goals and logging the work I do using ToDoList and tracking my spending (because Dili has caused me to go a little low on funds) using GnuCash. Trying to stay organized and held accountable to my own standards is easy to become lackadaisical about in this climate, but I know making the changes I plan on doing will all help me in the future and will hopefully make my stay here all that more enjoyable!

So yeah, things are going well! I will be relieved when everything has been written down, and hopefully that'll clear up the path for my future activities. The stress is real sometimes, but it's good to have a little stress, because it pushes me to move forward. It also doesn't allow me to feel comfortable with where I'm at which is a good lesson that resonated with me from the Brian series when I finished that a month ago. Food always tastes better when you're a little hungry, and things that require hard work pay back seven fold in the feeling of accomplishment that comes from achievement. So if you didn't understand any of the acronyms above or help a question about life here leave a comment below, and if I haven't talked to you for a while, hit me up! I have to go watch this dank Meme playlist. So until next time I'll leave you with this.

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us. 

~John Dryden

Much Love,

~BW