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
