TIMOR TERTIANSHIP TALES
Fr/Dr Alan Peter was sent to Timor to further his Jesuit education. How did he cope? ...Read on
It is four o’clock in the morning when hundreds of roosters signal dawn’s advent across the Island of East Timor. Their crowing provides a constant reminder that I too must rise, carefully raise the mosquito net, take a cold shower and prepare for chapel. I am not alone coming into the chapel at six o’clock in the morning. Seventy minor seminarians, all aged 17 and upwards, silently take their allotted seats. Morning meditation followed by morning prayer and then Mass in Tetum (the local language) completes a one and a half hour’s spiritual start to
the day.
I am in Timor Leste for one month on a tertianship experiment (a placement during a Jesuit training programme). The Jesuit community is full, as there are three visiting American scholastics who are on a six-week placement to experience something of the poverty of this area. There are also three Jesuits in the Minor Seminary, and I make up the fourth.
Staff and students divide to enter different dining rooms. Breakfast consists of fried rice and warm black tea for the seminarians. The staff get a small block of cheese to share, bread, filtered coffee and a small helping of egg. I struggle with this dichotomy and wonder how much is due to financial constraint (students pay 10$ US a month for board and lodging) or due to the priest’s role in society which occupies the place of the now defunct local chieftain-king.
On my first day I gather my stethoscope and ask for a supply of Holy Oils. My superior has consulted with the bishop and local chaplain. The bishop and chaplain feel that I should not act as a priest inside the hospital boundary, but only as a doctor. Outside the hospital ‘doctor-priest OK’. I accept this cross often offered by those inside Church circles: it has ‘either-or’ carved on it. I know though that in hospital, doctors beat priests to the patients - especially the sickest ones - just as priests get priority to penitents in Church. After all, this is only my first day, so I wave the Holy Oils goodbye.
My bicycle ride to the National Hospital where I work takes ten minutes. There are no traffic lights on this Island and road signs can be counted with two hands. The roads have neither ‘hard shoulders or white lines’, but provide multiple encounters with pigs, piglets, hens and chickens, adults and small children. Large four-by-four vehicles from various United Nations Organisations are the most roadworthy of the vehicles and account for about thirty percent of traffic. They too weave their way on these roads and I sometimes wonder if I will reach the hospital as a doctor or patient.
The National Hospital functions as best it can with its limited resources and facilities. Laboratory investigations are below the premium requirement, so this leaves us guessing about diagnoses in some patients. Patients’ family members must contribute to the blood bank’s supply if their loved one is to receive blood. I have one young man completely bled-out by a peptic ulcer. Being accompanied this day by a Jesuit scholastic (Martin Lopez) and a visiting seminarian to the ward. I persuade them both to donate blood with me, so that we can get three units from the blood bank and save this man’s life. His family try to find suitable donors amongst the police and the army, since only his father has his blood group. I am ‘B’, the Jesuit scholastic and seminarian are ‘A’ and my patient is ‘O’. The blood bank has no ‘O’ in stock. He eventually gets blood and is on the mend.
Patients’ relatives have to sleep on the hospital floor to help with feeding and nursing. Many patients are paraplegics from tuberculosis of the spine, yet I never once encountered bed-sores, such was their family’s meticulous care. Two of my patients have overwhelming tuberculosis, both weigh just above 25kg for adult men. I ask the families to call for the chaplain and explain the serious nature of the illness. Both die without the sacraments two days later. I will leave the hospital in a month’s time without ever meeting the chaplain.
Unemployment is at sixty eight percent and the country has no infrastructure. Five hundred years of Portuguese occupation left this island under-developed, with its marble, coffee and sandal wood carried off to other shores. Twenty four years of Indonesian occupation allowed some development, but their brutal assault on the East Timorese in armed conflict left one-in-ten buildings destroyed and thousands of lives lost. Bodies were thrown into the forest to decompose.
Twenty three Jesuits labour in East Timor, with seven novices from Singapore. The Society runs a high school and helps the Minor Seminary. Jesuits established an audiovisual centre which is producing a documentary on the Island’s history in twenty four episodes for national television. In the village of Suai, Fr Yamada SJ, together with community leaders, builds pit latrines, water irrigation systems, and runs an animal husbandry project providing much needed protein. I never get to see an overweight Timorese.
The sun heads for the sea-horizon, as the day wears on, and the daily ritual against malaria-carrying mosquitos kicks in after the second cold shower of the day. If the young men don’t gather three times a week at the grotto for the rosary then they are in the chapel for vespers followed by supper, which universally consists of rice and a vegetable broth. I worry about their protein intake which, over a week, consists of four protein meals in twenty one. Fr Rector is grateful for this knowledge and promises to speak to ‘Sister’.
With great sorrow I leave this island after one month’s insertion. The peace, joy, love and open heartedness of these people, inured to poverty and struggle, convinced me that too much money in our lives is the great under-diagnosed disease that hospitals cannot cure. They don’t have palm tops, lap tops, designer clothing, television and game stations that isolate so many of our young from each other. Yet greater joy and cohesion amongst young adults have I seldom encountered.
The seminarians need a new water tank. Water supply is always precious, and often the taps are dry. I investigated the cost and Fr Rector tells me that it would be just over £2,500.
After wanting my signature on their shirts and prayer books, fourteen seminarians are given permission to accompany me to the airport. I am given an East Timorese shawl and cassette with songs and well wishes recorded by the men over the last few days. Mariano de Deus (a seminarian) says to me: ‘Father when you are gone, don’t forget me in your heart’. This letter to Jesuits and Friends is a reminder of just that.
I am in Timor Leste for one month on a tertianship experiment (a placement during a Jesuit training programme). The Jesuit community is full, as there are three visiting American scholastics who are on a six-week placement to experience something of the poverty of this area. There are also three Jesuits in the Minor Seminary, and I make up the fourth.
Staff and students divide to enter different dining rooms. Breakfast consists of fried rice and warm black tea for the seminarians. The staff get a small block of cheese to share, bread, filtered coffee and a small helping of egg. I struggle with this dichotomy and wonder how much is due to financial constraint (students pay 10$ US a month for board and lodging) or due to the priest’s role in society which occupies the place of the now defunct local chieftain-king.
On my first day I gather my stethoscope and ask for a supply of Holy Oils. My superior has consulted with the bishop and local chaplain. The bishop and chaplain feel that I should not act as a priest inside the hospital boundary, but only as a doctor. Outside the hospital ‘doctor-priest OK’. I accept this cross often offered by those inside Church circles: it has ‘either-or’ carved on it. I know though that in hospital, doctors beat priests to the patients - especially the sickest ones - just as priests get priority to penitents in Church. After all, this is only my first day, so I wave the Holy Oils goodbye.
My bicycle ride to the National Hospital where I work takes ten minutes. There are no traffic lights on this Island and road signs can be counted with two hands. The roads have neither ‘hard shoulders or white lines’, but provide multiple encounters with pigs, piglets, hens and chickens, adults and small children. Large four-by-four vehicles from various United Nations Organisations are the most roadworthy of the vehicles and account for about thirty percent of traffic. They too weave their way on these roads and I sometimes wonder if I will reach the hospital as a doctor or patient.
The National Hospital functions as best it can with its limited resources and facilities. Laboratory investigations are below the premium requirement, so this leaves us guessing about diagnoses in some patients. Patients’ family members must contribute to the blood bank’s supply if their loved one is to receive blood. I have one young man completely bled-out by a peptic ulcer. Being accompanied this day by a Jesuit scholastic (Martin Lopez) and a visiting seminarian to the ward. I persuade them both to donate blood with me, so that we can get three units from the blood bank and save this man’s life. His family try to find suitable donors amongst the police and the army, since only his father has his blood group. I am ‘B’, the Jesuit scholastic and seminarian are ‘A’ and my patient is ‘O’. The blood bank has no ‘O’ in stock. He eventually gets blood and is on the mend.
Patients’ relatives have to sleep on the hospital floor to help with feeding and nursing. Many patients are paraplegics from tuberculosis of the spine, yet I never once encountered bed-sores, such was their family’s meticulous care. Two of my patients have overwhelming tuberculosis, both weigh just above 25kg for adult men. I ask the families to call for the chaplain and explain the serious nature of the illness. Both die without the sacraments two days later. I will leave the hospital in a month’s time without ever meeting the chaplain.
Unemployment is at sixty eight percent and the country has no infrastructure. Five hundred years of Portuguese occupation left this island under-developed, with its marble, coffee and sandal wood carried off to other shores. Twenty four years of Indonesian occupation allowed some development, but their brutal assault on the East Timorese in armed conflict left one-in-ten buildings destroyed and thousands of lives lost. Bodies were thrown into the forest to decompose.
Twenty three Jesuits labour in East Timor, with seven novices from Singapore. The Society runs a high school and helps the Minor Seminary. Jesuits established an audiovisual centre which is producing a documentary on the Island’s history in twenty four episodes for national television. In the village of Suai, Fr Yamada SJ, together with community leaders, builds pit latrines, water irrigation systems, and runs an animal husbandry project providing much needed protein. I never get to see an overweight Timorese.
The sun heads for the sea-horizon, as the day wears on, and the daily ritual against malaria-carrying mosquitos kicks in after the second cold shower of the day. If the young men don’t gather three times a week at the grotto for the rosary then they are in the chapel for vespers followed by supper, which universally consists of rice and a vegetable broth. I worry about their protein intake which, over a week, consists of four protein meals in twenty one. Fr Rector is grateful for this knowledge and promises to speak to ‘Sister’.
With great sorrow I leave this island after one month’s insertion. The peace, joy, love and open heartedness of these people, inured to poverty and struggle, convinced me that too much money in our lives is the great under-diagnosed disease that hospitals cannot cure. They don’t have palm tops, lap tops, designer clothing, television and game stations that isolate so many of our young from each other. Yet greater joy and cohesion amongst young adults have I seldom encountered.
The seminarians need a new water tank. Water supply is always precious, and often the taps are dry. I investigated the cost and Fr Rector tells me that it would be just over £2,500.
After wanting my signature on their shirts and prayer books, fourteen seminarians are given permission to accompany me to the airport. I am given an East Timorese shawl and cassette with songs and well wishes recorded by the men over the last few days. Mariano de Deus (a seminarian) says to me: ‘Father when you are gone, don’t forget me in your heart’. This letter to Jesuits and Friends is a reminder of just that.