ReFLeCtiOnS

Reflections for the YEP trip to East Timor
PS: Ming, please give me your feedback on any editing that needs to be done k :) thanx :)

When I first joined the team to embark on this service learning project to East Timor, I was actually quite apprehensive, I had many doubts on the safety of the country and the success of the project. However, looking back on the expedition, I realized that many of my fears were quite uncalled for. The local community there were generally friendly and helpful. Our host, Forum Communicacoes Juventude ( FCJ ) was also very supportive as well. However during our stay there, I discovered that the staff are rather tight-lipped about what FCJ does for the street kids and also about their personal life. Guess its part of their culture?
East Timor is a relatively new country and has been through tremendous hardship and turmoil before finally gaining its independence in the year 2002 after some 24 years under Indonesian rule. I believe that this has resulted in a generally hardy and patriotic community of people who have a very strong sense of national and religious pride. The hardship that they faced is evident in the number of graves in the Santa Cruz cemetery where a massacre had occurred on the 12th of Nov 1999. Our team had the opportunity to visit the cemetery and I was shocked at the number of young lives that had been taken and the vast number of infant graves there, some of the infants were as young as 3 months old when they passed away. Due to a high infant mortality rate ? or had most of them been killed on that fateful day?
Our team’s objective in embarking on this trip was to teach the children at FCJ some basic English language and IT skills and not forgetting, that the team and its member will take back some invaluable life skills and experiences. In terms of helping the home shelter ( FCJ ), I believe that the team has put in a lot of effort and that most of it has indeed paid of. From what I’ve heard from our host there a few weeks after our return, they have taken the initiative to set up a internet café to hopefully get some revenue to further improve the home shelter’s facilities and to help it be more self sustaining. Also, many team members, including myself, have forged some strong friendship ties with the staff and children at FCJ and wish to go back for a short visit. This, I personally feel is a rather great achievement in itself. Many of us, I believe, have come back as stronger, more independent individuals and with a new perspective on life. For my part, having grown up in Singapore, I led a very sheltered and comfortable life. Having gone to East Timor, I realized that I have come to take many things for granted for example, my family and friends and the material comforts that I have been lucky enough to afford. Many of the local people there have seen their loved ones killed before their eyes and watched their homes burn to ruins. Many of the children at the home shelter also had been forced to go out to the streets to work and have gone hungry for many a day.
Despite the many setbacks that the team has faced, for example, a few of the team members were unfortunate enough to contract dengue fever and the delay of the shipment, our team, under the constant guidance and encouragement of our leader and fellow teammates, managed to overcome these setbacks and came out all the stronger.