I felt really uncomfortable knowing that I would later buy myself a glass of wine for 6 U.S. Dollars without impacting my ability to eat food for the rest of the week. I felt financially
privileged in comparison to these people and the concept of privilege has always distressed me. The injustice of our situations aggrieved me greatly and I just didn’t feel tough enough to
distress a taxi driver on a hot, dirty road in a godforsaken landscape.
5.3.5 Conclusive comments on layers
In reflecting, I realise the sense of privilege I experienced could also be based in racism and prejudice. I have always grappled with how much I should give to equalise the place in the world of ‘the other’ in relation to my place in the world. I was lucky enough to be born in Australia, a prosperous, peaceful country. I have shelter, food and work. I have not done anything in particular to deserve this state of being over my fellow humans in impoverished or devastated countries. I do not feel more deserving than others, rather I feel undeservedly privileged. At this point in my cultural immersion I was acutely aware of privilege and I felt that privilege was slanted towards my educated, disciplined world. I wanted to know more about life in TL and more about the people whose life of hardship humbled me.
5.4
VIGNETTE 3 – LEAVING THE PAST BEHIND
5.4.1 Context
On the night of the event recorded in Vignette 2, my colleagues and I attended an alumni dinner, organised and hosted by Victoria University. At this point in our journey I was finding it difficult to be present at the dinner because of my chronic fatigue. Over a period of 18 years I had learned to manage this condition through withdrawal for rest at strategic intervals and I sensed this might be one of those occasions. I was strongly encouraged to attend the dinner and I did so reluctantly with a genuine concern for my health.
We took a taxi to a Chinese restaurant in a part of Dili I had not visited. The restaurant was on the ground floor of a building in a street lined with two storey buildings of basic construction. The restaurant was decorated as part Chinese and part Timorese, so it gave the feeling of being both familiar and fragile. Two university colleagues, with whom I had worked in Melbourne, were in Dili with a group of Bachelor of Education students from Melbourne undertaking their school internships in Dili. These two colleagues also attended the dinner. It was hot and for the first hour everyone stood around chatting and drinking.
5.4.2 Anecdote
I am finding being on my feet very difficult. Fatigue is gripping my chest and my legs feel weak. I scan the room for a kind looking face and engage a Timorese alumna in
conversation about her study and what this means to her in light of the declaration of independence in Timor in 2002. As she smiles broadly throughout our conversation, I feel the need to know how she can be happy when her country has been so devastated by invading forces. I ask if she lost family members during the invasion and massacre. Her smile disappears. I feel the blood rushing to my face as I recognise my intrusion into her
private world. She describes those members of her family whose lives have been sacrificed. Almost too quickly, I express admiration for her positive attitude and, as her smile returns, she explains there is no point in looking back, that she and her people must build a new, strong nation and to do this, they need the assistance of the Indonesians. Confusion overwhelms me as I recognise my own anger towards the invaders. Gripped by fatigue, tears well in my eyes. I do not understand. I move swiftly towards the exit for a breath of fresh air.
5.4.3 Emotional response and reflexivity
At first glance, this entry in my notes may not seem to be the intense sort of experience which might provoke an epiphany in general, but it had a very striking impact on me which remains with me still. I was in awe of the forgiveness inherent in the Timorese attitude to the loss of family, culture and wealth. I was humbled by the happiness and excitement I was feeling all around me that night and I guessed that it stemmed from the release from invasion and violence the Timorese were enjoying. The violence and loss they had experienced was in the past and, although they mourned for lost loved ones, they seemed not to place any blame as they looked to the future. It wasn’t until a few months later when I was reading in The Age online newspaper an article based on an interview with Ms Rosa Storelli, the displaced principal of Methodist Ladies College in Kew, Victoria, that I understood this attitude at a deeper level (Green, 2013). The author stated his admiration that Ms Storelli held no ill feeling to those who had moved against her to displace her from her position as a successful and much loved principal of a girls’ school. When asked how she could manage this, Ms Storelli remarked that if she harboured ill feeling it would affect her ability to move forward in her life. She stated that she wasn’t going to allow anybody else to dictate her future, so she had to shed any feeling she had about people who had influenced her past. I was deeply moved by this statement. In thinking about this, I recalled my conversation with the university alumna in the restaurant in Dili and experienced an epiphany of understanding so profound I realised that the Timorese were possibly more deeply spiritual and wiser than me. In terms of coping with cultural adversity, this was very humbling.
5.4.4 Strategies developed and concluding comments on layers
I learned from this experience that if I was to serve my students’ forward development, I had to adopt their attitude. What had happened in the past must stay in the past. Our task would be to work together towards the future development of the TVET system in TL. My position as the facilitator of their learning compelled me to address current and future issues. The past was theirs to deal with.
5.5
VIGNETTE 4 – UNDERSTANDING CULTURAL DIFFERENCE
5.5.1 Context
The following morning my travelling companions departed for an overnight stay in Baucau which is approximately a three hour drive east from Dili. I asked to be excused so I could spend a day
resting. On the second day of my companions’ visit to Baucau, my university colleagues with their B.Ed students invited me on a visit to a local primary and secondary school. This was on the Friday, my second last day in Dili. The schools we visited were government run schools in the poorest part of Dili. This visit was a huge insight into state school education in TL in contrast to what I was seeing in TVET. Earlier in the week one of my students had driven me to his newly developed TVET training facility just outside Dili where the new facilities revealed huge optimism for the growth of the TVET system in TL. I had been informed the TL Government was funding the growth of the TVET system as a priority over primary and secondary schooling.
The primary school was situated in an abandoned Indonesian army barracks which had been partially destroyed by the Indonesians as they withdrew from TL. Enough of the walls of the long rectangular buildings remained intact to support the roofs, but little remained to shelter the students from the heat and seasonal torrential rain. Spaces where windows and doorways had been remained open to the weather. Partially destroyed walls offered limited protection. Rooms were mostly bare apart from a blackboard at the front of the classroom. Students sat in groups on the concrete floor in some classrooms or those lucky enough to have a desk shared with their fellow students.