Timor Week | Mr Terry Thompson

Timor Week

Beginning tomorrow, Terrace celebrates Timor Week. It is an opportunity to celebrate our 17-year friendship with our friends in Timor-Leste and acknowledge the wonderful attributes of a nation that has encountered both extreme trauma and the joy of independence after over 400 years of Portuguese colonial rule and 25 years of oppressive Indonesian occupation. Friday 20 May is Restoration of Independence Day, the day in 2002 that Timor-Leste became a nation again.

Since 2005, over 150 Terrace students and staff have travelled to the mountain villages to meet and work with the Timorese people on our Year 10 Immersions. This partnership has expanded into projects like our Kolega Café, which runs before school in the Campbell Centre, our 10 for Friends appeal supported by our Years 5 and 6 students during the Lenten season, and the excellent work of the Terrace Timor Network (TTN), which have provided support for a variety of projects in Timor from card sales, agricultural programs, medical clinics and most recently, the women's livelihood projects. It is also important to acknowledge the initiation of our friendship with Timor-Leste by Christian Brother and Terracian, Br Dan Courtney.

Sadly, COVID has prevented Terrace students from visiting Timor over the past couple of years. The following anecdotes are from Old Boys who have been fortunate to travel to this remarkable place.

One of the qualities that I really admired about the Timorese people was their happiness despite their minimal belongings. For the first couple of nights in East Timor, we slept in a building adjacent to a school, and often in the mornings, the school kids would join us in our game of football. Now, although most of these kids were playing barefoot on the rocky dirt, they were all so happy, grinning from ear to ear. And this quality of the Timorese people is something that I will never forget. (Lucas Hicks GT 2020)

It was very confronting to see the marginalisation of the communities in which they lived, as some villages were situated in the vast mountain ranges within Timor. But the compassion and humility of the locals surprised me as they assisted us in learning about the different cultures in the country and allowed us to stay and live within their villages as a part of their people. The immersion in Timor helped me realise not to take things for granted as these people lived a tough life, but still took the time to share their knowledge with us. Rather than surrounding themselves with material things like phones or money, they found happiness through family and friends and treasured the little things in their life. (Sacha Rapchuk GT 2021)

We hope to return to Timor with our Year 9 Immersion program in the next couple of years.