TIMOR PART 1: Culture, Observations and Opinions

As part of my research on Timor-Leste, its needs and current aid programs, I interviewed the ever-insightful Michael O’Connell. His work in East Timor has been done through the Australian Alternative Energy Association. As an engineer, he’s been working on alternative energy solutions for developing nations (professionally and as a volunteer) and also now works in education and training, both locally, and in Timor.

This is the first half of the interview that I have transcribed from a recording. It covers what it’s like to live and work in Timor, observations of culture, and opinions on the way things are going. There is also commentary on why aid projects have either failed or succeeded. Part two to come shortly.

Q. First of all, tell us a bit about your background: Who you are and what you do.
A. My name is Michael O’Connell, I’m an engineer by profession, but I’ve been working in a lot of other jobs. I’ve also got some teaching qualifications of workplace training and assessment, so I do a lot of teaching. I’ve worked in the IT / Communications, building industry and renewable energy industry for over 25 years now, so I’ve been doing a lot of teaching in that time. Recently I’ve been doing a lot more volunteer work, some paid work and training work over in East Timor. That’s one of my passions – installing renewable energy systems in East Timor, and I’ve been trying to get into some more of that work.

Q. How many times have you been to Timor-Leste?
A. I’ve been to Timor every year since 2002, except for either 2009 or 2010 – I can’t remember which – and in some of those years I’ve been there twice. I’ve been there quite a few times doing different tasks: Sometimes it’s work related activities, sometimes it’s volunteer related. But every time it’s for the same NGO – the Alternative Energy Association.

Q. What is your opinion of Timor-Leste in general? Do you think they can be relieved of poverty relatively soon?
A. It depends what you mean by soon, look, it can be… but does that mean will it be? That’s another question and I think that there are lots of people working very, very hard to try to make that a reality, but I think they’re going to struggle on the short term, at least for the next five to ten years. This is because they’re still putting in place their entire administrative and political infrastructure. Until that’s all really padded down – and it’s getting better – they’re going to struggle to a certain extent.

Even though the government is a lot more stable and they’ve got a lot more processes in place (which is the reason why they’ve survived some recent internal problems, and it’s one of the reasons the recent elections went very well) they still don’t have a lot of those processes and things we take for granted like rule by law and separation of government from the legal process etc. And they’re working on things like corruption, for example, until they really get that down as well, and it becomes a way of life, they’re going to continue to struggle. Like quite a few other countries, developing countries and other countries that are only now putting some of those things in place, which separates and removes the opportunity for a high level of corruption, and a high level of nepotism. So once that’s done, there’s a much larger opportunity.

Also, it’s a matter of getting physical infrastructure in place and providing some sort of income or rather, purposeful employment, or purposeful engagement. So, not necessarily money related per se, but until they have an internal cohesive economy (whether that economy is based on a western capitalist model like we have, or something else, something their own), but once they have that working cohesive internal economy, then that will make a big, big difference in relation to where they sit on the poverty line.

Q. What is your opinion of the government’s push for nationalism compared to the strong held tribal cultural and spiritual beliefs? Which do you feel is the better direction for Timor, if there is one?
A. Look, there is that, and you’ll always get those tensions, you’re always going to get problems of tribalism versus nationalism, but I think there’s a very strong national interest, in as much as they struggled for 400 years under the Portuguese to get their own country back, and once the Portuguese handed their country back, they then struggled against Indonesia for another 25 years to get their country back, so, amongst many, there’s actually a very strong sense of nationalism. You might have smaller groups who are fighting against a national identity and want to maintain their own regional languages and things, but there’s no reason why that can’t be accommodated for. There’s no reason why you can’t have nationalism and regionalism at the same time, provided that’s done in a way which allows both to thrive. If you start trying to kill off one at the expense of the other, then the whole thing will fall apart. One of the nice things that seems to be happening in recent years (since 2006)with political problems and problems in the country, is that there is a focus on that nationalism side but allowing people to still maintain their regionalist attributes.

There are the two main national languages, which is Tetun, by far the most widespread of the languages, which in essence is the only true language of the country. And on the other hand, there’s Portuguese, a decision made – whether or not we agree with it, it’s irrelevant, that’s the language they government chose – but there is still some push internally within the country to change that again. You also get another diversity and strong unity of  language, particularly in the west and on the east coast, where there is a much stronger sense of regional independence and that has been fuelled in the past by the government being seen as “Dhili-centric” (where people thought there was a disproportional amount of aid centred on Dhili, and that’s the perception there). So they’re working on changing that perception.

And you’re going to have normal things with political parties – you know, ‘he said, she said’. The opposition will always be accusing the government of things, no matter who is in power. We even find that here. You know, all sides of government, to a certain extent lie, and lie about the others, but I don’t think there’s a really large issue within that any more (from what I’ve seen) and I think that any issues that are still there are being worked out and negotiated.

Q. You’ve noted that aside from setbacks, a lot has improved. What is your opinion of the many unsuccessful aid programs that have come in from the West? How they’ve tried to implement say – using an example given from a different speaker we’ve had in class: Aid organisations building fish markets 3 kilometers away from the shore, and there’s no way of using them because there’s no way of transporting the catch while keeping it fresh, and that kind of thing. Why do you think things like this happen so often?

A. Well, yeah, look, there have been a lot of failures, there’s no doubt about that. But there have been a lot of successes too. In almost every case where there have been failures, it’s been because of lack of understanding of local issues, and lack of communication, in almost every case. The other main cause of failures is the inability of particular organisations (or people within those organisations) to understand that they’re not there just for a photo opportunity – they need to be there for the long haul.

In those cases (and the fish markets are a really interesting one) there’s been other things happening in the background of that. There’s a lot of political things that happen too, so you know, in other words, aid gets done in response to political pressure (either from the host country or the Timorese government. So certainly the countries will have certain ideals that are a part of their own ideology, and consciously or unconsciously will attempt to impose those on other groups.

The two big things are usually lack of consultation and responding to a need – a proper need – because people respond to a need that they think is there, without affirming it. And also there’s this idea that they’re doing these people a favour. It doesn’t happen that much, but it does happen unconsciously as well as consciously, and it’s something you have to be very, very aware of. Some people go in there, for want of a better expression, as ‘The Great White Hope’. So they go in there, and they’ve got a photo op. They come in, do a big project, get photos taken, ‘Aren’t we wonderful’, and then they leave. And there’s no follow up. And there’s no ongoing support.

So, someone comes up with a project somewhere. It may be well thought out, it may not be. And they throw $100,000 at it, let’s say. And it’s a water project, and they spend all the money on the equipment. They bring it in, plonk it down on the ground, assemble it all, and do all the working, shake the peoples’ hand, and say “Here it is”, give them the key, and walk off. And there’s been very little training, very little (to no) ongoing support. Then something breaks down, or the people don’t really understand how it works, or it doesn’t quite fit in with their culture (because they haven’t got a culture where they store a lot of water, for example) so then, this facility – big or small – starts to have problems, or it’s not maintained properly because people don’t have an ownership of it, and they haven’t been trained well enough to make it run, they don’t have spare parts, the ongoing cost is hardly taken into account and now there’s no money left to keep it going. When things break down, they expect the local people to fix it with money they haven’t got. So, that’s the other part of it. Projects aren’t necessarily thought the whole way through.

All the projects that have worked very well are projects where a lot of consultation’s been done at the front, there’s really good communications about issues, there’s been money made available at the start of the project for ongoing maintenance for at least a period of time (whether it’s 6 months, a year, or 5 years, or 10, or longer) and there’s follow up done. Part of the budget has to be set aside for ongoing work and to do training. Not only once off training, but actually go back and review the work after six months or twelve months. And any good project manager or educator will tell you: If you’re going to run a training program, it’s not enough just to train people, say goodbye, and push them out the door. There has to be some follow up, particularly in a work-based training environment, or a vocational training environment. Unless there’s some follow-up to see how effective that’s been and to correct any problems there are and to go back and train on what looks like problems, you’re guaranteed to have a very low level of success, or even an outright failure. It’s as simple as that.

Communication, responding to a real need (other than an imagined need), and making sure that there is enough funding for proper follow up and review.

Q. While you were in East Timor, did you experience any fundamental change in the way you were thinking about the problems before and after you were there. If so, can you explain what you thought, how it changed, and what you think now?
A. Fundamental, I’m not sure. Because I already had a reasonable understanding about what kinds of things were required for me. This is because I’d had exposure to a lot of information before I went over there, and I’d already had a lot of friends who had been in that area and I was able to talk to them. I was already a little bit involved with Engineers Without Borders in Melbourne, I’ve been involved for a long time with the Alternative Energy Association, with rolling out technology into areas of high unemployment and lower socio-economic areas, assisting people with non-profit programs, so I already had some understanding of those things.

And there were other things too, little ‘in-country’ things, specific to Timor. There are probably things that are universal to any (and I don’t like using that term, but) undeveloped countries or countries that don’t have a lot of technical experience or high-technology experience. And most of it came back down to really understanding either the lack of basic information (so how far back towards the beginning of a training process do you have to go to give those people a basic knowledge). For example, if I were to tell someone in Australia how to do a certain thing, there are assumptions that I’d make. They understand electricity, they’ve used and have running water, they’ve got basic knowledge – they might not have technical knowledge, but they’ve got basic knowledge – they understand what I mean what I say about turning on lights or reading this or paying electricity bills, those sorts of things. You don’t have that context.

So the biggest thing and the thing that you learn that changes the way you do things is re-examining what people’s basic knowledge is, and what their basic understanding of how the world works is, because how the world works in Timor is not how the world works here,  especially in the villages. You don’t have things like running water; you don’t have things like electricity. You can’t go down to a shop to buy a spare part.

All of those sorts of things, and some are technical and some are cultural, and there’s other cultural things as well, remembering that the country is extremely strongly Catholic. I’ve come from a Catholic background, but I’m not particularly religious myself, but I have a lot of family members who are quite religious, and I forget. When I get there, it’s not in your face or anything, but it’s embedded deep in the psyche of everybody. The church and Catholicism is woven into the fabric of life. It’s not something that you ‘notice’ or ‘see’. It’s just there, all around you. And sometimes you have to make sure you take that into account. Little things catch you out, like, ‘You can’t work that day, because it’s a religious festival’ and it’s not going to be a religious festival you’ve ever heard of in Australia, because it’s obscure even for a Catholics diary. And the same thing is when I’ve dealt with Muslim communities in Australia, teaching and everything. The first couple of times I was thrown because they’d stop and say, ‘Hey, look, we’ve got to have a break’ and I didn’t even understand or think about what it was until someone pointed out to me ‘they’ve got to pray. It’s one of the five prayer times’, and then I thought ‘oh! of course’, but for them, it’s something that they don’t feel like they need to explain because it’s so a part of their psyche, and I was completely clueless because it’s not something I’ve experienced before. So until I found out it was because they had to pray, I didn’t understand why they kept taking breaks at the same time every day – because it didn’t suit me as part of the training. As soon as I understood that, it was fine. And the same thing happens with any religious thing or cultural thing. And there are those little cultural things.

And the other thing is that family is fundamental to everything that they do. Everything is based off relationships. So those are the things you learn, and it’s not really a fundamental shift, but it’s the way you have to pick that stuff up and be conscious of it and work not around it, but within it. There are some things that are easier to do over there, and some things that are harder to do, and the same with Australia compared to the US or England or Europe anywhere else.  So it’s more cultural than anything else.

And again, the training things, if you’re going to teach someone how to do something here, you’ll assume they know how to use a screwdriver, and you don’t need to teach them. There are lots of really interesting examples of this. Here’s a technical example: I’ve just had to change some of the training stuff that we’re doing because it suddenly occurred to me – and I don’t know why it didn’t occur to anyone else in the past – we were training up some technicians for solar power. We train them on everything, all the aspects, electricity, everything like that, and then, it wasn’t until this recent trip that someone made a comment that made me realise the one thing we hadn’t trained them on was how to change the battery inside the multimeter. The multimeter’s just a nice, simple piece of equipment used to measure voltage and current and everything about electricity, and we taught them how to use the meter and everything else. And we went up to one of the villages, and the guy there said his meter was broken. Quite often the leads break. So I said ‘okay, I’ll have a look at it’, and I did. He said ‘it hasn’t worked for ages’. And I noticed it was still switched on. What had happened that this guy didn’t know that if you just left it on, the battery would go flat, and, that he didn’t know there was a battery inside of it at all, and, he didn’t know how to change that battery. That’s when I discovered that the toolkits that we gave them didn’t contain a screwdriver the right size to remove the multimeter battery, or even a spare battery. And it’s something that’s just so obvious here, so taken for granted that you’ll have these sorts of things, you don’t even realise you have to do that sort of thing. That was an eye-opener, so I’ve taken that back and incorporated it into all of the training and the tools that we supply to all of the villages. You get caught out by little things like that. That’s the biggest change.

The other biggest change for people on a practical level is that you’re working seven hours away from the closest hardware store. If you have no experience about doing that, and you’ve worked mostly in cities and towns in Australia, if you need a spare part, you go down and buy it, unless it happens to be 11pm on a Sunday and the stores are closed. I got caught out again this year because there was a part that I took up to, after nine hours driving, over a day and a half (because we stopped overnight), the spare part that I’d brought with me in a hurry was broken, out of the box. I hadn’t tested it, and it was my fault. And I had my students with me, and I pointed out to them what an idiot I was. And they agreed.  So, it was a good learning experience, but had a bad outcome. I had spent well over $120 on car hire and petrol to get there, and then another $40 or $50 on top of that to not fix the fault that was there. So, now we’ve had to send someone else up there, remotely (which is fine, we can do that), in teaching a course which involved making sure they didn’t do that. Even though it was embarrassing for me (and I felt like a goose), it was a very good case study to present to the students. The three students that came with me took great delight in explaining what not to do, pointing to me as an example.

And the language issue of course is always a fun one to get around. Working through translators takes twice as long as anything else.

Q. So, we had a speaker, who is in a very similar position to you (but working in social sciences within RMIT), and he taught a Sustainable Development class relating to aid in foreign countries. He mentioned that a lot of students who went overseas for aid reasons started with this idea of ‘finding themselves’. He’d meet them a year later and their whole attitudes would have changed. They would say things like ‘why can’t the Timorese just do x’. Do you feel as though, in what you’ve seen, that our aid representatives often ‘get it wrong’ because they think about the problems on a personal level, rather than about the Timorese?
A. Certainly, people do that. I’ve met a few, and I know a few, and I’ve got a very good friend that does that very thing. He loves Timor, but he never stops complaining about how they can’t do things. And I keep asking ‘why are you here, then? Why do you keep coming back?’ And he always says, ‘Because I love them’. It’s a real odd position.  You hear of a lot of people over there like that. Not just in Timor, I’ve heard of career orientated people in aid organisations who complain about how ‘people won’t take responsibility’, how ‘they’re not pro-active’, how ‘they never learn’. I think there’s an element of being jaded in all that, but there are also a lot of other people who don’t think like that at all.

There are two ways people go about their perceptions of it, and most people fall inbetween. Some are tired and jaded, and have been there eight months out of a two or three year placement, and things are tough and hard, and they’ll have a bit of a whinge (and that’s fair enough) but there’s also those who have unabated optimism and enthusiasm and have nothing but high hopes and positive thoughts about the people, and think all they need is a helping hand and a bit of education and they’ll fly above the clouds and everything is wonderful. Again, the other kind are cynical and jaded and over it, and think ‘these people are complete dills, they’ll never amount to anything, the best we can do is manage them and stop them from shooting themselves in the foot because they’ll never amount to anything, and we’ll have to stay here and hold their hands because they’re incapable of looking after themselves’.

And both of those positions are absolute crap, basically, those positions. The reality is that there are always going to be – anywhere in the world – some people that really cannot function effectively without people around to help them. There are other people who are completely self-contained, extremely switched on and self-motivated all the time, and it doesn’t matter what environment they’re in, they’ll always make the best of it. And then there’s the other 99.99% of people, who are mums and dad, sons and daughters, brothers, sisters, lovers, just trying to get by. They’re good at some things, not so good at other things, they’ve got their own weaknesses and strengths and everything else. In short: They’re people. And the only way to deal with people is to treat them like people, and there are some things that some people are not good at.

There are a lot of people who wouldn’t know the first or last thing about a car, except that if you jump in and turn the wheel, you can drive it. If it breaks down, or something stops, they call somebody, because they have no idea (and no desire) to understand how a car works. I know other people who would be happy as to be elbow deep in grease, and know everything there is to know about their car and cars in general. That’s fine, that’s just how people are.

The key difference between some places in Australia and some places in Timor comes back to the cultural thing and the infrastructure thing. The Timorese, for hundreds of years, have been told what to do. They have a very hierarchical culture, so, it has been ingrained into them, generation after generation, after generation: you do as you’re told, get someone to take care of your problems and you don’t have to worry about looking after things. And so people think that they’re lazy because they don’t have any inclination to do anything about water or electricity, and they don’t seem to want to do stuff. In the middle of the day I don’t blame them – it gets hot and uncomfortable.

All you have to do is look at farmers and people in the villages growing their own crops – women in particular – working their bums off to look after the family, to bring in firewood, to cook, clean, everything else. They’re not lazy. They’re not lazy at all. They work really, really hard, and the things that are important to them, they work at. Things that are important to maintain, they maintain. There is also an overarching attitude of ‘if something breaks you fix it, if it works, you don’t bother mucking around with it’, and that works best for simple technologies. And farmers for example, will maintain tools and other things. It’s not that they’re lazy or good for nothing, or that they don’t have any desire for anything, it’s because they have a different cultural attitude that doesn’t gel well with some of our cultural attitudes. And they might look at us in the same way and say ‘well, why do you guys work so hard for so little reward, why do you do things you hate, when you don’t have to do those things’,  so, it cuts both ways. The people who say they’re lazy and shiftless and stupid and everything – they’re not stupid. They’re uninformed about how certain things work or need to be done, and they have a different cultural attitude about what needs to be done. That’s changing slightly and slowly as the country changes. There’s no shortage of people who want to do well, there’s no shortage of people that want to work hard and learn, and there’s no shortage of people who can and will do really well. There are still a lot of people that won’t. Their kids might, but they may not necessarily change.

It’s essentially about finding what’s important to them. If something’s not important to somebody, it doesn’t matter how many times you beat it into them, they won’t remember it, and they won’t do it. Why do some kids excel at maths and science, and some at the humanities? Other kids excel at trades, you know? Some people become world leaders, some don’t. Some people become wonderful parents, and some don’t. It’s because of the things that they’re interested in, things they’ve been trained to do, things they’ve got some natural talent for. And that’s really what it comes down to.

So even though (and I’m sorry for the long winded answer) some people say they’re useless and things like that, it’s usually a reflection of that person, rather than a reflection on the culture that they’re living in, or the misunderstanding of the culture that they’re in, and trying to impress their own views onto that culture rather than looking at the culture itself, what it’s about and how things can work in that culture. People that are happiest there and have the greatest contributions are ones that appreciate a mix of those things, because they actually look at the culture; see how it works within that. They also work to create change to make the community a better community. And that doesn’t mean reshaping the community, what it means is guiding the community and adding extra things and providing information in a culturally sensitive way, so that people can make their own decisions about how they want to live.

At the end of the day, I don’t think we should be trying to make them like us. What we should be doing is giving them the information and the tools they need to make the decision themselves about what they want to be. And in the end, that might not be what we think they want to be, but it doesn’t make it any less valid. In fact, it makes it more valid if they actually choose the lifestyle they want, based on the information we’re able to provide.

Q. Have you been to any other countries or developing areas?
A. I have been to Papa New Guinea, and I was working with Telstra, and I was doing the year 2000 project, and I went there to do some technical evaluations. I’ve also been to a few Aboriginal communities (off and on) which were also an interesting experience. As a tourist I’ve been to a few other countries. I’ve been to Thailand and some places in Europe, and that’s an interesting point. It’s not necessarily just going into developing countries with poverty and a lack of infrastructure that makes you wake up to a different world view. Going into any different culture, countries in Europe, or in the Middle East – and I was lucky enough to visit Egypt – any country that has a sufficiently different culture to your own is an eye-opening experience because you can then really truly understand (opposed to just seeing on television or something) that our culture is one of the very many possibilities, and it’s not the only one that works. That’s a view changing, paradigm changing event in itself.

And then going into a third world country, and seeing the poverty, and people still smile, with completely alien ways of doing things and looking at things in some ways, are still people. And, as much as it’s different, it’s the similarities that strike you. Coming back into a culture like ours, you have a much deeper appreciation for what we have. And that doesn’t mean that I can’t complain about it – there are some things about Australian culture that I have very strong opinions of, but by the same token, you can realise ‘how lucky are we’? To be in an environment where we have plenty, we don’t have to suffer, there’s no physical reason why we feel like we have to suffer, or that we’re outsiders, or that we have nothing, or no hope or anything like that. There are other cultural reasons for some people feeling like that way, and social reasons, but compared to other people on the planet, we are so well off.

Q. Did you feel safe in Timor?
A. I feel safer in Timor than I do in some places in Melbourne sometimes. There are some places in Melbourne I wouldn’t go at night – not many, but there are some. In Timor, I rarely felt at risk at all, ever.

Q. So even though you’re clearly a foreigner, you still felt some hospitality where you went?
A. Almost without exception. There are one or two situations where I felt, not uncomfortable or even unwelcome, just that they were indifferent. Or like if I fell over, they wouldn’t care. That’s the extent of it. Except for the last visit, now that the UN has left, there’s a different feeling. There’s a feeling of emptiness, for lack of a better word.  And I felt a little less comfortable on some of the streets at night. I’ve personally never experienced any problems at all. I have heard stories of other people having problems; there have been a few reports of volunteers being accosted, but in almost all of those cases there have been reports and people have been arrested, and then people are jailed or fined.

Q. So there is a standing law system?
A. Yeah, there is a standing law system, but there is a bit of lawlessness and corruption that goes through with it. But aside from that, in that last visit, I have never felt unsafe at all. There have only ever been one or two – not even hostile, but just belligerent, uninterested people – but those people had probably had bad experiences with aid workers or were jaded as individuals. Who knows, they could have just been having a bad day.

Almost without exception, the people there are warm, friendly, always pleased to see you. Particularly Australians have a very good repoire and are seen to be their very good friends. I think, because people have been over there for so long, and we have a bit more laid back attitude than some of the other imposing cultures, for whatever reason, Australians are well liked. It also depends on your personality, I mean; I’m a fairly gregarious, outgoing sort of guy, with an open disposition, so I tend to get along with people anyway. And over there, because I’m culturally aware (not more or less so than other people) and actively try not to cause offence and try to be culturally sensitive to the way people are, I think that stands me in good stead. Generally speaking, Australians are generally well regarded, and I’ve never had any problem, in fact, I’ve many, many friends over there now. And that’s why I’ve seen the differences of going into a place as a tourist and going in as a volunteer worker or being employed there. You actually get absorbed into the culture. You actually experience much more than if you just go there as a tourist taking happy snaps. Once you go in there and start working with the community, and you’re living and eating and working with local communities and people there, you have a much deeper experience and a much more rewarding and wider experience. And as a consequence you have a totally different experience than what you would have had just as a tourist just seeing some nice places and some poor people and whatever.

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