To Lospalos and Back

To Lospalos and back

We left the comforts of the big city behind and started our seven-hour journey on the dusty, potholed road. Two cars to transport us to Lospalos, a village in Lautem where Gillian Howell was completing her Asia Link residency, engaging with the local community in music making. Being a passenger in a car chauffered by what was described to us as Timor’s best driver, I still felt that I should have taken out additional life insurance that covers roads that are known to collapse without prior warning, get washed away by the ongoing wet season (direct impacts of global warming) or disappear into abysses where entire sections of road have fallen into river beds.

A coffee stop in Baucau along the way, a chance to practice my Tetun with the driver (who would also slip in some naughty words every now and then and would giggle when I would repeat them) and an mp3 player consisting of Jimi Hendrix, Manu Chau, Tinarawen, Paul Simon and local Timorese music led to the hours flying by. We arrived at Hotel Roberto Carlos as dusk was setting in and made our way to Gillian’s where we finished the day by sharing a meal Timorese style, jamming on the verandah and folk dancing to some Macedonian tunes that I taught the group. Highlights included a motorbike ride through Lospalos to find the village guitar, then trying to balance the guitar on the bike by sandwiching it between the driver and myself.

On Sunday we officially started our involvement in taking a part in the cultural life of Lospalos by travelling out to a convent where children between the ages of 3 and 20 gather to participate in afternoon activities. We ran a workshop led by Gillian where the participants were encouraged to recreate a traditional story using music and body percussion. This turned into a jam with some of the instruments that we had brought with us including kokolos- pieces of bamboo with a long narrow slit on one side that have varying degrees of resonance and shakers made out of recycled plastics and rock. These instruments were made using local materials by Gillian’s partner Tony. The children could easily recreate all instruments with materials in the village. The two-hour workshop was followed by a soccer game with the kids.

The day’s activity on Monday was to have a jam on Gillian’s verandah and see how many children that heard the music would stop by and join in. School in Lospalos ends at 1pm and a lot of the population have very little activity to keep occupied with so the streets are full of people sitting and observing the village’s activities. Due to the lack of things for young people to do, the youth engage in martial arts fighting groups and cause trouble in the community. One of the reasons for creating an arts centre in Lospalos (the goal of the organization that is hosting our stay in Timor, Many Hands International) is to give the youth an option to spend their time creatively and continue the culture and tradition that is being lost due to the west’s influence. About 30-50 children came and went during the two hours that we jammed. We taught them the chord progressions of Forever Young, a song that was around a couple of decades ago that the children all hear on Timorese radio. Gillian had translated the verses into the local dialect of fataluku so we essentially had arranged this pop song in one of the many Timorese languages using the instruments at hand including guitars, chime bars (that were donated by a percussion shop based in Sydney), kokolos (the bamboo percussion instruments) and shakers. Rachel, Doug and myself got out our instruments and played along with the group. Most kids had never seen the instruments before; some kids had never seen young foreigners either. We were often referred to as Malae- the word for foreigner in Tetun. It became quite common when walking down the street to hear a child shouting Malae!Malae!Malae! and waving.

By Tuesday, we were starting to recognize the faces of the children we had been playing music with and some of the older members of the community. Everywhere we walked we would be greeted and asked where we were going; often we would have our instruments on our backs and children would follow us to see what kind of fun we were getting up to when we took these shiny objects from the cases. We all got quite used to using mosquito repellant as our cologne of choice. Daily, there would be 7 new cases of malaria reported. To our relief, only two cases of dengue fever were reported in 2010 but we weren’t prepared to risk it.

We made our way to English class were we held a song writing workshop. There are several English classes a week, but the students don’t have anyone to practice with so we encouraged the students to converse with us as much as they could. The song writing process was quite effective.  We brainstormed our favourite English words, structured these into sentences then structured the sentences into two verses and a chorus. My group was assigned the chorus. I had the help of Gillian’s partner Tony who’s funk guitar skills are impeccable. We created a catchy riff, then a way to say the sentences in a rhythm that would work with the riff. By the conclusion of the workshop we had created a complete song to rival any on the top 40.

On the walk home, Doug and myself stopped off at the boys’ community centre that acts as a shelter for the boys in the community. They have set up a printing service and keep themselves busy with this business endeavor. We were told there were some pretty talented guitarists and singers that hung out there. We were offered a cup of the sweetest coffee I have ever tasted then had a jam with the boys. It made me aware just how much music can transcend language as a form of cross-cultural communication. The jam lasted for 45 minutes where we were directly involved in a dialogue with a group of non-English speakers. Pretty awesome. After the jam we wandered down the road where one of the village’s crafts men was making reed instruments/whistles out of young coconut leaves.  We later found out that these were duck callers, named for their distinctive sound.

On Wednesday I separated from the group and travelled with Deb (founder of Melbourne based organization ETWA), driver and new friend Nono and a young man interested in Deb’s work Sipri. Deb has started a women’s weaving co-op to keep the tradition alive in the high country and areas surrounding the locale of Ilioma. During Deb’s time in Timor Leste, she has also co-ordinated the building of a centre dedicated to the women’s weaving co-op in a very picturesque setting. I was invited to travel to the high country with her to witness all of this in action. In the first village, I received a greeting that would have seemed like the ladies had known me for years and years. I watched as one of the older members of the co-op weaved a tais in the corner of the room, surrounded by a few other lady weavers and the chickens and dogs that would walk in and out of the house. Cups of coffee and a lunch of papaya leaves over rice followed. At the second village I saw the newly built co-op headquarters. When you look out from the steps of the building, on the west you can see the extent of the southern ocean and on the east you can see the flowing hills and slopes of the countryside. Upon our return to Lospalos, a group of children that regularly jammed with us along with Rachel, Doug, Gillian and Tony were preparing for airplay on the local radio station. I sat outside under the rising full moon with a few of the older children and played reggae hits of the 70s and 80s as well as newly composed songs.

On Thursday, we had UNPOL escort us to the beach. We had made friends with the Turkish contingent of the UN police stationed in Lospalos throughout the course of the week. As cars are pretty sparse to get a hold of, these friends became quite handy, especially when we were able to hitch a ride to the eastern most point of the island, the tropical paradise known as Tetuala. Very picturesque. We were the only people there apart from the fishermen who caught us two rather large fish that they barbequed for  our lunch as well as transport us on their fishing boat to the island of Jaco. Jaco is considered a sacred place to Timorese people as this is where the Indonesians would bring their Timorese prisoners to torture and kill them. The seas were rather rough and the fishermen left us on Jaco with a bit of a warning, telling us that they would come to collect us once the seas had calmed down (when ever that may be). Good thing we had the UN with us who are able to call in a chopper at short notice. We were keen on having an encounter with a crocodile; instead we were stung by a few harmless jelly fish and the sun’s rays.

On Friday, Rachel, Gillian, Tony, Thomas (our local interpreter) and I made our way to a tiny village called Cocovei. We were dropped off by our ute on the road, and formed a procession (pied-piper style- I had my flute out and was playing happy little riffs to lure the children, Tony and Rachel played percussive rhythms) towards the village centre were we ran a music workshop. We handed out the instruments and led the group through various rhythms and songs. We finished the workshop by singing a local song to them and Tony, Rachel and myself improvised on a theme that was taught to Gillian by the kindergarten in town. On our way back to Lospalos, we bush bashed through a bit of dense jungle where we discovered the Indonesian military markings on the trees as well as having a coconut stop on the side of the road. Thomas climbed up the 5-meter tall coconut tree with his bare hands and feet and dropped half a dozen coconuts to the ground. A local man cut holes in the coconuts with his machete, and we enjoyed fresh coconut juice and flesh.

On Saturday we held a public jam that we had spent the week advertising by word of mouth. We called it Toca Boot (the Big Play). We invited the children and young people from the village as well as local musicians to engage in some good old-fashioned community music making. Gillian expertly led the crowd in a percussion jam followed by yet another rendition of Forever Young. The local groups then shared some of their music with us. It was the biggest musical jam that I have ever been involved with. Around 500 people came and went over the two hours that we were set up in the old market place. It was an awesome vibe and also an incredible way to finish our stay in Lospalos. On the walk home, Doug, Rachel and myself were listing the things that we would miss about living in the community: being waved to and greeted by everyone we would walk past, the energy of the children that were keen to be involved in the music making process, the way we were referred to as older sister (mana) and older brother (mau), our diet of rice, a few vegetables and MSG (maybe not so much miss as think fondly of), the countless marriage proposals from the locals, the smells and sights of the village and many many more things that will resurface over the coming weeks in my memory.

Sunday, we began the long drive back to Dili.