Medical Work in East Timor

The team arrived on the 28th of April and as we were about to go to Gleno, we found that the road to Gleno was blocked by a group of rioters at the round-about outside of the airport. The road is on the way to Tasitolu, which is a hot zone as quite a number of timorese from the east lived there, and the rioters had made the place their 'base'. They blocked the road by burning tyres and as the rioters approached us, we turn our vehicles around and head for Baucau, the eastern side. On the way up to Baucau, we saw from the hills that Dili was burning. We found out later that about 100 buildings(houses and shacks) and 5 vehicles had been burnt. It was good that we did not manage to get to Gleno, otherwise we would have been stuck there and not able to carry out the medical work in district Lautem.

The roads to Baucau and Los Palos are good but the roads from Los Palos to Iliomar are terrible most of the time. The roads are much narrower than the Baucau and Los Palos roads and many parts of the tar road have deteoriated. Averaging a speed of 20-30km, it took us about 2 hours to reach Ilioma from Los Palos.

We visited one village(called Desa in Bahasa Indonesia) in Iliomar and the people there can speak Tetun but some older folks can only speak their own local dialect. Most of the adults and some youth speak bahasa indonesia but the children no longer understand bahasa indonesia because it's no longer taught in school. Using my basic bahasa indonesia and tetun, I gave them instructions for their medication. Some of the locals helped in intepreting the instructions into the local dialect for the older folks. We discovered many of the adults had backpain and we think it's probably due to continuous back stress(like drawing water from well, working since young). There are also many cases of cough and skin diseases. It was the same in Los Palos where we did our last medical work the next day. It was a great experience meeting the people and serving them. You can see some of the trip's pictures here. More stories and pictures at www.intomarvellouslight.com


Other Info
Places we stayed in: Lorosae Guesthouse in Baucau. AVR Guesthouse in Los Palos. Hotel Audian in Dili.

Fear Factor: The narrow roads and blinding late noon sun. Blinded by the sun, we nearly crash head-on with a van.

What you must know: Changing tyres. One of our tyres deflated overnight after we hit some rocks.

Bring along: Medication for food poisoning and gastrictis. One of us worked up at 2am, vomitted and suffered from stomach pain.

Experience: Invaluable and much joy.