I am a goat
shepherd and I am a 14 year old East Timorese boy. My family
live in a traditional thatched house in the hills about 10 kilometres
from the town of Baucau. My name is Jose and during the day
I look after 5 goats belonging to my family. Three of the goats
are small and I need to watch them carefully so that they do
not wander away from their parents and get killed by other animals
or get lost. These goats I take to different parts of the open
fields and the side of the road as my family does not own land
to run a goat farm. Very few people in Timor are this lucky
but we do have a small garden near the house and a small rice
plot in the village community shared land. This food, except
in the dry season, is the main source of our two meals a day.
I enjoy these vegetables and rice and our family is not to be
hungry as we have a tradition of being good farmers.
We all thought
that my youngest sister would never be able to walk as she was
born with bad legs. But she is being visited by the Katilosa
workers who are teaching us kids and my parents how to help
her do walking exercises. Next year she hopes to start school.
Katilosa is supported by Australian Marists as a small Timorese
organisation helping people with disabilities. They bring a
lot of joy to my sister and village.
It is the
hope of my parents, and myself too as I have not been to school
since Grade 4, that we can raise the goats to be fat and healthy
and sell them in the Baucau market. This will give us some US
dollar cash for our family needs, especially the $1/term fees
for my younger brothers’ and sisters’ schooling.
Last time I was down in the market I saw the signs for the new
Marist Brothers’ teacher training centre. This lead me
to think about my future kids and I hope that they have good
water proof school rooms as it is a warm tropical climate here
and rains every day. I hope too our schools have well trained
teachers. I am going to have six kids like mum and dad!
|
