When the corn crop fails…

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In late March as most of the world was focused upon the COVID19 pandemic, the people of the village of Berau, on the island of Atauro in Timor-Leste were focused on something very different. Due to a sporadic wet season, the corn crops for the village had failed. Instead of fields filled with green corn plants with cobs ready to be picked, just brown withered stalks surrounded the homes.

Kadi Kapasidade, which means ‘Sharpen Capacity’ in Tetun is a Christian organisation working in Timor-Leste. They operate a one year Bible college style training course and have completed the translation of the Old Testament. The community of Berau, on the southern end of Atauro island is one of the communities where Kadi Kapasidade visits regularly.

The 140 square kilometre island, which stretches about twenty five kilometres from north to south is off the northern coast of Timor-Leste. Although Atauro island is just thirty five kilometres, or a fifteen minute flight from the capital city of Timor-Leste, it is a rocky, mountainous place and its inhabitants struggle to access resources such as food and health care easily. Approximately 8,000 people live on Atauro island, many in village locations with no road access, so travel must be done by boat or by foot.

On the 20th of March, MAF Timor-Leste Pilot, Timothy Southcott left Dili International Airport for the fifteen minute flight across the sea to Atauro island. Onboard MAF’s GA8 aircraft, VH-MAH, on this flight was two 44 gallon drums and five hundred kilograms of corn. Timothy explains, “I wasn’t planning to fly that day, as we were due to fly out to Australia the next morning, but was happy to help on my last day in Timor-Leste. It was tricky loading the aircraft as the corn was in fifty kilogram bags. Calculating the weight and balance, maximum floor loading and maximum landing weight requirements was complicated. The corn and drums amounted to a 540kg payload which meant I had to take everything I could out of the plane (including the front seat) and fly with close to minimum fuel.
 
The flight went well and the locals in Atauro were very grateful for the delivery but sadly I couldn’t stay around to chat. When I landed I received a call for a medevac from Oecusse so we had to unload as quickly as possible to return to Dili. The MAF team then helped me refuel and reconfigure the plane as fast as possible so I could head out on the medevac flight. It was a busy last day in Timor-Leste but very glad to be able to help.”

Samuel Bacon from Kadi Kapasidade says, “The community of Berau only get one chance each year to grow corn. We chose to deliver the corn to Berau because it is remote, there is no road access, only access on foot or by boat. Kadi Kapasidade own a small boat and we took four MAF drums by boat to Berau.

The decision was made to use the MAF plane for this delivery as it is a much quicker and safer method of transportation for these essential supplies. A boat trip to Atauro island from Dili can take around three hours depending on ocean conditions. This is using a normal ‘everyday’ Timorese boats with little outboard motors. Taking 500 kilograms of corn and drums in a small, open Timorese boat would have been challenging. The weight would have meant the boat would sit low in the water increasing the risk of being swamped and the corn getting wet. The trip would have likely taken three or four hours and at this time of year with the wet season ocean conditions can be very rough.

These drums allow the villagers to store the corn throughout the year so rats and weevils don’t get into it. Staff from Kadi then went around to the Atauro island runway on the east coast, a boat trip of at least forty five minutes, to collect another two fuel drums and 500 kilograms of corn. Berau has no port or jetty and the beach is made of large boulders. This makes unloading very difficult. There’s a lot of struggle and its definitely a group effort to steady the boat and pass off the corn. When a big swell comes in they push the boat out for a bit until it dies down and they can resume the offloading.

This corn won’t feed the village but we’ve asked the village chief and the pastor of the church to use the corn to help the very poor, such as the elderly or others in great need. If one hundred grams of this corn is included in a meal for one person, then I suppose it could supplement five thousand meals. The people of the village can add fish, roots and tree leaves (moringa) to this.”

MAF Timor-Leste loves to partner with organisations who are seeking to transform the lives of the isolated people in this nation. For the people of Berau this corn is a gift that will dramatically improve the health and well being for many people in this small village, perhaps saving some from starvation during the months ahead. This flight was perfectly timed for this community, as just two weeks later, restrictions were put in place regarding the purchase of grain and the movement of people within the country, due to a COVID19 related State of Emergency.

We are thankful that this partnership between MAF Timor-Leste, Kadi Kapasidade and the people of Berau allowed the community to have access to this much needed grain, and an effective way to store it, before a season of social distancing and restricted travel commenced.

Crocodile bite victim needs a medevac

Nineteen year old Lino was working on his boat on a rainy day in January when the crocodile attacked. Because the sea was dirty from the heavy rains, Lino didn’t see the crocodile approach. He was bitten on the leg but managed to escape greater injury by moving out of the water and onto the sand. A nearby friend was able to telephone his brother to come and help take Lino to hospital. Thankfully the crocodile didn’t follow him, which most likely saved his life and leg.

Crocodiles are believed to be sacred by the Timorese people. Many of the legends of the formation of this island nation include the ‘lafaek’, the Tetun word for Crocodile, as the mountainous ridges are said to resemble the silhouette of a crocodile’s head. Because of the sacredness of the crocodile, they are not killed or removed from populated areas, which allows them to increase in number in some areas of the country.

It was 4pm on a Friday afternoon when Pilot Jason Job received the call for a medevac flight to Baucau. Baucau is a regional town, 131 kilometres east of the International Airport in Dili, Timor-Leste. Baucau town sits on a plateau overlooking the sea and the journey there by road can take around three hours due to road works. In the air, the journey to Baucau takes approximately forty minutes and so before 5pm, Jason in the GA8 Airvan, VH-MFM were on the ground at Baucau airport loading Lino, his medevac patient, two family members, including Lino’s brother and a medical professional and preparing them for the return flight. Due to his injuries, Lino needed to lie on a stretcher in the aircraft.

Only fifteen minutes after landing, Pilot Jason and his passengers had taken off and were on their way to Dili. January in Timor-Leste is the wet season and so low cloud and rain often prevents flights in the afternoons. However, on this day, thankfully, the weather was fine and allowed for a smooth flight for Lino. The flight back to Dili took forty minutes with the local ambulance service waiting at the MAF hangar to transport him the final distance to the National Hospital. As Pilot Jason photocopied medical records for the ambulance staff, MAF Timor-Leste’s local staff member Aldo was able to ask Lino’s brother about his accident and gave us permission to share his story with you.

MAF Timor-Leste carries out approximately 28 medevac flights every month for the Ministry of Health of Timor-Leste. Each year we transport one or two victims of crocodile attacks, usually from the eastern end of the country. MAF is so thankful to be able help Lino in his time of great need and pray that his medical care will enable him to have a complete recovery.

An urgent medevac from Suai

As I watched VH-MAH, a GA8 aircraft climb into the sky above Dili International Airport, my eyes filled with tears, knowing that most likely this flight would help to save someone’s life. The pilot, my husband, Jason was on his way to Suai a town on the southern coast of Timor-Leste. A medevac call had been requested from the medical staff in Suai for a woman, 28 weeks pregnant who was having complications with her pregnancy, as well as suffering from two other serious medical conditions that could be potentially life threatening. This woman was in great need.

As a MAF wife I have seen my husband take off into the sky so many times I can no longer keep count. I have watched him go on and return from medevac flights many times. I have watched the plane tracker on my computer to ensure he is safe. But these events do not usually make me cry. However, this medevac flight was different.

This flight to Suai was different because just weeks ago our family drove the road to Suai to deliver a drum of fuel to the airport there. It was a journey of more than five hours. The trip was hot, bumpy and in parts I was not sure that we were even on the right road as the road conditions were so bad. The road to Suai winds through mountain ranges and valleys, with both my son and I feeling car sick at various times. While the scenery is truly spectacular, beautiful and green at this time of year, the landslides on the road were a constant reminder of just how unpredictable these roads can be. As you travel along the road you encounter goats, dogs, cows and on our trip even a few monkeys. Groups of children walk along the sides of the roads on their way to school, making the roads even narrower than they truly are. Not knowing who or what will be on the road around the next bend reduces the speed at which you can safely drive, which slows down your trip considerably.

This flight to Suai was more emotional for me, because I now knew what MAF was saving this young woman from. This one thirty minute flight in an GA8 Airvan was saving her from five or more hours in the back of a road ambulance, on that hot, dusty, bumpy road. The road ambulance is the only alternative form of transport when the MAF aircraft cannot fly.

As Jason returned to Dili, approximately an hour after he took off, three teary family members and a nurse all climbed out of the plane to help unload the patient and their belongings. The distressed faces of the family members and Jason’s whispered, “She’s not doing well,” made my heart ache. But again I was reminded of the reality the situation. If this young woman was this ill would she have even survived the trip by road to Dili if our plane was not able to medevac her?
My gut feeling, said no. Perhaps this medevac flight will save her life, and the life of her unborn child… perhaps it won’t. We don’t often hear the end of the story for our medevac patients, so we don’t know what the outcome is.

But I do know that I am so thankful that MAF can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes for seriously ill people to be transported to Dili and therefore receiving more thorough medical care. I am so thankful that in a time of great stress and worry for her family, that they were not subjected to five hours of bumping and dust on that road from Suai. I am so thankful that perhaps MAF increased her chance of life, health and motherhood by providing this thirty minute flight from Suai.

Why does MAF need reliable vehicles?

If you were to do a 176 kilometre road trip from your home how long would it take? Two hours? A little more perhaps if you aren’t driving on a highway. The Job family, Jason, Kim and their nine year old son Sam, one of our staff families in Timor-Leste recently took a trip of this distance from their home in Dili to a town on the southern coast of the island called Suai. It took more than five and a half hours.
 
In Timor-Leste, like many places in the world, road travel is bumpy, hot and often slow due to the road conditions and the surprises that are found along the way. Surprises like monkeys playing on the roadside, giant potholes where you cannot see the bottom, speeding buses traveling in the other direction on narrow roads that only fit one vehicle or a herd of goats just spending time in the middle of the road. But this road trip was made a lot easier, safer and more comfortable because of the new MAF vehicle purchased in 2019 with money donated through MAF Australia. Challenging roads are easier to navigate with a vehicle that is reliable and easy to drive. The old MAF vehicle has a tendency to overheat during long climbs and the faulty temperature gauge doesn’t help.
 
Despite the bad road conditions and the time consuming nature of the trips, these trips are often necessary to support MAF working in a country. In this case, the Job family was transporting a drum of fuel for the MAF aircraft to use as contingency fuel in Suai. Aviation regulations mean that a drum like this cannot be transported in the plane, so a trip by road is needed. Timor-Leste has a mountain range that runs down the centre of the island. This means that when the weather is wet and rainy low cloud often sits on top of these mountains making it difficult for our pilots to navigate through to the three airstrips on the southern coast of Timor. Sometimes the planes need to circle around to try and find openings in the cloud, or fly to various valleys to see if it is possible to fly through to reach Dili. Having fuel stored in Suai will allow our pilots to re-fuel on the southern coast, giving the pilot more margin and more options, something that is often needed when the weather is bad. 
 
Timor-Leste is a beautiful country. Mountain peaks, green covered hills, roadside stalls selling cabbages, strawberries and mangoes and smiling Timorese children everywhere you look. Local people in the small towns seemed surprised to see Samuel our son, as foreign children aren’t often seen in this part of the country often. At times we felt like royalty waving out the window to all those sitting outside their homes watching the traffic go by. 
 
As we drove to Suai and home again, we were reminded again of how important MAF is to the health and well being of the people of Timor-Leste, for as we bumped and bounced across potholes, stopped for passing animals and avoided small landslides on the road, we saw ambulances traveling in the opposite direction. These road ambulances are the alternative transportation for seriously ill and injured people who need greater medical care in Dili when our aircraft cannot provide a medevac flight. In 2019, MAF Timor-Leste flew 336 medevacs, with 405 patients transported to Dili, but each year there are many times when we cannot carry out a requested flight. Bad weather, low cloud, a request that comes too late in the day to fly safely or aircraft that are grounded due to maintenance issues are just some of the reasons why our MAF pilots cannot help people in need. And for these people, more than five hours in a road ambulance, instead of thirty minutes in a MAF plane, is their transportation to Dili’s National Hospital.
 
While a road trip like this is a fun adventure for our family, all healthy and under no time pressure. Seeing the ambulances on the road was a vivid reminder of just how stressful, scary and uncomfortable this trip would be for a critically ill or injured person who desperately needs to reach that hospital in Dili. So we arrived back in Dili thankful! Thankful for our safe journey on those terrible roads, thankful that the bumping and bouncing is done and thankful that because MAF is working in Timor-Leste hundreds of people each year do not have to travel on those roads while they are unwell.

Helping during COVID19 – Oxfam working in Oecusse!

At 7am on the 8th of April, Pilot Andrew Macdonald and MAF Timor-Leste’s Operations Assistant, Aldo Falo took off in the MAF aircraft VH-MFM for the region of Oecusse. Oecusse is an area of Timor-Leste which is surrounded by West Timor (Indonesia). To access this region from Dili is usually done via sea ferry or by road taking many hours. But with a State of Emergency declared in Timor-Leste due to the current COV19 crisis, Oecusse has become locked away from the world. The ferries have stopped. The borders are closed. They are seemingly alone and cut off from everyone else to face this crisis.

The people of Oecusse, however, are not on their own. The flight on the morning of the 8th of April was proof of this fact. In Dili, eighty kilometres away, the staff of OXFAM are sending help. Kathy Richards, Country Director of Oxfam Timor-Leste explains,

“Today we are sending 430 kilograms of hand washing kits, soap and posters to the Timorese people of Oecusse. 68,000 people in Oecusse are without ferries and commercial flights to main land Timor-Leste. Surrounded by Indonesia, Oecusse is a border region vulnerable to COVID transmission. Oxfam has worked in Oecusse for twenty years. We won’t let them down. A specially approved cargo delivery filled with Oxfam resources and using the Mission Aviation Fellowship plane. We are working together for a special delivery for Oecusse. This will get COVID information packs to 14,350 households and hand washing kits to 1500 families. Thank you MAF – Safe flight!”

Pilot Andrew reported that, “when we were loading the plane there were quite a few people there to help. The Oxfam staff stressed that the information flyers were the most important resource on the plane, as the need to educate people about COVID19 was the first line of defense. The load was bulky rather than heavy, but we got it all into the aircraft without too much hassle. It took fifty minutes to fly down the coast. There were a few isolated clouds on the way with a  high overcast layer which kept the temperature down en-route and when unloading. The importance of this flight was clear from the beginning! Being able to get education material and appropriate protective supplies to Oecusse was hugely significant for all of us involved.”

Working to help isolated people is one of MAF’s key purposes for existence. It is why our MAF planes and personnel are currently in countries like Timor-Leste despite COVID19 restrictions. Partnering with organisations like Oxfam who have the networks, information resources and the equipment to promote health and good hygiene is what MAF loves to do. This flight was particularly important for MAF staff member Aldo Falo who grew up in this region of Timor-Leste and has many family members still living there. “Thank you to the Timorese government for allowing MAF to operate this flight to help the people of Oecusse.”

This week in Timor-Leste!

This week in Timor-Leste we are dealing with the issues of bug, creepy crawlies, critters… all those things that your eight year old son loves, but you hate!

Mosquitoes!
It is the end of the wet season here in Timor and mosquitoes are everywhere! Mosquitoes are annoying. They fly around your head when you are trying to sleep and as soon as you turn on the light to kill them, they are nowhere to be found! In Timor these bugs have the possibility of being deadly! Timorese mosquitoes carry Dengue fever, a blood borne disease that can be fatal, as well other a number of other weird viruses that can leave you ill and miserable for quite awhile! You have to try your best to protect yourself and your family from getting bitten, but even with the best of attempts bites will still happen and you need to hope and pray that one mosquito wasn’t carrying anything bad! You have to not think about it sometimes, as the possibilities will keep you house bound with fear!

Crawly things
Slugs, millipedes and centipedes are just a few friends that have appeared in our bathroom and shower base from out of the drain! In our home here we need to keep a plug in the drain hole to stop these visitations. None of these are deadly… just icky!

Ants
How many ants need to be in your sugar jar before you throw it all out and buy a new bag? Someone once told me that this is a test of a missionary’s experience. A new missionary throws it all out and buys more sugar! A person with some experience picks out the ants. An experienced missionary just uses the sugar with the ants included! What do you think we did?

But in this home ants are not just a feature in the kitchen. They often times appear on our bath towels – keep in mind these are biting ants…ouchies! They climb the walls in various rooms. They attack the dead cockroaches that appear on the bathroom floor during the night. They love to practice their tightrope walking on our washing line and on our clean clothes! And sometimes they invade your bed! The other night as we were going to bed, Jason turned off the lights and suddenly I could feel the biting! Quickly the light went back on as we searched the sheets, high powered torch in hand, to kill all the ants in our bed! We found a swarm of them feasting on a used tissue next to the bed and the sheets had provided a perfect bridge for them straight to me.

Cockroaches
Why do a number of cockroaches all decide to die in various rooms of our home on the same night? It puzzles me but is a frequent occurrence! We hadn’t put down any traps or cockroach killer recently, yet in one morning we found two dead cockroaches in the kitchen and one in the bathroom. Dead cockroaches on their back with occasional legs wiggling. Sam hates cockroaches, alive or dead and so it wasn’t long before he was declaring the bathroom unfit for use!

Life goes on here. I hate these critters but there are ways to make life with them more tolerable! Plug the sinks, bin the tissues, wear the bug spray, keep the doors and windows closed, zap any mosquitoes in your bedroom before going to sleep, check your clothes and towels for ants before using…the list goes on. Maybe I should make a warning sign about all of this for our guests who are arriving on the weekend… then again maybe that will just scare them away!

Our week in pictures

Sometimes we have eventful weeks… some times our weeks are fairly mundane and ordinary!
We have had a few adventures this week… let us show you some…

Last Friday we packed anther two months supply of care packs for our medevac patients. This is just part of what we include! Children’s books produced by WEC. Bookmarks made by Scripture Union Timor-Leste! Craft boxes, modelling clay and stationery donated by the ladies in Tatura Victoria and transported here by Rotary! Other items are purchased with funds donated by MAF UK and MAF Australia. We are so grateful to all the donations that make it possible to distribute these packs to each person we help with a medevac flight. We distribute approximately 30 of these packs each month.

This is my taxi waiting place! The security guards now know me and greet me each day! Our home is a local Timorese style house and it would be complicated to request a taxi to meet me at my gate. The instructions would take several minutes. Using this housing complex, which is a two minute walk from our home is much easier.

On Wednesday as we went to Hera to volunteer at the disability centre, we followed this truck load of university students up through the mountains.

Then we encountered this! A land slide had come across the road and a truck had rolled over on its side. The police were directing traffic through. It was a bit scarey driving through the slippery muddy landslide, but everyone ahead of us was doing okay, so we thought we would be okay.

This was the line of traffic waiting on the other side to go through. We were lucky we didn’t have to wait. Our friend waited here for nearly two hours later in the day!

Then we got a phone call to inform us that the bridge and road to the centre was not in good condition and to be careful! And if we thought it was too dangerous we should not try to cross it but just go home again. This is Deborah walking up to look at the state of the bridge before crossing it.

The bridge seemed okay and vehicles bigger than ours were crossing it okay… so we continued on….

We had a great morning at Hera! Totally changed our plans due to the people who were able to come on this particular day. Flooded rivers were preventing the centre’s vehicle from collecting other children and young people who usually attend.

We decided to head home early in case we too had to wait two hours to get through the land slide section. We needed to collect Sam from school at 3!

This was the view along the first stretch of the journey home.

Then we dicovered that the bridge we drove across this morning had been blocked off and now we had to drive over a temporary road / bridge / pile of rubble that we had seen had been totally washed away the previous week by heavy rains. See below!

So we watched and waited while the bus went across, prayed and ventured across too!

 

We had made it safely to the main road again! Thankfully the landslide and the tipped over truck had been moved by the time we reached that place and so our trip home was made very quickly and easily, allowing us time to go to a cafe and have a drink and a treat before going to get Sam from school!

Do you ever pray for our safety here in Timor-Leste? This might give you some ideas of why we need your prayers in this area!

 

Transport in Timor-Leste this week

This week in Timor-Leste we have seen a road that we often drive to get to the disability centre in Hera get washed away by flood waters!

Then we encountered a rolled truck and a landslide on the mountain road to Hera!

Then we saw this in the media! A bus with 14 passengers on board tried to cross the flooded river and needed rescuing. The news clip is in Tetun but the footage is very scary!

Finally, on Wednesday, a plane owned by a Timorese aviation company was forced to make an emergency landing on a road. In order to avoid the motorbikes on the road and the power poles, the plane ended up in the ditch by the side of the road. Thankfully the pilot and his passenger were unharmed and were able to walk away from the plane.

This is why we ask people to join with us in praying for safety as we live, work, drive and fly in this nation. Accidents do happen! But we are thankful that in all the situations shown above no one was killed or seriously injured!

Unexpected Benefits of Homeschooling

Homeschooling has been a tough road for our family this year. The choice to homeschool came out of a number of things going on with Sam that we felt needed a change. As the teacher Mum who always said i would never homeschool, it’s funny to reflect upo

 

n that now six months in… So despite the excruciating days and the super fun moments, there are some things about homeschooling that i really love… here is just a few…

 

I love the flexibility!
Life is very changeable in Timor-Leste! Jason’s schedule is never the same week to week. Events pop up that we want to be involved in. Jason often works weekends and has week days off. One of the things i love about homeschooling is the flexibility it brings… I need to be at the airport to pack care packs for medevac patients, Sam can do school in the office.. Jason is off Thursday and Friday, we’ll do school on Monday through Wednesday and pack a bit more in each day! At the moment it is school holidays here in Dili, so many of Sam’s friends are home during the day, so week day playdates become a possibility… squish the schoolw

 

ork into fewer days and that becomes possible! While everyone else in Dili is on school holidays we are soldiering on… as we have a five week break planned for September / October, so we will have our big school holidays then. The flexibility to not do school on holidays is a nice bonus for both Mum a

 

nd son, so we continue on now so that can have that break then…

 

I love the sleep ins!
When Sam was at school i always found it nuts that i would have to wake him on school days, which made both him and me grumpy! While on weekends he would often be up at the crack of dawn. I love the extra sleep t

 

hat homeschooling brings. I try to start school at 8.30 each morning, but if he is still asleep, then we adjust! If we are both still asleep, then we both adjust! I think we are all getting more sleep this year.

I love learning new things!
I have never taught Grade 2 before, despite being a trained Primary school teacher, so learning all about spelling rules, birds, bats and pterosaurs is pretty fun! It’s fun to be talking about a topic and then research it more together online or find answers to our questions.

I love the curriculum that i chose!
Selecting curriculum was really tough. Did i want to use homeschool curriculum or distance education style? I know i loved Sonlight from what i had seen in Ethiopia, but living in a foreign country without a reliable postal system and strict weight allowances on suitcases, i wasn’t sure a literature heavy curriculum would work for me. I ended up mixing and matching a number of different books from recommendations from friends and what i liked in the Educational bookshop (which was a 5 minute walk around the corner from where we stayed when we were last in Melbourne). And I am happy with what i chose… for me i didn’t want to unschool or deviate too much from what Sam would be doing in a normal class… So for those that are interested, here’s what i am using:

Firefly Education:
Imaths 2 – a maths program made for schools but easily used at home too… based on problem solving investigations. It has an online component too with lots of Maths games and videos.

English Stars 3 – Event hough Sam is in grade 2 the Year 3 program really grabbed my attention. Plus he is reading really well. He hasn’t had much problem with the higher level. Sam loves it. All the lessons are online and the program copes with our slow internet very well. Again based for classrooms, we have to alter some of the presentation or group work, but it is easy to do.

Writing Time 2 – a handwriting book – Sam hates it, but i don’t think he would like any book that works on handwriting. It is fun and colourful and even mentions Nhulunbuy, where we used to live. It also has an online component if you want to use it.

Think Mentals – a books of short maths tasks – broken down into Day 1 -5 which revises skills on a daily basis.

Science
Apologia Science: Exploring Creation with Zoology: Flying Creatures
I had read lots of great reviews about this series. I like most of what they do, but i do find it challenging to keep it interesting for Sam. We do a lot of me reading aloud and him colouring in the pages in the Junior notebook. The information is sinking in though. We have learnt about birds, bats and flying dinosaurs… next up is insects! Lucky i found a butterfly net and bug cage in Cairns when i was there.

Social Studies – has been a hodge podge of different topics Term One was an introduction to history through looking at technology, past and present in music, transport, inventions and technology. Then we visited Ancient Mesopotamia and Egypt for awhile. This term we are looking at the Geography of Australia, which is great for our visit to Oz later in the year.

Target Spelling – Year 2 a spelling and grammar book for students. I use the list words as spelling focus words for the week and work through the exercises day by day, with him doing one or two each day!

I have a few extra English support books (Text Types 2 and Comprehension once a week) for when the internet fails or i need something different for whatever reason. I quite like these books!

Epic – an online library for kids is also great! It needs a lot of internet to use though.

I love that i often get other work done too!
We do school in the mornings from 8.30ish until 12.30 ish depending upon the day.. some days Sam can power through super quick and on other rare days he can still be found sitting at his desk at 4pm! Always because he doesn’t want to do something! First thing we read a Bible story together and pray. Then we move onto English Stars, Imaths and then science or social studies (we alternate days). For these three topics he is still pretty dependent on me and work through things together.

 

After a short recess break of a snack, a bounce on the trampoline or a swing, Sam completes his other work almost independently. It has taken quite awhile to get there…but we have.

Handwriting or Typing lessons online (Typing club) – we alternate days
Mental Maths
Spelling – a worksheet on the spelling words for the week and 2 questions from the book
A task to help him learn Tetun, one of the local languages here.

Anyway… as he works through tasks, especially after recess, i sit at my desk, just behind him and do my work… answer emails, work on newsletters, work on Communications work for MAF, plan for Hera visits etc. By forcing me to sit at my desk I find i get lots of my admin jobs done each day.. “I am already here, so i may as well do something useful with my time…”

I love that we have been more healthy this year
One of the side benefits of homeschooling that we have discovered this year is that we haven’t been nearly as sick as in previous years! When Sam brought home bugs from school one by one we would all succumb to the infections. Tummy bugs, colds, viruses with weird fevers… we had them all! But not so much this year…

I love watching Sam learn
Sam is naturally pretty inquisitive and curious. It is easy to engage him in something unless it involves writing. He seems to have a bit of a block there. Not because he can’t do it, but rather because he doesn’t like to. He can write a card or a letter in no time at all when he wants to do it. As a teacher it is so fun to watch him head off to his room to find a picture or a book that talks about something we are discussing. He has an amazing memory and is reading everything he can get his hands on. I love watching him enjoy reading and sharing books together. He gets so much joy from a book and reads them over and over again.

Homeschooling is not a life long dream or passion for me, but something i do because circumstances necessitated it for this season of our lives. I am not a passionate homeschooler, but i am Mum who loves her son and so for now this is what we need to do… and who knew, it comes with quite a few benefits!

I hate mosquitoes

I hate mosquitoes

There i said it! Shall i say it again? I hate mosquitoes! I hate that they LOVE ME! Why me? I hate that they make me itch and swell up with big welts. I hate that they carry all types of icky diseases, some that are unpronounceable and others like Dengue fever are just scarey to think about… I even leave the cobwebs around in the hope that the spiders will eat them, with no success…
I just hate them.

This past week Jason and I have been really hating mosquitoes as they have been upsetting our sleep. We are in dry season now, the time of the year that we can sleep without the air conditioning on pretty comfortably, except for the mosquitoes.

I don’t know how they keep appearing. Have the been in the house all day and just descend on our bedroom in the evening? Are there holes in the screens? Do they sneak under doors? Can they get in the ceiling and through the man holes – i can sometimes see the light of the sky through cracks in our roof… It is a mystery to us, but they keep appearing.

One night this week, i woke up itching and discovered i had about ten bites up and down my arms and shoulders. Poor Jason kindly went and found the Stingose for me as each bite swelled up into large lumps! That mosquito had a good feed.

Another night we were both awake in the 2am hour after a mozzie tormented us, flying around our ears while we slept. After several swoops and swats by us, we were awake and annoyed! Armed with the lamps and the mozzie zapper tennis racquet we tried to find it with no success. Turn on the lamps, turn them off, try the tennis racquet little light, no success! Turn on the bathroom light to attract them into there – the white walls mean you can see them more easily. No luck. For nearly an hour we tried with no success to find him. And just as Murphy’s law dictates, as soon as you give up and turn off the light, because you are losing precious sleep with this hunt, you hear the buzzing by your ear …. and it starts all over again!

So now we are starting a new evening tradition in our marriage, where before we go to bed we do a big mozzie search, armed with the zapper racquet of course. When we finished we go to bed and lie there for a bit, zapper in hand searching out any remaining mozzies before sleep… last night we used the air con just to avoid the middle of the night mozzie fun! We needed a good night sleep after a few other interrupted nights… Maybe we should just start sleeping with mozzie repellant on to solve the problems 🙂