A WRITE UP BY MISS CELINA GRATTON FOR HER VISIT TOGETHER WITH HER TWO OTHER FRIENDS

It was a pity that Peggy and I was not at the orphanage when these 3 lovely girls  (Ms Celina Gratton, Ms Alissa Lipper and Ms Dani Garcia) visiting Roslin orphanage. We were in Vancouver for our son's operation. It could have been a great time to be hosting them during their visit. Indeed we are so thankful that their visit was able to give the orphanage children happiness and a learning experience of cross cultures and interaction to boost the confidence on dealing with non Indonesian. We are hoping that we will be with them when they are visiting us again. Here is their write up written by themselves without any alteration for us to share.

                                             Roslin Orphanage. March ‘11

We are three grade 11 students from United World College of South East Asia. Every year in late March it is tradition for all grade 11 students to select a service project in a foreign country to volunteer for. This college custom is called Project Week.

We first heard of Roslin Orphanage from family contacts. We immediately felt inspired by Budi’s good work and emailed him with our interest to come visit his orphanage. We were delighted to find that Budi was happy to have us come visit his family and orphanage. From this point, we arranged dates and kept in contact to sort out small details. We were very excited about meeting all the children and visiting Roslin Orphanage. However, we had a very limited understanding of what life was like in Timor, but were eager to find out.

We arrived midday, on Sunday. Although it was pouring with rain, we were all extremely surprised at how spectacular the scenery was. After a tiring flight from Bali, we were relieved to meet such happy and well-behaved children at the Roslin Orphanage. As soon as we came, they all sat quietly at a long, wooden table, with welcoming smiles on their faces. They immediately impressed us with the amount of songs they knew, and we tried our best to join in with the sweet melody of their voices. Despite the language barrier, we easily got to know each of them by learning their names and teaching them songs and dances. Overall, we were extremely impressed by the orphans’ behavior, as they were able to take care of themselves and most importantly each other at such a young age. We were overwhelmed by the sense of family Roslin embodied and more than thrilled to be able to spend the next five days with them!

The next morning, we decided to head into town and buy supplies for games and crafts for the rest of the week. The store was happy to find that we emptied their supply of notebooks. We purchased a notebook for each of the younger children with color pencils and crayons. After discussing the different activities we could do with the children the previous night, we ended up buying along with the notebooks and crayons, tennis balls, origami, skipping ropes and balloons. The three of us then returned to the hotel, had lunch and picked up the kids from school. The bus ride was extremely eye opening as to how truly beautiful Timor is. The palm trees sprang happily out of flirtatious green blades of grass, which framed the rice paddies swimming in the breeze. The yellow van rumbled against the singing voices of the kids until we arrived back to Roslin. We spent the rest of the evening teaching the kids simple words such as ‘cat’, ‘dog’ and ‘flower’ through drawings against a backdrop of Justin Bieber music. The children would line up in turn for each of us to draw in their notebooks, regardless of the fact that our cartoons were no better than what they were capable of.

                                                    painting the wall with cute pictures

On the third day, we asked whether we could go on a small tour of the city and surroundings of Kupang. The driver was free around 2 o’clock, so we could bring a few children with us after they finished school. After breakfast, we walked to the orphanage in order to find out whether we could help with the animals or with cleaning. But once we arrived, we saw the youngest children playing, as they did not go to school yet. Hence, we spent a few hours with them teaching them games and singing songs, as well as drawing in their new books. We were so impressed with the children and how politely they conducted themselves at such a young age, and felt fortunate to play with such sweet and extremely well behaved children, who all seemed excited and happy. We then went back to the hotel for another delicious local meal, before going back to the car and pick up some children form the orphanage in order to go on the tour of Kupang. We all agreed that this 2-hour ride was one of the most beautiful experiences we have ever been on. The scenery was truly amazing, with a bright turquoise sea washed up on baked white sand, imbedded against the lush mountains. After taking many photos of this breathtaking scenery, we all went back to the orphanage to spend more time with the children.

On the morning of our fourth day in Timor, after we had accomplished our daily morning routine, we hoped into the red 4-wheeler that now had become our comfortable way of transport. As soon as we our eyes met the peaceful scenery outside the street of the hotel, our car fell into complete silence. Every car ride had become a method of us soaking in the beauty, culture and noises Timor had to offer. The little noises that did happen where us telling the other about a view that we had never seen. Once we had arrived to the super market, we began our search for paint. From the moment that we knew that we are going to be working at the Roslin Orphanage, we had all decided that we wanted to paint a wall in the orphanage. The night before we had stayed up to plan our ideas for the bright, happy, cheerful painting. It was in our initial plan to get everyone’s handprint on the wall, and build a scenic painting out of hand prints.

Finding paint at the market could have been an easy task for any, however we managed to make this task challenging. Everyone in the store stared, as we waddled through the store having no idea where to look for the paint. After circling the market more than a couple of times, defeated, we asked for assistance. We loaded our tiny little cart with paints of different colors and amounts. The ride back to the orphanage was used to plan every little detail of our painting.

Once we arrived to the orphanage our task was to set up the paints, paintbrushes and the room for our work. We could all understand the excitement and confusion of the children. In our broken Bahasa we assigned the youngest children a number, “Satu, Dua, Tiga.” One of the children (Sonny) put his hand into the paint, his face lit with excitement and we put his hand onto the wall. All the small children got their hands dirty with different shades of green; this was our grass. After a while one of us realized was that the paint was becoming dry and sticky very quickly. This lead to our humbling conclusion; the paint was definitely not for hands. To this day we probably all regret doing this, it created a mess between the little and older children. The challenge was now to paint the wall, without making a mess and cleaning the younger children’s hands. It was as if a hurricane of paint had rambled the room, there was paint on everyone and on the floor. As two of us continued to finish the task of painting, of one of us played with the children. Once again to the music of Justin Bieber, which had now began to grow on us and evolve into considerably catchy song. We played with the new tennis balls and skip ropes. The entertainment lasted for a couple of hours until the wall was completed. Our finished product consisted of painted butterflies, flowers, a rainbow and a sun.

The following day, we awoke to what we knew was going to be a nice, active day with the children. We walked to the orphanage, with the sun beating down on us; we were still amazed by the tolerance the Timor people exhibited against their climate.

We got to the orphanage in the morning so we could spend more time with some of the youngest children in the orphanage, the cheekiest children. They had gotten a custom to the routine of us bringing new things with us to the orphanage and anticipated Justin Bieber to be playing none stop the whole day. As we pulled a bag of balloons out from our bag, all the children where uncertain about how the balloons where going to be any fun. Once they had air in them, they become magic, hours of entertainment. The entertainment wasn’t only for the children. We chased it there and here and everywhere; we played what seems to be a universal game, ‘Don’t let the balloon touch the ground’, which breaks every boundary of language. Balloons became something special for the children.
When the older children had come back from their long day at school, they joined in the fun with the balloons. We dispatched another set of balloons so there were now even more balloons to play with! They shared, traded and bartered their balloons for color, size or anything else. The balloon was treasure. Before we knew it, ‘susu time’ (milk time) had come along. The kids were happy to eat but at the same time they wanted to play with their balloons.

We wanted to more than just a simple balloon game with children. As we started to understand that one of their simple joys in life was music. We observed this from their beautiful unified singing before meal times, and the one item that held the kids attention for hours was the iPod, something they had not experienced. Playing basic games on the iPod, lead to hours of fascination. We played musical chairs with everyone. What started as a simple game, led to a serious competition. Every time the music started children would give a devious smile so the music would stop. The burst of simultaneous cheering and laughter delighted everyone. The competition went on for a while until dinner time.

On the morning of the last day, we woke up with the shocking reality that we would have to part with our new friends. We started the day with preparing for our flight later in the day. Then, we walked up to the Roslin orphanage and played with the younger children until it was time to go pick up the older ones from school. For the few hours we had left in Timor, we tried our best the savor the experience and say our good byes. When it was finally time to leave, we waved goodbye from the window of the car. We missed the rain only by minutes, and continued to wave until the children became small blurry figures in the distance because of the rain rolling down the windows.

When we reflect on our few days in Timor, we all agree that we had an amazing time. We cannot thank Budi and his family enough for welcoming us into their everyday routines and life. We hope to come back to visit soon.