my father worked as an elemetary school teacher. As you know a teacher may move from one school to another, depending on the government�s decision. Moreover, during that time the Indonesian government was
in need of many elementary school teachers who would be willing to be assigned in the villages. Many who accepted the offer, including my father, spent many years teaching in remote villages which were almost inaccessible by any means of transport. I remembered at that time we had to walk on foot as long as more than thirty kilometres to reach the main road where we would catch an old transport to the nearest town, Oecusse, or to go our home village in Noemuti. During that time, trucks, old buses, and motorcycles were very new things many of the villages, especialy the children. When they appeared in the village road, many people would approach them to see how they looked like. Some children run after them without thinking about any danger. Sometimes, my father and the other teachers became so mad, because some students left the class running to the road. A city man or woman would find it very funny and laughed a lot.
When I was in early grades of elementary school, we lived in a very peaceful village named Nanat-Kiubukif, a village located in the sub-district of Nitibe, during the Indonesia�s era in the enclave of Oecusse, for more or
less six years. The people of the village and the neighbouring villages, like Hauboni, Oeltam, Nefolete, Keun, Fautana, and Noe'metin, were very kind to us.They visited us almost everyday, especially on Sundays. Most of them never came to visit us with empty handed. They usually came with presents, like vegetables, meat, fruits, and some even gave us some chickens and puppy dogs for free. As my parents are kind too, my mother always gave them something we had - rice or kerosin - in return. We visited the villagers many times, and they always gave us a warm welcome. What a peaceful life we had there.
There, in the village far away from the city life that I know today, I grew up and went to elementary school where my father was the first principal and my teacher. My father was the first teacher of the school that began its classes in a two-roomed permanent building and a traditional house. As it was the earlier years of �East Timor�s Integration into Indonesia� Indonesian language was hardly ever spoken in the villages, even in the towns throughout the coutnry which is now known as Timor Leste. Inspite of this, my family (my parents) did not face any grave difficult with the culture, especially the langauge, because they spoke a dialect of Uab Meto, the language widely spoken in the western part of Timor Island, although mixed with a number of Portuguese loan words. I did not speak it fluently because it was forbidden at home by my parents, especially my father who thought that speaking Indonesian would be more important than speaking the local language.
In the school, everyday, before and after class, I would stand in front of the class and led my friends pray Our Father, Hail Mary, and The Glory be to the Father in Indonesian and greeted the teacher. I did the same thing everyday until two of my friends Alberto Sila and Venancio Lafu were able to speak good Indonesian and replaced me. Many of my friends were very good students. They learned the language very quickly and understood given. We used Indonesian not only for praying and speaking, but also for singing. Most of all, we used it in our daily conversations. From the third grade Indonesian was obligatory. Whoever speaking the local language would be punished. The victims had to clean the toilet or clean the school yard.
I spent the days of my childhood studying, playing as much as I liked, and making frinds with the children from many villages, especially with those coming from the village where my family lived. Almost everyday I went hunting by using my catapult. I went from creeks to creeks, village to village. There I met the people who did not speak Indonesian and I used the opportunity to learn and speak the local dialect, although without the permission of my father. My did not know my secret language affair until he was told by a villager taking his child to school one day. My father was angry. He punished me that day. I will never blaim him for this because it is always useful for my further education. Anyway, I will never imitate that way of education.
On Sundays, our family would go to a small chapel located just next to the school building, where, sometimes, my father led the prayer, replacing the religion teacher who was too busy. At bigger church celebrations, like Christmas and Easter we went to a bigger church where an American missionarist priest, Father Richard Dasback lived and worked. He is really a hard-working man. He would go from one village to another by his motocicle that he named Polo Bnoko (in Uab Meto, meaning Hill Breaker). One impressive thing about the missionarist, he was very nice to our family. One Sunday, when I attended the mass with my father, he offered me some fried rice and gave me a western magazine. It was the first western magazine I had ever seen in my life. Although, I did not understand the language at all and did know what language used in the magazine, I enjoyed the pictures.
When I was a child, I didn�t have much nap everyday, because I prefered praying with friends at mid-day, under the sun heat. Once, I remember, my father escorted me to take a nap. The other time he ordered me to sleep beside him covered with one big Timorese blanket that we call beti� or mau�, until I was almost out of breath. He tought that doing that would make me sleep and stop me from playing at mid-day. He was wrong. Seeing that he had slept, I took the blanket away slowly and left him secretly. Besides playing with friends, I also liked attending parties with dances, and camping, too. But, most of all I like playing rubber bands and toy cars before and after the class. I was a very active boy and sometimes very naughty.
The game that I liked most was rubber band game. Each player would have prepared some bundles of rubber bands. We would stick a nail or a rib in the round and throw the rubber bands to the nail or rib from a decided distance. One would win the game when one of the rubbers gets into the nail. It is only a matter of winning or loosing. Sometimes, we did not throw the rubber bands with our hands but with our feet. So, we jumped once with the rubber bands on our feet and at a certain point, we tried to make them touch exactly the top of the stick or nail and encircle it. The number of rubber bands used be agreed before playing. Sometimes one by one, two by two, etc. depending on the amount agreed. It is a nice game. The first time I played I lost and wanted my rubber bands returned, but nobody did not want to. I once even lost when playing with my sister Anas.
When I was in the fourth grade of elementary school, one day in the morning, just before class, I played rubber bands with a classmate named Thomas Afoan who lived in a small village called Hauboni, located near a big hill. That morning I defeated him badly. Consequently, he lost all his rubber bands that he had won before. In order that he could continue playing, he asked me for some rubber bands that he would replace with a book that said to be very good.
The next morning, on 4 November 1986, he handed me a book that I did not know what I would use it for, neither did Thomas. I just read it two or three times. But, because it was too difficult to understand, I put it in the box where I used to put my books. I did not read the book again, until I was in the university.
One day, on my university holiday in 1996, I opened the box to look for some books. Suddenly, I came across the book after not seeing it for such a long time. This time, I did not want to loose it forever. I took it to Kupang, the city where I used to study in, and read it whenever I had leisure time. I even brought it to campus and read it when I had not classes. Some friend who showed me with the old Portuguese book thought that I was good at the language, but, in fact, I did not. Anyway, I have learnt many Portuguese words from it and understand some, because some of them resemble to some English words. Let�s say they are cognates. A friend from Mozambique, who used to work for an international organisation in Kupang, has once copied some parts of the book. He also wanted that I gave him the book, but I refused.
There might be many books which are better and more complete than this book. However, the Portuguese conversation book is much more valuable for me, because it is a souvenier of my childhood. Every time I read it, I remember my childhood and the friend I used to play with. There is something funny about it � Thomas stole the book from his father who was head of the village.
Yogyakarta, 4 August 2002
Copyright @ 2002, John Manhitu
Yogyakarta, 8 August 2002