It’s a ticklish issue!

By Snake

Understanding the cultural myth of East Timorese people is no different  from  understanding God’s creation.  One doesn’t need to wonder why some people are white and some  are black,  or some are tall and some short, or some are pretty and some are not, and other contradictions that you may have not.

One common complaint and some are unfounded of  people working for the UN in East Timor is the ability of people to assimilate with the prevailing development scheme due to  incoherent or inconsistent attitudes by  the recipients.  This is vice versa that either camps can be faulted.  In the first place there are peculiarities of each to consider.  Most of the UN workers for instance come from diverse experiences and training who may find themselves  with the  people  with  more or less  homogenous  cultural underpinning, such that it messes-up the serene nature of their existence by  failing to understand, accept or accommodate them.  The feeling of superiority and racist they are (some), are  largely contributing to an obtaining impression of skeptics from  either  camps.

One existentialist Rene Descartes (1596-1650) had said, “I think therefore I am”, after he had wondered on the nature of his existence.  Some people  just don’t simply understand.  Are we here to superimpose the kind of understanding that we want to have?  Would it make it work for UN workers to listen first to what these people simply want?   Are we doing justice to the people we ought to serve? For quite a time do we really understand and make do positively with that understanding of them? 

Understanding in all fronts is the key in this mission.  It evokes compassion, accepting, sympathetic, kind, thoughtful, caring and love.  Some people just don’t understand what they are doing.  It’s not  us for them to understand but for us to understand them. 

Where do you belong?(irs).

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