Kids starve in East Timor

Sydney
13 July 2003

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Kids starve in East Timor

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Kids starve in East Timor

East Timorese children ... many “don’t have breakfast or lunch”

By Chris Lindsay

The Salesian Missions Office is calling for urgent donations to help 3000 children in an East Timor parish, many of whom are attending school without breakfast or lunch.

Recent news reports say that because of a drought 150,000 of the East Timorese population are facing a diet of rats, cats and dogs, and the United Nations has stated that East Timor faces a 14,000 tonne food deficit this year.

The hungry children attend the 45 schools in the Laga parish, which is three and half hours east of Dili, in the Bacau district.

Fr Marcos de Oliveria, a Salesian priest, is in charge of the parish, which contains 42 villages with a population of about 20,000.

“There are a large number of students in our schools who don’t have breakfast or lunch,” Fr Marcos said.

“I would like to be able to give them one meal a day at school.

“It is also my dream to provide each school with gardening implements and seed to enable the children to grow their own vegetables and fruit trees.”

He said that within the Laga parish there are 50 orphans, many poor widows and a large number of mothers in need of help to feed their children.

“Our needs are very great and I am very grateful to the generous people in Australia who have helped us this year,” Fr Marcos said.

“However, right now we don’t have regular income - we need money and we are relying on Divine Providence.”

Salesian Br Michael Lynch, who is co-ordinating the appeal in Australia, says there is a primary school in every village in the Lagos parish, plus three junior secondary schools.

“It would be a crisis if some of the schools close because of the famine as the countryside is too difficult for the young children to get to the next village,” he said.

“East Timor is recovering from two years of drought and in the last couple of weeks the Laga area has suffered flooding.

“Cropping techniques are fairly primitive and the villagers do not have stores of food to last them through difficult times.

“In the latter days of the conflict with Indonesia, the Indonesian army shot many of the water buffalo to deny the East Timor freedom fighters access to food.

“Water buffaloes were used extensively for ploughing the ground and without them agriculture now depends on a few tractors and hand held rotary hoes.

“The Salesian school at Fatumaca has 10 tractors on permanent loan to villagers but they are a long way from Laga, and in any case they regularly break down.

“Recently $25,000 in spare parts was sent to East Timor to fix them.”

The Knights of the Southern Cross and the Freemasons have combined in a Melbourne appeal to get people to donate garden implements to be sent to East Timor.

“The Bunnings hardware centres functioned as drop off points, and the donations were so generous that when I visited the collection centre there were 30 men there sorting them all out,” says Br Michael.

“In East Timor the Salesians will distribute them and ensure that each village gets a set.”

Donations can be sent to the Salesian Mission Office, PO Box 80, Oakleigh, Vic 3166. Donations are tax deductible.