gallery

Life in Timor-Leste

Read about our Timor experience in our blog Dili Dally. We returned home to New Zealand in April 2015 after two years on a VSA assignment mentoring Timorese in communications skills and teaching creative writing (click on the photos to enlarge and for captions).

Pip at the launch of her book on creative writing, the first such guide ever published in Tetun.

Pat is presented with a tais at a ceremony to open a new water system.

Pip is farewelled by students at Timor’s national university where she coordinated a programme of free English classes.

Pat worked alongside World Vision workmate Mateus (pictured) and other staff to show them communication skills ranging from story writing to web publishing and photography.

You have to be an all-rounder in Timor. Here Pat uses his rented 4-wheel drive to help pull a truck out of a ditch.

Pip exercises her negotiating skills in the Maubisse vege market.

Children in front of our house celebrate the monsoon rains arriving after four months of no rain.

Pat chats with a local in the inland town of Maubisse.

We got around Dili on our trusty Honda Scoopy – a great way to travel in the warm tropical air.

Timorese were fascinated by our photos of family and friends back in New Zealand

Pat with fellow Kiwi volunteer, Del Bovill, on top of Timor’s highest peak, Mt Ramelau, at sunrise.

A pre-Christmas celebration with other Kiwi volunteers in Dili.

Mentoring takes many forms…Pip shows some local kids picture books from New Zealand.

Sharing a joke with local lads at the south coast town of Suai.

Pip made new friends at a tree-planting ceremony in the eastern district of Bobonaro.

Korean War book launch

Pip’s book, The War That Never Ended, was launched at Parliament on 5 March 2013. Veterans Affairs Minister Michael Woodhouse, Ministry for Culture and Heritage chief historian Neill Atkinson and Pip addressed a large gathering of Korean War veterans and their families, RSA members and Defence Force personnel (click on the photos to enlarge).