lowers for DiliF
The walk to school...
In January 2012 I travelled to Dili for the first time - to teach English, Media and Visual Arts in an International school. On arrival I was hit by a wave of culture shock the size of a Tsunami. The place felt to me to be stuck in the bottom of a well of desperation - and at first I fell into it. From the overworked, malnourished street children, to the omnipresent dirt and disease - like a typical unaware Westerner it took me weeks to break through my initial perceptions and begin to understand the place I was in.
On my walk to work every morning I started composing questions and opening my eyes and mind to what had gone on here around me. Very close to the high, barbed wire security gates that encircled our school, and nearly every functioning building in Dili, were the remains of another building. Through two rusty gates, loosly padlocked together, grass split the concrete slab of what looked to be the exposed walls of a house structure - I wondered what this place had once been, what on earth had happened here and why was it locked but abandoned...
A few days later I walked to school with another teacher who had been living in Dili for some time. She told me the story of the empty place as we walked past it. The building had been an orphanage and at some time during the Dili Massacre nearly all of the children living there had been attacked and slain with machetes. The bodies had been taken away for week-long burials by the surviving family, then the gates locked and no one had entered since.
Every day I walked past the locked gates and thought of those innocent children. Born into a world of death and fear and destruction instead of the loving arms they deserved. It was on that morning walk that I had the seed of my first crazy idea: I wanted to grow flowers in that place. For the children who perished there first but also for the survivors and the families that still lived in the neighbourhood - a sign to start to heal and release the ghosts that they believed lived here - free and up to the heavens.
Days passed and I settled into living in a small converted demountable classroom that was to be my home. I purchased toaster, kettle, sheets etc at a local new mall that had just opened - Dili's first. I wanted to buy flowers for my room - to remind me of my home in Sydney and my regular routine. I looked everywhere at a variety of local shops. Heaps of veggies, chickens in cages ready to become dinner but - no flowers. Anywhere! At the consulate parties I was invited to I searched the foyers. the Western hotels, cafes, restaurants - not a petal. Where were they? Why weren't they growing them here in Dili?
Having been a florst in my late teens I knew the tropical, monsoonal environment was perfect for orchid cultivation and that neighbouring Singapore was a huge export market. Timorese are expert gardeners and there was ample fertile soil. I got to thinking... A flower industry would provide skills and income for local families who could be easily trained as flower arrangers. I imagined land plots like the orphanage blooming with colour, and local people having the control of a productive and satisfying business...