My Internship
Between March and April 2008, I had to carry out my second year teaching internship in Uai-lili village as a future bachelor of teaching-primary student from a local teaching institute college in Baucau. The place of my internship is a little distant from Baucau city. It is one of the villages (suco) in Baucau, we can go there many times during the day because there are many microlets (minivan vehicle) available. I did this internship with colleagues who belonged to my group.
At first, I never thought I would do internships in such a place out of Baucau city, a well known district (today changed to municipality) among thirteen districts in Timor-Leste. The previous internships were only conducted at the nearby local primary schools within Baucau city.
When a colleague from my group told me that we were going to Uai-lili, I suddenly felt discontented. I even thought to cancel and wanted to change my internship to another place within Baucau city. Then I made up my decision afterward and willing to join the group to Uai-lili. This was because, in my life, I have never been live with a group in a place so far from my parents and out of the city. I have heard colleagues telling their experiences about their life outside their parents’ home, which mostly are uneasy one. Therefore, I was afraid. However, I struggled to believe that everything would go well and I considered that this stage is a new experience and an adventure in my life.
And so, the group of ours gathered and we prepared to go to Uai-lili village.
After we arrived there, we introduced ourselves to the school principal and the chief of the Suco. They welcomed us with much sympathy, prepared us a place to stay, and assured us to be safe, so that the young people of the community, which for us seem quite unfriendly, would not bother us. The authorities told us that the local young people there were a bit aggressive sometimes and that they might be getting a little bit disobeying and annoyed and so they told us to try making good relationship with the local youth. In Baucau city, it is a common story that Uai-lili village is well known as a village with aggressive people. This made me cringe.
However, I had to accept that despite of my uneasiness to go there, it will becomes part of my life story and personal experience to develop myself. Facing a new situation and the new community with an environment that anytime might turn unfriendly was an edgy, since we were ‘the newcomers’ in the village. Uai-lili is a place where people might at first are not well looked, I thought to myself. After all, while we were there, nothing bad happened to us at all, thank God! The community, after all, was indeed very kind and friendly people. One of the schoolteacher genuinely insisted our group to visit his house and offered us go to his garden and pick some vegetables he grew to be brought home for our food stock during our stay in Uai-lili. We were so touched with his kindhearted spirit. We also made friends with the local young people as we spend times together, talking and exchanging our impressions with them in our leisure time.
The internship began on March 9, 2008 at the local primary school in Uai-lili village. In the first week, I was a little nervous, but the teachers helped us to prepare the lesson plan and gave suggestions on teaching the students. During the internship, I felt pity, because most teachers still use the stick to punish and beat the students when they did not capture well the lessons taught, or when they did not obey the rules. This reality still happens in any school in Timor-Leste that time. After all, the students are sad too for these treatments. However, the children there are nice and funny. I really liked them.
I spent the Easter holidays in Uai-lili with my colleagues so that we could help the community to prepare for Easter celebration together by decorating the church or took part in the mass liturgy tasks at the local church, or preparing for local community Easter banquet festivity with local church priests.
For me, this Easter was unique as it was the first time I celebrated it without my parents. Even so, I was so happy because I was with my colleagues and I did not feel alone. There are difficulties we faced such as lack of food, illness, some disagreement among the group, but then we managed to overcome.
During our internship, the local schoolteachers requested us to participate in an event of welcoming the visit from some of the orphan students’ donors at the school. For this visit, we had to prepare the students for some dancing and songs rehearsals that were indeed so fun. Other time, we also joined the schoolteachers attending some retreat session in Fatumaka College, a popular Catholic college of Salesian community located in Gariuai village close to Uai-lili.
In the meantime, we were also preparing for our farewell party to school and community.
We were very sad when we returned to the college. We have already considered the teachers and the community as our family and so when we were on the farewell day, I cried a lot.
For me, this has all been a great experience, which can help me to develop myself and to learn many things as preparation for the future. Within this stage, I have gained many new friends: the local young people, the children and the old men and women at the neighborhood. They used to hang out with me and told me the stories of their lives. Indeed, I also learnt that I should not judge a village and its people before being there with them and getting to know them better.
Hence, the experience of this internship had made me to reflect the words of a sage ‘there is no gain without pain’ and that ‘the world is a great book, anyone who never goes far from home just opens one page of the book ….’
Uai-lili (Baucau), 2008.
