Finalists

As previously published, the first Istoria Timor writing competition has now closed and we have received 10 entries. The entries received are as follows:

• Atauro by Amelino "Ano" Fernandes


• Loron Abang Nakonu ho Esperansa by Atanasio Maria Pinto


• Matan Ben ho Esperansa - Betty Reis


• Tinta Nurak - Edmundo "Cono" Corbafo


• Lalaok Domin - Flash C. Guterres (Preman 69)


• Tuku 11 - Irim Tolentino


• Subar Domin Sai Realidade - Maria "Lena" Madalena


• Tinan Ikus Iha Kolegio - Marciano da C. Fernandes


• Harohan Ida hose Matebian Sira - Fransisco Pinto Amaral


• Ha'u Maka Lucas - Teodozio "Teo" Batista Ximenes

Judges will be selected over the coming weeks and we expect to announce the winners by the end of May 2009.

Judging

We had our coordination meeting last Saturday at Motion in Mercado Lama, the main aim of which was to decide a fair and transparent way to coordinate the judging process.

We were joined by most of the writers, some of their friends, and Maun Abe - a well respected Timorese poet and active member of the artistic community.

I was very keen to ensure that we draw judges from as many walks of life as possible and had come up with all sorts of complicated methods to ensure the balance of men and women, young and old, literary types and non-literary types, and so on. After over an hour of discussing the pros and cons of the different methods, one of the writers interrupted and said "look... We trust you and Maun Abe. How about the two of you get together and work it out yourselves?" Everyone agreed, so that's what we're doing. As most of the judges will be from Maun Abe's and my (considerably smaller) social circle of literary types, this does make it a little less democratic and will make it difficult to get participation from out in the foho. That said, it will be a lot simpler and quicker. Also, Maun Abe and I are very conscious of these limitations, and we think that, with care, we can select a good, balanced panel that will help us pick a winner.

I was in Indonesia for most of last week so we didn't get a chance to meet again yet, but we hope to start contacting people and asking them if they would be willing to be judges this week.

We have taken nominations from the writers and have a few ideas ourselves, but if there are any readers out there have any suggestions or feel qualified themselves then let us know.

Competition closed

The Istoria Timor competition is now closed!

We have received 10 entries and official judging will commence shortly. We're having a coordination meeting this Saturday to work out how the judging is going to work and
generally discuss the project.

The way I hope to judge the project is by putting out a call for judges among the universities and high schools. They will submit a form with their name, age, gender, contact details and 100 words on why they should be a judge. The writers will then pick 10-20 to read all of the stories. We'll give them a month or so to read all of the entries and then take their judgments as final. Of course, these are all my ideas, I'm going to put them to the writers and see what they think.

As Shelley and I are leaving Timor in December, I want this project to be as sustainable as possible. So I'm in no particular hurry to decide on a winner. I want to create a community of writers that could potentially run this competition next year, so I'm going to take it slow and try to get as much of this done by the authors themselves. Conservatively, we should have a winner by late May/early June.

I'll then shop the winner (and possibly the runner up) around to all of the local NGOs to see if we can find someone to print it. The quote we have from a local printing company is that it was cost around $8000 to edit, and then print 5000 copies of the book including layout.

Exciting times.

More media

Darwin-based journalist Stephanie March filed this report that showed an interview with me and Livio, one of our authors.

Check it out here.

Buku-buku Indonesia untuk Timor Leste

Salah satu hal yang membuat saya mulai berpikir tentang kompetisi Istoria Timor ini adalah keterbatasan buku-buku fiksi yang dapat dibeli ataupun dipinjam oleh remaja Timor-Leste. Walaupun Bahasa Indonesia tidak merupakan sebuah bahasa nasional untuk Timor Leste, ratusan ribu orang masih menggunakan bahasa Indonesia untuk keperluan sehari-hari dan masih suka mengkonsumsi media Indonesia (mentang-mentang media dari tanahnya sendiri sedang diancam).

Buku-buku yang disediakan untuk masyarakat Timor Leste di perpustakaan umum biasanya hanya buku-buku sumbangan dari SD dan SMA di Australia atau Portugal, yaitu dalam bahasa Inggris atau Portugis yang tidak dikenal sebagian besar Timor oan. Oleh karena itu saya, sama pacarku, suka meminjam buku-buku Indonesia yang kami punya kepada teman-teman yang niat disini.

Memang, buku ini hanya akan digunakan untuk sementara, sebelum masyarakat Timor Leste mulai menguasai bahasa Portuguis atau industri penerbitan buku dalam bahasa Tetum sudah matang. Tapi lumayanlah, ini masih akan makan waktu sedikit-dikitnya 20-40 tahun. Daripada bengong atau gabung dengan gang-gang bandel, mendingan baca lah...

Mana Okke Sepatumerah, seorang penulis yang berasal dari Bandung yang pernah bekerja di Timor Leste dan Nusa Tenggara Timor tertarik juga dengan proyek kami ini. Sebagai tambahan untuk Istoria Timor, Mana Okke menciptakan sebuah inisiatif untuk mengumpulkan buku-buku fiksi, how-to/ketrampilan, self-help dan lainnya di Indonesia untuk mengirim ke Timor Leste. Informasi lebih lanjut ada disini.

Buku-bukunya akan dikumpulkan terus dikirim ke rumah orang tua saya di Jakarta. Saya akan ke Jakarta pada bulan April, jadi saya bisa jemput dan bawa buku-buku itu ke Dili untuk masyarakat Timor yang ingin membacanya.

Jika anda mempunyai organisasi yang bisa menyebarluaskan buku-buku ini kepada para calon-pembaca di Timor Leste, silahkan hubungi saya lewat Comment dibawah atau lewat email di johnholdaway(at)gmail(dot)com.

PS - Jangan lupa mengucapkan Terima Kasih kepada para donatur dan Mana Okke!

Istoria ba kompetisaun simu ona

We have begun to receive entries for the competition. So far we have received four via email, one hard copy and have been promised another two hard copies in the coming days.

I hope to post another profile of a writer soon, but in the meantime, if you would like to be kept up to date on the progress of the project, read the submitted stories and provide constructive criticism, then please join our Istoria Timor mailing list.

Writer profile: Almerio

Merio was one of the first people to contact me to find out more about the project, but we didn't get a chance to meet until today due to his busy schedule working as a journalist and trainer at TLMDC, the Timor Leste Media Development Centre.

After growing up mainly in East Timor, in the late 90s Merio decided to head to Universitas Cendrawasih in Jayapura, West Papua to study philosophy. Much like in philosophy courses back home, they start with the Greeks and move on from there. Merio quickly realised that Eastern philosophy was his thing and, inspired by the violent revolution in Jakarta in 1998 and back home in 1999, he devoured everything written by Mahatma Gandhi, especially the principles of Ahimsa (non-violence) and Satyagraha (truth). He eventually wrote his thesis on the applicability of non-violent struggle in an Indonesian context.

After completing his studies, Merio returned to Timor Leste in 2001 and began work as a journalist. While in Papua he had already written for many of the local newspapers so he was able to use that experience into a job contributing to the Union of Catholic Asian News service based in Bangkok and a number of local newspapers.

When he returned to Timor in 2001, Merio packed up all the books he had accumulated during his university years and shipped them back to form the kernel of his own miniature library. Every time he goes to Indonesia now he tries to bring back a box of books to add to it. He finds it tough to add to his collection in Timor because books are so expensive, but when he has something he really wants he saves up money and orders a whole box of books through the Optik bookstore in Colmera to bring the shipping costs down. His collection includes some of his favourite authors including Albert Camus, Hannah Arendt, Friedrich Nietzsche and, of course, Mahatma Gandhi.

Driven by what they saw as a lack of serious investigative journalism in Timor Leste, Merio and a few friends set up the Kla'ak blog where they post articles on politics, society, culture and economics with a humanitarian bent.

While he writes mostly articles these days, Merio has filled a whole exercise book with poems and has written a number of short stories and longer fiction. He writes mainly in Tetum, but says he finds it frustrating as there is still no standard spelling or vocabulary and often needs to import words to flesh out his ideas.

Merio hasn't yet decided what he wants to write about in his Istoria Timor, but the 2006 crisis is still weighing heavily on his mind and he would like a chance to try and deal with that.

With all this talk recently of another potential flare-up in violence, maybe a book like this is what Timor really needs...

Galp delivering books to Timorese schools

Via ETAN:

[translated via google. Portuguese original follows english text. Anyone reposting this might want to note that the translation is very unofficial. - JMM/ETAN]

Galp Energia delivering books to Timorese schools

Dili, Oct 20 (Reuters) - Nearly seven thousand books collected in a campaign of Galp Energia in Portugal were today delivered to the Ministry of Education in East Timor Portuguese embassy in Dili.

The books were symbolically delivered by Ambassador of Portugal, Joao Ramos Pinto, to the vice minister of Education of East Timor, Paulo Assis.

The titles, in Portuguese, will be distributed by schools throughout the country.
At the same time, there was an exhibition of works by East Timorese trainees of intensive courses in Portuguese, which took place between July and September 2008.

Paulo Assis said that "the choice to reintroduce the Portuguese in East Timor was the Timorese, to someone else, not from Portugal or Brazil."

The Deputy Minister of Education thanked the efforts of teachers who exchanged the months of holidays in the calendar year to achieve the intensive courses.
During two months of school holidays, the courses covered 90 teachers and 2100 Portuguese Timorese trainees.

--

Segunda-feira, Outubro 20, 2008

(http://timor-online.blogspot.com/2008/10/galp-energia-entrega-livros-escolas.html)Galp Energia entrega livros a escolas timorenses

Díli, 20 Out (Lusa) - Cerca de sete mil livros recolhidos numa campanha da Galp Energia em Portugal foram hoje entregues ao Ministério da Educação timorense na Embaixada de Portugal em Díli.

Os livros foram entregues simbolicamente pelo embaixador de Portugal, João Ramos Pinto, ao vice-ministro da Educação de Timor-Leste, Paulo Assis.

Os títulos, em português, serão distribuídos pelas escolas em todo o país.

Ao mesmo tempo, foi apresentada uma exposição de trabalhos efectuados pelos formandos timorenses dos cursos intensivos de português, que decorreram entre Julho e Setembro de 2008.

Paulo Assis declarou que “a escolha de reintroduzir a língua portuguesa em Timor-Leste foi dos timorenses, de mais ninguém, não de Portugal ou do Brasil”.

O vice-ministro da Educação agradeceu o esforço dos professores que trocaram os meses de férias no calendário anual para concretizar os cursos intensivos.

Durante dois meses de férias escolares, os cursos abrangeram 90 professores portugueses e 2100 formandos timorenses.

PRM
Lusa/fim

Competition launched / Kompetisaun Komesa Tiha Ona

We launched the competition on Wednesday the first of October 2008 by sending an announcement to the ETAN mailing list and starting to hand out and stick up the flyers.

Our Tetum flyer*

We've had a great response so far with a lot of people calling up and emailing saying they want to enter. Journalists have been the most common occupation but we have had interest from office workers, students, theatre troupe members, waitresses, security guards and even a few people who are looking for work.

Their first question is normally "does it need to be history or can we write in fiction?". As I alluded to in an earlier post, unfortunately our project name has a bit of a historical ring to it so this confusion is understandable... We're still in the market for a new name if anyone has a good suggestion.

We are in talks with a few different organisation that may be able to help us promote this nationwide including CARE (who publish the excellent Lafaek magazine that gets sent to every single school student in the country once a month), a World Bank program that has connections to youth centres all over the country and two different national journalist associations.

Local journalist Steph March who reports for Radio Australia came and interviewed me the day we launched the competition and this report hit the airwaves this morning. Probably not terribly useful in getting the word out to potential contestants, but will be quite useful for finding funding sources once we move on to the printing stage.

In addition to interviewing people that we are lending books to, I'd like to start interviewing writers too. I'm off to Indonesia tomorrow or the day after, but I'll try and get an interview with an author up here soon.

If you'd like to help us promote the competition, please email me at johnholdaway (at) gmail (dot) com.

* I stole the image of the reading crocodile (well, technically it's an alligator) from the website I acknowledged on the flyer. I tried to contact the guy who drew it but he never responded... Oh well, we are a non-profit organisation, hopefully he won't mind.

PS - If you are the guy I stole the image from, let us know if you want us to stop using it and we'll find a new one.

Se mak Ami?/ Who are we?

Kompetisaun Hakerek Istoria Sira Timor Nian ne'e patrosina husi Timor Aid no Fundasaun Alola ne'ebe konesidu liu iha Timor Leste ho nia programa ne'ebe foka liu ba Edukasaun no Dalen Nasional.

Istoria Timor Short Story Competition is sponsored by Fundasaun Alola and Timor Aid, leading NGOs in Timor Leste with a focus on Education and National Language.