The rainbow never sets

The third building was built from bebak again which contained two class rooms on either side with benches and tables, and a blackboard each. Between the two class rooms was another small dormitory.

Further away I saw a plantation of tall coconut trees with banana trees as undergrowth, and quite extensive rice paddies. All this belonged to the theological school.

I talked to a group of students and was quite pleased that my studies had paid off. I was able to understand most of what they were saying. Then Chris BanoEt asked a couple of students to climb up the coconut trees to get some fresh coconuts down. Our children were fascinated by the way the students climbed up the trunk of the trees in their bare feet. It looked so easy, but when they tried themselves, they didn't get very far. With great skill some other students brought out a parang, a long bush knife or machete, and chopped off a cap from each coconut and presented them to us one by one. The first time I had tasted the juice of a fresh coconut was in Fiji. This reminded me of our lovely holiday there, and this drink was a wonderful welcome to Timor. It tasted just superb, the best drink one can have. I finished it all and the students then split the coconut in half and we spooned out the very soft flesh around the nut shell. Even the spoon was carved out from the shell of a coconut.

I noticed that there were no female students around, which surprised me, as I knew that GMIT had ordained women ministers long before our church in Australia had. I was told that there was only one student. She went back to Kupang each day, staying with her parents. The boys still looked fairly young, I would say all were under 20 years of age. I noticed they had different features: some had longer faces, were quite tall and had straight hair, others had round faces with tight curls and shorter bodies. I was soon to learn that they came from different tribes and different islands, and I was surprised to learn that these ethnic differences could still cause some tension between them. But that was not apparent on the first day. They all seemed very friendly and I was keen to get to know them better.

The student body was divided into four separate years. The senior year would be graduating at the end of 1969, then there was a year four, a year three, and a year one. As there was not enough room, the school did not take on new students when none were graduating. Chris suggested that I teach all of them English to begin with, so that I would get to know them, and he asked me to start the following Monday.

Other staff teaching there apart from Chris BanoEt was Peter Stephens from the Methodist Church in Australia, Kees Oppelaar from the Dutch Reformed Church, and some visiting teachers from Kupang. There was a timetable, but this was flexible, as I was to find out. A number of the Indonesian teachers appeared only occasionally, as they all had teaching jobs at other institutions, and as I found out later, their timetables often clashed, but this didn't seem to concern anybody. I also found out that

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