Team 3 returned quite a while ago….in fact Team 4 is now in TL. Even the ‘easiest’ trips are exhausting, especially for the Team Leaders, who go from being flat chat in TL to being flat chat on their return to work… here are a few notes on the trip from Team Leader, Dr Peter Shakes

Compared to post COVID 2022, 2023 team 3 trip was pretty easy. Smooth travels. No cancelled flights. No MEETINGS!

The Australian contingent consisted of Drs Peter Shakes, Ed Montgomery and Will Hariman – all dentists. The three met for the first time in Darwin International Departures with Will playing the “who looks like a dentist” game and winning!

We arrived quite refreshed in Dili, did the customs and visa thing, hastened by the highly esteemed Mario from Dili Rotary and met Ed’s soon-to-be-highly-esteemed son, Jack, who is living and working in Dili.

Timor Plaza, Leader Supermarket, local sim cards – this is starting to feel familiar…

We overnighted in Timor Lodge in preference to the Maubara Klinic and managed to see the Matildas beat France in the women’s world cup at an Aussie expat bar – great atmospherics even for someone who believes football of any worth can’t be played with a spherical ball !

Days 2-11…

Began with the now familiar long haul Dili-Maubara-Atsabe which takes pretty much a full day with 10+ hrs Timor Leste Driving!

Ed fell into the role of car 2 driver like an old hand, with Will doing a great job of GPS route checking.

We collected all 3 Annas (Ana Paula, Ana Tilman, Ana Martins) after a little confusion and some stressful u-turns and made our way to Maubara Klinic where Nico Pires was waiting with all gear fully packed and ready to load (of course!)!

Arrived in Atsabe after a quick lunch in Gleno just in time to see our first Atsabe sunset!

If we were cursing the state of the road being as bad as always, it was more than balanced by the place being as beautiful as always!

New parish priest, Fr Fidelis was now in charge; a young vital fella with a real enthusiasm for the Timorese people he serves and a pretty fine musician as well.

So the pattern emerges from day 3 with clinic set up on the front verandah of the priests’ house and a dentist or two with an Ana or two off to drum up business in the surrounding schools.

Timor being Timor, a funeral and a commemoration ceremony meant that most of the schoolchildren and teachers were either enroute to, in,  or returning from said ceremonies in Gleno for the first few days.

We still managed to get a good solid flow of work despite this and we rotated screening trips between Ed and Will with the rest of the team keeping busy on our verandah clinic.

A 4 pm finish allowed most of the team to join Fr Fidelis on a village tour higher up the mountain where an enterprising individual has built the Timor Leste Eiffel Tower. Not sure how or why, but you have to award him points for enthusiasm!

Day 6 saw a priest meet at Atsabe with the priests from surrounding parishes in attendance. Many of them have supported our teams in the past but for the few that were new to us it was a good networking opportunity most ably pursued by our marketing team of Anas.

Ana Tilma, in particular, was in her element and now has direct phone access to most of the parish priests in Ermera.

This area has had little access to dental treatment since we were here pre-COVID despite having a dental nurse in the community clinic in Atsabe. In a familiar story, he has a clinic but pretty well no equipment or materials and no local anaesthetic. Fr Fidelis asked if we could set up and work for a time in a remote village in his parish known as Laçao. So after the Sunday morning off for those who mass to attend Mass we packed up and made our way to Laçao. The trip was slow, as we have come to expect, but a couple of the bridges were a point and pray moment that neither of us drivers enjoyed. It was not the bridges that caused the most concern but what appeared to be a clear stretch of road. It was here that I demonstrated for the benefit of the team that even 4WD doesn’t help if you have diagonally opposite wheels in the air.

The locals were as always helpful and got us back on the road without further incident.

Day 12-14….

We left Atsabe with a positive report from Fr Fidelis “you can stay for a month if you like” and an invitation to return next year.

The road to Gleno is pretty much the same going the other way – I spent the first hour on the way to Letofoho in first gear! I have passed here a number of times but it was the first time I had stopped here at the invitation of the priest who spoke very highly of the efforts of team 1. We stopped at Gleno Hospital on the way to Maubara and replenished Tino’s near exhausted local anaesthetic supplies and passed on some other restorative goodies he can’t get. [Tino is regarded by many of us in the TLDP as our biggest mentoring success story. He continues to join our teams every year to help out and gain experience, even though he now runs a busy hospital dental clinic – Ed.]. Back in the vehicles after a quick lunch and back to Maubara, with Nico and Peter making a detour to Dili to refill gas bottles while the rest of the team ate pizza in Liquiça!

Accommodation in clinic in Maubara with meals provided! Two days work at a school in Siamodo with about a 90 min drive each way. Normal flat out school with a great, friendly and curious group of kids with no water at all on school grounds. A very dry and dusty venue.

Last day was a half day – the team had worked every day for the last 12 days and was showing some sign of weariness. No complaints though. Back to Maubara to stocktake and clean and stow gear for the last team of 2023. Drop off and goodbyes as we returned to Dili for a last night  at Timor lodge.

-Pete