In a remote community in Timor-Leste, three young girls are already dreaming big. Their mothers and the teacher who crosses rivers to reach them each morning are determined to help them get there.
Marchanda is five years old. Her family calls her Asan, and she wants to be a police officer when she grows up. So does her cousin, Olandina. Their friend Cesaria has a different plan. She wants to be a doctor because she wants to care for people who are sick and need help.
The three girls live in a small village in Timor-Leste. Getting there from Dili takes around three hours, on roads that cross more than 10 rivers, large and small. In the wet season, the rivers rise. In the dry season, the unsealed roads turn to dust.
Spoken by a five-year-old, a dream like this can sound simple. For their mothers, it carries the hope of a whole generation.
“I want my child to become someone”
When we sat down with Marchanda’s and Cesaria’s mothers, we heard the same hope from both. They want their daughters to become someone: to grow into women who contribute to their families, their community and their country.
Cesaria’s mother teaches her to speak politely and respectfully, to sit properly when she wears a skirt, and to carry herself with confidence around others. They are small lessons, given every day, towards a future her mother can hold in hope for her. This hope though sits alongside a quiet fear that she might never get the chance.
Marchanda’s mother wants the same thing for her daughter: opportunities beyond the limits of a remote community, and a life that makes her family proud.
Both mothers know that education is the one thing that will give their daughters a chance to get there.
A short walk, a long journey
Marchanda, Olandina and Cesaria live only a few minutes from their Kindergarten but their parents understand something important. The distance between home and the classroom maybe short but the distance between the classroom and a police uniform or a doctor’s surgery is much longer. It takes years of learning, encouragement, opportunity and support.
That is why these early years matter so much.
It is a truth Saint Mary MacKillop understood more than 160 years ago, when she opened a school in a converted stable in Penola so children in rural South Australia could learn close to home. A school nearby is the beginning. What a child needs next is a circle of people who believe in where they could go.
Parents who keep showing up
Families here earn their living from the land. Cows, goats and chickens; bananas, cassava and rice. These are not only part of daily life, but they are also the income that pays for food, clothing and school supplies. And these are not farms as we imagine in Australia; they are small homesteads growing what they can on the small amount of land in their backyard.
Selling what you grow is hard when you live this far from the city. Transport is limited, and the market comes to this village just once a week, every Tuesday. For parents, every chicken sold and every harvest carried to market is an investment in their children’s future.
And every day, they bring their children to school, wait for lessons to finish, and take them home again.
They will do it tomorrow. And the day after. And through all the years ahead.
Because they believe their children’s lives can be different.
The teacher who crosses the rivers
Ideally, a kindergarten would have a coordinator, a classroom teacher and an assistant to help care for the children. Here, there is just one dedicated teacher, Manecas who travels for around an hour each morning and crosses several rivers to reach them.
He teaches, he supervises and he comforts children when they are upset. He manages a room full of different personalities and needs. And he brings energy and encouragement into every lesson on his own.
Over several days in his classroom, we watched his patience, kindness and commitment up close. When children grew restless, he found new ways to draw them back into learning.
Manecas is also a father. His own child is about two and a half. Yet every day he makes the journey, because he believes the children here deserve the chance to learn and grow.
This is one community’s story. It is also the story of thousands of children growing up in rural Timor-Leste, where parents and teachers are working hard to protect children’s dreams while facing real challenges in education, household income, infrastructure and much more.
