As I mentioned in my last posting below, I visited the area around Lospalos including some of the development projects that Plan recently implemented. One of these projects is a chicken raising project, as a source of income generation for local youth; they designed and built the structure below, set up a business plan for their new small business after attending some training that Plan provided, and have just bought some chickens to start raising.



To recognize the official opening of their new structure, they asked if I would present them with a chicken as part of a handover process - but before the official ceremony, I took some time to meet the chicken so that she (and I!) would not be too nervous during the actual handover...



On the way back to Dili, we travelled through some very dry areas - I can't imagine how any crops grow here but apparently people in this area depend a lot on agriculture for their income...

As we neared Dili, the heat of the day caused a bit of 'heaviness' in the air which made the mountains in the distance look rather 'misty' - I am looking forward to painting this picture soon...

I'm back in Dili for the next 10 days, then I will be travelling to Singapore enroute to Bangkok for meetings for work, and then onto Bangladesh where I will be doing training at some of Plan's more remote offices which are about an 8 hour drive from Dhaka (capital of Bangladesh) so look forward to more stories and photos from afar!