29日から、東ティモールからの留学生、パルメラ・アロウゾ・ドサントスさんを本校にお迎えしています。

東ティモールは、インドネシアとオーストラリアの間に浮かぶ島で、2002年にインドネシアから独立した若い国です。希望に燃えて国作りをしています。本校の設立母体である聖心侍女修道会の修道院と学校があります。長野清泉は、清泉祭の売り上げの一部を10年以上に渡って寄附させて頂き、それによって学校の校舎も建てられました。

東ティモールの修道院には、以前本校で英語を教えていらしたシスター中村、また宗教の時間を担当なさったシスター西川が、いらっしゃいます。パルメラさんも、シスター中村から英語を教わったとのことです。

4年前には、山浦先生と町田先生が、東ティモールを訪問し、全校生徒から集めた鉛筆をお届けし、現地の生徒達と親交を深めました。

今朝は、パルメラ・アロウゾ・ドサントスさんから皆さんに挨拶をして頂きます。

それではパルメラさん、よろしくお願いします。

I am Palmira Araujo Dos Santos from East Timor, aged 20.

I come from a simply family, my father is working as a famer and my mother is a house wife. I have two brothers and three sisters. I am the eldest. Fortunately, I am now studying at Contemporary Japanese Study Program, Waseda University, thanks to the Japanese Government Scholarship.

East Timor is a new country, located in the south-East Asia, near Indonesia and Australia with our population of 1,2 million. East Timor became independent 15 years ago in 2002. My country had been colonized by the Portuguese people since 16th century and after that was occupied by the Indonesian military regime. In 1975, the Indonesian military cruelly destroyed the 70% of all the infrastructure, and so East Timor became a very poor country. We are now constructing a new nation, but it is not very easy, because we lost a lot of human recourses during the war. My country is very small and is not yet developed.

The reason why I want to study in Japan is that the people living here have many different cultural backgrounds, as seen in a rich variety of music, arts, pictures, foods, cookings, expressions and so on. As regards the political area, Japan, which has been ruled by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party for many years, has succeeded in keeping the country developing fast in many areas. I feel envious of Japan, as it has higher literacy rate, good health care and stable price of pensions. In Japan, there are a lot of natural disasters. The latest one is the Kumamoto earthquake. I am so surprised that the people can find the way how to recover so soon from all those terrible experiences.

My dream is, if I can become a leader in the social field of my study, to contribute to the building of my nation, for example, by giving formation to the youth, helping them get knowledge about global issues, by organizing seminars, debates, researches, etc. And another dream of mine is to form a bridge between the two nations, East Timor and Japan, in the near future.