Pedro was one of the more outgoing members of my English class. Although only 15, he was quite fluent in English and took great pride in showing off his ability to the rest of the class. In one of the exercises we did in the class, where the students were asked to write their daily timetable in English, he took great pleasure in differentiating himself by allocating a significant amount of time to watching television.

Not even I could contain my surprise that he had access to television. I had seen no signs of any televisions anywhere that I had been. I certainly didn't expect one of my students to have one. It was such a contrast to the other answers of students who simply went home, worked their patch of land, helped prepare the meal, wash, pray and go to bed. But it at least explained how he had become so fluent in English and so informed beyond what was normal amongst the rest of the students, even the adults.

He lived in the market area of the village of Viqueque and often when we wandered through the market we would see him with his family in their neat little stall with its variety of goods. Somehow he seemed above his situation. No way a victim. Not trapped here in this little village on the south east coast of East Timor. Certainly at home here, in control, but also looking to move beyond it. Television, I'm sure expanding his horizons. Our English classes another opportunity that he wasn't going to miss.

He took pride one day in telling me that he had just been to Dili. It was the reason that he'd been missing for a few days. He went with his father on the overcrowded mini-bus to buy supplies for their stall. Not many get to travel beyond the immediate district. Maybe they might go as far as Bacau on the north coast. So Pedro wore this journey as badge of distinction, similar to the television. Almost cruelly I told him my story of how I had coincidentally been in Dili on the day that he went, but that we had come back the same day. I indulgently took pleasure watching the shock and wonder in his eyes.

There's no way you can go to Dili and back from Viqueque in the same day. It's a five hour drive one way and the roads are so bad, dangerous even. But we did it. Ten hours travelling in the back of a truck. Thank God the company was good. Pedro was suitably impressed.

As the weeks of classes went on, we became good friends without the need to go into any great depth. There was always a friendly greeting and wave. His smile and happy personality endeared him to me. He was always so interested in everything, not just the class. While intent on developing the relationship, he was also always looking to expand his knowledge of what lay beyond the boundaries of his present world. Always asking questions. Always seeking answers and explanations. Which led to our discussion on my last day in the English class.

In an attempt to bring the three weeks to a close with a suitable, interesting activity and to give the students a chance to apply what they had learnt by engaging in conversation, I decided to finish with a class about Australia. We looked at things like geography, population, work and wealth. To help them understand I continuously related things back to their own world of East Timor.

Without meaning to, the class for me became an embarrassment. It became painfully obvious how overwhelmingly privileged we are in comparison to this small yet fiercely proud nation to our north. While not intending to, the class simply highlighted to this group of optimistic students who had gathered to learn English to help improve their situation just how physically impoverished they are. What for me was general interest material for them was in reality life and death issues.

As the class went on, I could see an increasing, almost overwhelming sense of wonder and awe in their eyes. I don't know if they could see the growing discomfort and embarrassment in mine. I wanted to end the class, or at least get back onto safe ground by talking of koalas and kangaroos. And then Pedro asked the first of his questions.

"My dad told me that the East Timor people helped Australia during World War Two. Is that true?" And so we began to talk in the class of the history of the relationship between our two nations. How this impoverished nation - that has over the centuries been so abused by the European colonisers, the oppression of the Indonesian military and the apathy of nations that should have known better and done something about it - were able to help their wealthy neighbour, despite the extraordinary cost of life, during the war.

My discomfort, my embarrassment, grew. And then quite innocently he changed the subject. Despite all that had gone before, he innocently asked what I was doing in his village teaching English. Why had I come? It wasn't a challenge. We were friends and I think he respected me and what I was doing. He simply, genuinely wanted to know.

Rarely during my month in East Timor did any one speak to me in great depth of their experiences over the last twenty five years. No mention of what they had suffered. Despite the incredible physical destruction that scars the landscape all around you in East Timor as a result of the malicious withdrawal of the Indonesian military after last year's independence vote, there was hardly a mention by anyone to me of the pain and the suffering that they experienced, made worse I'm sure by years of neglect and indifference and complicity by the world community, including Australia.

I could have been teaching English anywhere in the world. But I wasn't. I was teaching in East Timor, and my final experience in this last class wasn't of the pain and suffering of the East Timorese, but of my share in my country's shame for what it didn't do from its position of relative strength and wealth over those past twenty five years.

Why had I come? I wonder if Pedro and the other students in the class understood why their English teacher started to cry?

Paul Reed omi