The plane falls the last 40ft and thumps onto the rain soaked tarmac in Kupang, West Timor.

Five hours ago I left Jakarta and I am now dropping into a culture and society which moves with a slower and rougher-edged pace.

David MacDonald recently visited Oxfam programmes in West Timor

It is far more in line with the rhythms of the Pacific Ocean than the capital's brash sophistication.

I am the manager for Oxfam's Indonesia programme and want to tell you about my visit to our work in West Timor.

First, some history.

The birth of the 'new' country of Timor Leste (East Timor) in 1999 was particularly traumatic with thousands killed during the Indonesian withdrawal.

Hundreds of thousands fled across the border to West Timor to escape the violence, squatting in small informal camps.

There are some 40,000 ex-refugees still trying to rebuild their lives on the Indonesian side of the border.

They have to do this with almost no external assistance.

Oxfam 'ingenuity'

Aside from Oxfam, all other international agencies and local government view the issue as finished.

When I discuss the issue in Jakarta, I am told that the refugees are all ex-militia who cannot go back for fear of reprisals for the atrocities they committed.

Enough of the context - what are we doing here?

Some very successful work that's what.

Oxfam's programme has four main strands.

• Supporting discussion and negotiation between refugees and local communities to reduce potential for conflict and open up opportunities for access to land for permanent settlement
• Providing transport and shelter to allow the communities to move to their new sites
• Providing clean water and sanitation facilities for the resettled populations
• Supporting the refugees in establishing their livelihoods in these areas by providing them with goats, seeds and tools and fishing equipment

On this trip, I visited six sites where our teams of social workers, public health and livelihoods staff are supporting local communities to build new lives.

We still rely a lot on the ingenuity of staff on the ground to modify our plans to better meet the needs of each community.

This is one of the poorest areas in the country with populations suffering from chronic food insecurity caused by low rainfall, poor soil quality and widespread monocropping of maize

On food security Yanne found that some communities were predominantly fisherfolk not farmers and adjusted our package of support to meet their needs.

John, our public health team leader, makes sure that we build latrines by getting the community involved in the design.

Finally, Frans and his team of social workers have to use enormous ingenuity in overseeing the process of conflict resolution and negotiation between the refugees and locals.

Frans calls it the "invisible programme" and it is difficult to see as you walk around the sites.

However, without this preparatory work resettlement would not be possible and the refugees would be left in a much more vulnerable and precarious situation.

'Big challenge'

As I mentioned earlier, outside of the Oxfam programme there is very little support for these people.

Children travelled across the border to West Timor in 1999

During my trip, I was repeatedly informed that though people have settled on the Indonesian side of the border they cannot access the government's own programmes such as free health care and food distributions.

Clearly there is a lot we can do here to advocate and we held one press conference during my visit to raise the profile of these issues.

In future, this programme will move outside of refugees to encompass a broader range of the poor and marginalized in West Timor.

This is one of the poorest areas in the country with populations suffering from chronic food insecurity caused by low rainfall, poor soil quality and widespread monocropping of maize.

The Oxfam team faces a big challenge in making the transition from being focused solely on one single project implementation into designing and managing all of our projects across the area.

On the strength of this visit I am confident that Oxfam is developing the approaches and systems which will enable us to do this to a very high standard.