EAST TIMOR

Dili’s a city of palm trees and burnt out buildings, or rather building repaired but still looking burnt out. The schools in particular look like they were burnt just yesterday, but through the glassless windows students’ heads are bent over books. Mountains rise vertically up from Dili, and clouds pile apparently from sea level.

Small children abound everywhere, and when they get to secondary school age they seem to gather in groups on street corners or in the river bed to play bare-foot soccer on the tough pebbles. People are everywhere on the street, with limited schooling and 20% unemployment there’s nothing else to be doing, but in no way did it feel sinister as in Cambodia. Rather they were just watching, and were more than happy to engage in a conversation. My colleague and I tried, via mime mostly, to ask which palm leaves were used in the traditional huts. I think the Timorese translated it as “Are these palm-leaf huts made of palm leaves?”, which brought them amusement at least.

On our second day in Timor L’Este we travelled up the main mountain behind the city to Alieu. The mountain completely lived up to its seemingly vertical appearance from the ground by being actually vertical (or nearly) along the edges the road wound around. Looking down we saw green hills, small villages of single-room huts, the massive new presidential palace, Dili covered in a smoke-haze from the wood cooking and waste disposal, the grey waters, nearby islands, and stacks of clouds in many shades of grey.

We visited a number of small villages to ask about their shelter situation, always careful to talk to the chief first (thanks Tim), saw a traditional spirit house, and learnt about the ingenuity that poor people can show to make their lives a little better. The hills around us were so verdant abounded with fertility. Anything could be dropped into the ground and grow, yet there seemed to be little development of anything more than subsistence farming. The Indonesian destruction seems to have had a large hand in that by removing any security in land tenure for now. These people have spent 6 years just trying to get back to where they were before the vindictive bastards destroyed everything as one last fuck you to the Timorese.

In the late afternoon we had a meeting with the national disaster department. We began to explain why we were there, but were met with glazed looks, especially from the ‘UN special advisor’. After a couple of minutes she cut us off “I’m sorry, we’ve just come from a meeting in which we’ve been advised of a pending cyclone. I’ve got to, um…I’ve got to send an email!” We (from a disaster organisation) offered our help, which was studiously ignored. She left with a strong scent of panic trailing her, and the others followed too. Great, a disaster’s coming and those supposed to be dealing with it are in a state of panic.

The rest of our stay was full of meetings and checking out Dili. On our last night we took a drive around the bay to look back at Dili. Clouds seemed to come right down to the ocean, the light coming through was stained blue, bluer than I’ve ever seen. I’ll post some photos which look like they’ve been blue-stained, but that’s how it really was.

I left Dili wanting to come back. It felt like a place so close to coming good, in which a little help applied to the right places could really make a difference.