But with the continuing telcoms monopoly, Timorese people simply remain offline.

Below is a section of MIT grad student’s rendering of the “unFacebooked” world. Indonesia, including West Papua, is super connected. And Timor… increasingly has electricity (yellow dots) but no Facebook (dark green).

(The Facebook friendship map is dated December 2010. Let’s hope with the introduction of 3G the situation is no longer so bleak.)

More history developments!

A friend on Facebook drew my attention to this exciting site/project to help Timorese people document the history in and around them. “Fatin Historico” (Or “Historical Place”) is a blog in English and Indonesian (with Tetum language videos) where editors hope people will contribute photos, video and text. I can’t endorse the idea enough.

They write

This project is a labor of love of several youths who want to document the sites that made Timor Leste. We are interested in buildings from the ancient, Portugese, Chinese, Japanese and Indonesian era, urban (and village) planning, hideouts, old conversations and the soil and sea of Timor Leste.

Take a look at the post about the Japanese caves in Venilale, a place that you may have noticed from the car and been curious about.

The editors are Kamil Muhammad of the University of Melbourne’s Architecture program, and Pedro Ximenes, a Baucau based journalist. They will be partnering with Architects for Peace.

I hope to contribute material when I get a chance. I think it would also be great for them to include an interactive map of the posts they publish.

Here I hope to bring to a wider audience the tragic and compelling story of a Topass “prince” from the island of Timor who was essentially kidnapped by a Dominican priest and abandoned in France in 1750.

Pascale Balthazar, the 12 year old son Topasse ruler Gaspar da Costa was taken with a couple of dozen slaves to Macau. There his charlatan “protector” Dominican Father Ignácio sold most of his slaves in Macau and his nice clothes in Canton, after which time they continued on to France, in a journey which took about nine months. During the journey, the priest convinced the boy not to reveal his status or walk around freely on the ship, as the French sailors were monsters and would eat him.

Upon arrival at the port of Lorient, Ignácio promptly unloaded the boy’s riches and ran off. Pascale refused to leave the ship, waiting as a 12 year old would for his guardian. After three days, the Captain informed him that Ignácio was long gone.

Parenthesis: at this point, this story sounds a little like an email scam. I have actually had a couple of Timorese friends – one is even a diplomat – whose emails have been hacked and I have received similar scam appeals for me to wire money.

Alas, this was the 18th century, and there was no email, no Western Union, and young Pascale’s only salvation was one of the ship’s cooks, an older man who adopted him. The young Timorese prince traveled as a ship’s cook to Quebec and back. After years at sea and the death of his cook-adopted-father, Pascale could speak French, and began his quest to find a way home.

To put this into context, Lombard-Jourdan suggests the Pascale was one of a number of princes and heirs brought to France to be educated and become future “friends” of the Compagnie des Indes and the French crown. She also suggests that a number of people pretended to be princes who were actually impostors.

Piece by piece, after years of hard work, Pascale was able to convince French nobles and even the Compagnie des Indes of his true identity. But he appears to have hesitated to return before his stolen riches were returned to him, afraid of his destiny if he returned as a destitute, “forgotten” prince after so many years had passed.

Pascale was believed to have died in Saint-Denis, but a recent article by Lombard-Jourdan suggests that he may have lived longer, spending a number of years in Paris.

I am particularly interested in how “filtered” Pascale’s voice is by the French documents about him. This would require more than a night’s deciphering French and amateur blogging, I’m afraid.

If this kind of story does not inspire some Timorese students to go into history, I do not know what will!

My source is an article by Anne Lombard-Jourdan from Archipel magazine, available for free thanks to the French government. Even more amazing for history scholars is that the National Library of France made the original pamphlet petition to the king of France available for free online.

South Sudan gains its independence today – with many more dark clouds than East Timor had at the time. Troubling reports of fighting and of mass displacements in the border regions.

East Timor’s struggle against an invading force was quite different that South Sudan’s. In 1998, a referendum (and a half-hearted ceasefire) was brokered. 1999 was the year the referendum, the build-up and the bloody aftermath and mass displacement of the East Timorese population.

After a horrendous scorched earth campaign which cost many lives, transferred much wealth to Indonesia, and seriously disrupted the territory, East Timorese had over 2 years of UN administration before they formally declared independence (for a second time).

I cannot help but see events in South Sudan as a sort of “pile-up” of Timor’s 1999 and 2002.

Imagine the referendum, the scorched earth, and independence all in short order. Bashir in Juba – it’s like imagining a hypothetical still-president Suharto rocking up in Dili in December 1999 for an independence party, when a huge part of the population was still in West Timor or internally displaced.

Collapse three years into one.

For East Timorese and Timor watchers, this has real meaning.

As much as we may have been impatient, as much as we may have questioned the UN’s administration at the time, there is really something to be said for taking time.

In January, I pleaded with Timorese people to write letters to Juba, but still have yet to see one. I was pleasantly surprised by this Time magazine opinion piece this week, by a malae, entitled “Three things Nation #193 Can Learn from #191″. There is still time – any Timorese takers?

I think these are of interest because they give us some (limited) insight about what information people are seeking on the internet on Timor.

(That said, a look at the statistics reveals that US Marines are my most frequent visitors, thanks to a post I wrote comparing Alfredo to a rooster. Which leads me to think all military men are actually peacocks. But we’ll leave that for another post.)

Timor related top search terms in the past year are (in descending order of number of hits)

• Matebian
• Crocodile habitat
• naueti
• Mario Carrascalão
• Rogerio lobarto return to prison
• Xanana Gusmão poems
• Buibela
• Baguia
• “armindo pinto correa”
• kingdom of motael timor leste
• laklubar
• east timor tais

If I look at search terms for the whole history of my blog (since I migrated to WordPress), others jump out

• alfredo reinado
• joni marques
• dom bosco comoro
• konis santana
• metro tv
• angie pires
• ramelau
• dom boaventura
• savio freitas
• fretilin
• maubisse
• falintil
• toke lizard
• maromak
• rosa muki bonaparte
• uatolari
• montara oil spill

The most fascinating searches for me are those one-off searches of obscure terms. Google has become for better or for worse, the “history book” of a people with no published historians.

• sejarah laga baucau
• uatolari 1950
• matebian afaloicai
• ainaro timor leste foto don aleixo corte real
• jony marques militia
• 1975 east timor chico oliveira
• buibela/antonio de almeida
• biography of rosa muki bonaparte of east timor
• festival custom house in distric lospalos
• timor leste liu rai monarki loi lari
• sama hare dança de timor
• asuain sexe woomen
• dili 1975
• dili colonial era

But I will say, I have been searching for alternatives to help people support people in other places that does not involve big international organizations with operations and ‘footprints’. So I have been reading a lot about crowdfunding.

The idea of creating an online, global “kitty” is nothing new. Kiva has been around for years, but has recently undergone much scrutiny. It is hard to get these systems right, so that they are fair to recipients and donors.

That said, I wanted to draw attention to two crowdfunding experiments in relation to Timor. This is not a full moralistic endorsement of either, this is more like a plea to “give it a shot because everything else is annoying me right now”.

One is Kopernik, where you can help fund appropriate technology in Oecusse and Ataúro, which means light and sanitation for people who live without. Kopernik works through local NGOs, who do not give the technology away – thereby destroying already existing markets, but instead they come up with affordable pricing schemes. Read more about their unique model here.

The second is fundraising for a project which aims to produce East Timor’s first feature film. Involving Timorese writers, actors famous from Bibi Bulak, the story of “A Guerra da Beatriz” or “Beatriz’s War” is based a true French love story from the 16C, but adapted to East Timor. An ambitious project, no doubt. It will be co-directed by Bety Reis, who directed this charming little short

Asu from Dili Film Works on Vimeo.

They currently have 15 days to raise over $42,000 – no small task.

Whether or not these crowdfunding campaigns will be successful, we can learn a lot from them.

Arbiru can go right and it can go wrong. It is somewhere on the edge of chaos, and something essential to the war machine.

Looking through Luis Costa’s Tetum-Portuguese dictionary, I notice that there are few words in Tetum that have ar- as a prefix. The only other words from Tetum (Terik) are aruma (meaning whichever, whatever) and aran (meaning to hate, synonym with hirus).

But the word’s second and third syllables are more potent. A biru is a totem, or an amulet, possessing power to turn its holder invincible in war. Falintil guerrillas used these.

It hardly seems a coincidence that this amazing map, annotated by Xanana Gusmão, of the eastern part of Timor, depicting the crucial dates 1983-85, was named “Talismã” (or biru). The map is from the Archive of the Resistance.

But apparently biru is more about invincibility than the actual object, and it is not something harnessed only by Timorese. From a recent Tempo Semanal article about a meeting between Coronel Lere and ex-Indonesian army official Prabowo [my translation]

“Before we shot at each with firearms but now we just shoot with words,” Coronel Lere said.

“At that time, Mr Prabowo’s biru was strong and mine was too because of this we didn’t hit [each other],” said Lere who received him with a smile.

Another character that comes to mind in this discussion of [ar]biru is the “white” Falintil called Niki Mutin, meaning the “white bat”. There are lots of urban legends about this guy, who appears to have been a ginger-haired Australian man. One is that he was ex-SAS. Another that he killed Indonesians. He apparently stayed with the Falintil for years during the 1990s.

But as historians can tell us, the original malae “Arbiru” was a man named Francisco Duarte, who was sent to Maubara in the 1890s to reign in some rebellious groups. Read more about him here, in this text by Geoffrey Gunn.

With any luck, I can convince a friend to write more here about this Duarte character, and this temptation towards a Heart of Darkness reading of (post-) colonial Timor.

I remember one of the lines of conversation most repeated in East Timor. I have had this conversation multiple times over the past ten years. To paraphrase

Inquisitive Timorese person: You are from the US? The US must be developed, like paradise on earth.
Me: Well, yes, we are a rich country. And life is easier there. But there are poor people in my country. Many. Some have no houses, no place to go.
Inquisitive: WHAT??! But the US has been independent for so long! I mean, in Jakarta, I have seen these people, poor miserable people with no place to go who live under bridges. But that is because Indonesia is so young as a country.
Me: There are lots of countries that have been independent, some for a long time, like Brazil, that suffer with poverty.
Inquisitive, with look of distrust: Hmmmmm…

The dream of independence in Timor was linked to a dream of material prosperity and economic development. It is no wonder people fleeing brutal military occupation, on the run in the jungle, were able to feed their resistance with visions of uma mutin (literally “white houses” – houses with concrete foundations, white tile floors and whitewashed walls).

Polls showed, however, in the first years after independence, that the average Timorese person still very much valued education and health above all other forms of government spending. That is to say, the uma mutin could wait – a while.  The first government spent what it could in these areas, but perhaps did not do enough to make this vision of white houses materialize. The current government is taking entirely the opposite approach: concentrate on the here and the now. After subsidizing imported rice and renovating government buildings across the country, there is talk of an ambitious housing policy which could entail building in each village.

The needs are great. Yet sometimes, no matter how urgent it is to spend money, it is simply impossible to do so responsibly.

Timor’s national riches – its precious oil and gas resources – must last it for decades, until it generates some non-oil income. And precious little has been done to kickstart the non-oil economy.

But I am just a foreigner. I would love to hear from Timorese bloggers. What would those who voted in Timor’s 1999 referendum for independence tell those voting in south Sudan?

This post goes out to all those Timorese youth who woke up under flashing lights in a manger this morning.

Those who have spent time in Dili in December, or who go by the name of Bishop Ricardo, will know what I am talking about. Timorese youth have long made nativity scenes into mini discos. Given the lack of nocturnal recreation in most of the country, it’s hardly a wonder people confuse that a hut with flashing lights with a happening night spot.

Unfortunately, either some kids have taken it to excess or a certain Bishop whose name is an anagram for killjoy has finally decided that these nativity nightclubs are the worst thing since Martin Luther.

Quoting a story that ran in the Tempo Semanal last week:

“Labele tuur no toba iha Prezepiu laran. Labele hemu tua la iha Prezepiu. Prezepiu la’os fatin atu halo problema no toka muzika fatin,” dehan iha nota Amo Bispo Ricardo ninian.

“Do not sit and sleep in the nativity scenes. Do not drink palm wine in the nativity scenes. They are not places to make trouble and play music,” read the note by Bishop Ricardo.

Tempo Semanal goes on to describe the heinous abuses, including those in my adoptive neighborhood Bemori

Hanesan prezepiu ida iha Audian Bemori entre Otel Audian ho Ailele hun ninian, jovens sira tau lampu piska-piska besik estatua prezepiu ho toka muzika furak hanesan diskoteka. Jovens sira balun tuur iha parte Estrada sorin hodi fihir deit.

Like the nativity seen in Audian Bemori between Hotel Audian and Ailelehun, where youth have put flashing lights near the nativity characters and play wild music like a discoteque. Some of the young people sit on the roadside just to stare [pick each other up?]

I remember presepios of yore, that were quite frugal and ingenious out of necessity. Like this one, made in a central location with plastic water bottles last year. Here is a low key presépio gathering during the day with what we can hope is the pre-disco generation.

Most are pimped out now, with imported figures and art, and tons of lights. See António Terra’s photos on Flickr.

This photo of a nativity scene on an UNTL roof caught my eye. Hope they were not drinking tua up there!

The photo above is by Flickr user Llauren from 2004, used with a Creative Commons License.

I asked what the crocodile [photo 3] was doing on the street and he did not appear to have any purpose except to make people laugh. I was half expecting him to grope me, but instead he let me take a couple of fun photos with him.