Communication breakdown

To catch my readers up on the recent events in Dili, which I’m sure have been misreported, manipulated and distorted by a pathetic and frequently vacationing western media, there have been a number of incidents in the past couple of days. This is not really seen as any kind of escalation, it’s merely a continuation of the status quo after a bit of a lull last week.

Following an incident of rock throwing at a wedding in Lorumatan, near the old Comoro market, on Saturday, there was violence on Sunday, which I saw on my return from Maubara.

After that there was rocking throwing in Jardim (Kolmera), in front of the port area, literally in front of the five star hotel where all the VIPs stay.

There maybe have been incidents in Caicoli, but they were not serious.

In Comoro, two days ago, things began heating up with something like 7 more houses burned, and one person injured. Then two nights ago, two Molotov cocktails thrown into the Jardim camp (Kolmera), it’s unclear about injuries. That same night, early in the morning, a group of up to 200 hundred youths (unconfirmed, as is everything) attacked the Airport Camp at around 5am. I think there were injuries, and the GNR came in with great force. Rubber bullets quite likely were used.

Docogirl reports that yesterday, after some rather routine rock-throwing into Jardim, Australian peacekeepers and Portuguese GNR arrived. The Australians basically assembled shoulder to shoulder and blasted into the camp, in a line. (When it was people outside the camp who apparently started the whole thing, and they were long gone.) Then the GNR apparently started throwing teargas in there like water balloons, and the whole thing got very ugly.

The Timor Post says they arrested 29 young men at the camp. The paper “confirms” (or repeats) word on the street that the kids arrested were not the trouble makers.

Taxi drivers don’t seem to like GNR. Very few people are supporting their heavy-handed tactics, which I find surprising. Because in the riots of 2002, people were calling for harder measures, more bullets. Real bullets.

What has struck me most in talking with Timorese people about the current situation is the way in which different groups distribute the blame. I can make a couple of basic generalizations.

The Timorese diaspora, or educated class with good jobs here in Dili, tend to blame the ema beik, the stupid people who have come from the districts and live in these shitty peripheral neighborhoods in Dili. Why do they resort to violence? They are ignorant. Beik. I have to say this reeks of condescension to me.

Then the average person, lucky to be making $80/month, the taxi driver, the maid or the security guard (those are basically the only jobs of that kind) thinks that the politicians and the political class is almost entirely to blame. The ema boot, many of whom spent decades abroad, and have now come to scramble for personal influence, disregarding the needs of the suffering Timorese people.

The lefty NGO community in Farol tends to side with the government, assigning limited blame for certain miscalculations it has made. The government has done a good job protecting Timor from the predatory World Bank, its Health and Education work has been pretty good, and in the end these guys want to see the “revolution” prevail, and they see Fretilin as the only way. I do detect the blame being shifted to Western imperialism, the fight for the Timor Gap. While not all people there blame Australia for attempting to bring down Alkatiri, there seems to be consensus that the Market forces, capitalism, and certain hegemonic foreign “interests” are behind the unrest.

It is rare when you find somebody to admit that all sides are screwing things up. The politicians are to blame, the ruling party, the opposition, the President all have shown a dire lack of maturity. But the “little people” too have fallen very easily into the absurd eye for an eye mentality. And it’s probably true that Australia (and Portugal) to some extent have used the Petitioners crisis to reassert their influence on the place and promote their national interests above the interests of the Timorese. And of course, there is consensus that instead of a UN posterchild, Timor was a quiet flop, a failure, that is now a real squeaking wheel. So now they are going to throw another $300 million at the situation.

Very few people can admit that Alkatiri had some merit, but really created too many enemies with his personal style and intransigence. Few are willing to rationally doubt the actions of all politicians, but support the current government because it is obviously the only way out.

Yesterday I met up with Pedro Lebre, who has been a longtime friend of solidarity activists from all over the world. He has been hosting journalists, activists and now solidarity tourists for over a decade in his Vila Harmonia in Becora. Part of it was burned, when he left briefly in June because, as he said “I didn’t want to be killed by idiots.” He confided to me that this whole situation, more than anything makes him ashamed. He blames the politicians, fair and square. He had told me years ago that he knew Timorese politics was poisonous. Back in 1975, and he knew it after 1999 too.

He will dedicate the rest of his life to promoting Timorese culture and tourism, which he believes go hand in hand.

He is talking about moving back up to his mountain village, where he grew up in the shadow of Mount Matebian. He is writing his memoir in Tetun, a gargantuan task, and he says that when he thinks back to the 1950s and 1960s, he was still living like “a primitive” which seems unbelievable but true. I said, but “a happy primitive”? He just kind of looked off, saying “yeah” softly but already mentally transported to his childhood, which was a tough but perhaps a less bitter, more hopeful place.

Yesterday, 5:50pm

Uma Fukun, one day to be a “Cultural Centre”, formerly the Portuguese customshouse, in the background. One of the only buildings to survive over 94 Allied bombings of Dili while in Japanese hands. Apparently used as a torture/interrogation center by the Indonesians. Recently rennovated and painted up by the Portuguese government, only to be neglected, and subsequently trashed by the “Petitioners” when they camped inside in April 2006. Now they are going to rennovate, AGAIN!

In the foreground, the royal Ai-Hale, banyan trees. They are hundreds of years old, keeping silent witness over Dili Harbor.

Halo de’it ona (Just Do it!)

Today I had the good fortune of being invited to a Timorese “business lunch” along the beach road out towards Areia Branca and the Timorese “Cristo Rei”. I called an extremely nice friend who is now a Timorese Diplomat and he said come on down and meet “us.” “It’s a business lunch, my big businessman friend will buy you lunch.” (I have a major complex about getting bought lunch because I am aware that basically crumble under pressure and do not put up a big enough resistance.) Anyways, interesting experience I thought.

So I convinced a taxi to drive me down there for $1.50, which I suppose is a testament to my bargaining skills in Tetun or the fact that the taxi driver was lazy and just wanted me to shut up.

I got closer and noticed all of these buses down there. Strange, I thought. The main road to Baucau goes through Becora. But buses to Baucau no longer go there, because there is too much rock throwing. Those buses are “lorosa’e” and hence the target of the anger of the majority of Dili (which seems to be increasingly “loromonu”).

All of the restaurants down there are new to me, with the exception of Victoria which has been there since like 2000. There is a Balinese place, very friendly, and then after a “Timorese Portuguese” place apparently owned by people from Baucau. Very pleasant, simple but clean and well decorated with views straight out to Atauro. I think this row of restaurants is actually nicer than some of the beach resort areas in Bali.

Anyways, so I sit down and Diplomat says “have a beer! This is my second” and he’s wearing these nice aviator Ray Bans, and I’m thinking, wow life is good for the foreign service everywhere. He says, and rightly so, “You never know how long you have to live, so enjoy it.” Meaning never skip beer or wine at lunch. They had ordered ikan (one each!) which came with a really nice sauce, and modo which are like watercress grown in the canals of Dili, and a salad. Really top notch food.

Diplomat’s friend, big business man, did not have a lot of bling bling or flashy clothes to indicate that he was in fact Nike’s sole representative in Timor! They explained that Nike wants to sell legitimate shoes, balls and clothes here, they believe there is a market now for such stuff. I asked if they had any Timorese athletes with the Nike endorsement yet, and he said they were working on it. He says his sales are already outranking Fiji. I told him it’s only a matter of time before he gets invited to World HQ in Oregon!

I asked him if he ever wore the swoosh, and he said yes, but we can’t everyday. He said that Nike is making a global comeback since the loss of Michael Jordan. But Adidas is still really big at the moment. Most of the customers, Diplomat laughed, are foreigners, UN types who think it’s cheaper here than in their home countries. In any case, sales are good in Dili.

Turns out that Businessman knew quite a few people who could help my research, and he actually got me thinking about some important things. I also learned that all of the roads around my region have gone to shit, and that even now in the dry season, I’ll need a 4WD car to take me out there.

Next, for a change of pace, I went to a discussion at Sa’he Institute, the revolutionary NGO named after Vicente Sa’he, the Fretilin leader who pioneered Timor’s first indigenous literacy campaigns. There was supposed to be some discussion with a famous malai activist from Australia. I felt as though I entered into a time warp, listening to the language from some of the initial revolutionary Fretilin documents. These are guys (and a couple of girls) that still use “reactionary” without the quotation marks.

It was interesting (anthropologically) but I was a bit distracted because I really wanted to talk with one of the moderators about his work on “conflict transformation.” I finally got to talk to him at a tea break; I remember meeting him briefly in 2001 before he went to study in Ireland. He is one of the (aging) youth/student leaders who is political but not “in” politics.

One thing that struck me, is that for a place that talked so much about “patriarchy”, and the preeminence of the white man, there seemed to be ingrained gender roles. It made me chuckle that when snack time came around, it was the girls who hopped up to bring out the bananas, roasted tubers and seaweed salad. The only man who got up to help was wearing a t-shirt that said “Good Bush” (followed by an illustration of a woman’s pelvis, covered) and “Bad Bush” (President Bush).

This reminded me of my parent’s story from 1970, when they were staying briefly in the same apartment as the infamous Abby Hoffman, who was on trial in Chicago. He would go to the trial all day, and leave his wife in the house to type up his notes and be his secretary.

Viva la revolución! Or better yet, halo de’it ona! Just do it!

Terror as the norm

After reading in Xanana’s autobiography that he repeated intervened to save the “pro-Indonesia” or “1959” liurais in 1977, I decided to risk it and put some effort into understand the aftermath of this “mountain” period.

I spent the day comparing data from three lists of those killed in Uatolari-Uatocarbau in 1978-79. This period followed the rendição, the surrender from Mount Matebian, where the majority of the civilian population had lived for over a year. Many died of thirst, poor health and bombings with fighter planes sold to Indonesia by the Carter Administration. Some civilians snuck out of Fretilin controlled areas on the Mountain when the suffering became too great.

But most stayed until Falintil gave the order for a civilian surrender on November 23, 1978. When people passed through the military cordon, my informants say there were already Timorese collaborators pulling out Fretilin sympathizers from the crowd of civilians. People over the age of about 12 had their hands checked for gun powder or residue of munitions.

Once “down” in the villages and towns, those who saw themselves as victimized by Fretilin power on the Mountain seized their chance for revenge, mostly by working with Indonesia to hunt down Fretilin sympathizers.

The three lists I have are all public: from the CAVR or Truth, Reception and Reconciliation Commission (the final list for posterity), one from an activist group in London’s human rights reporting documents, dated 1979, and one from the “Konis Santana” archive. (The latter two are held by the newly open Archive of the Resistence, which was organized by one of Portugal’s most noted historians – a medievalist – José Mattoso.)

I have a total of about 130 people killed from the subdistricts of Uatolari and Uatocarbau from the three lists. The most “complete” list is the CAVR list, but it has many repeated names and gaping holes in its information. The Activist list dated 1979 has that very “human rights”-y feel about it, with age, profession and details of death, not in any apparent order. It is handwritten. The third list has a more “local” feel in that it is merely a list of dead, with village and suco carefully noted. Neither of the other lists contains consistent village information. (This last list contains very interesting annotations on the back, indicating the involvement of some pro-Indonesia Timorese in the killings.)

I suppose the thing that struck me, reading off this list, is how such bare names, dates, “facts” can be both terrifying and “normal” at the same time. I began to forget that I was looking at the names of those who were violently killed, and who will eventually be forgotten. Some of them didn’t even go by Christian names, so they were Lequi and Cai Mau. Or if they did, they didn’t have a family name. So there were 3 “Manuel”s and a number of “Luis”. I wonder what a “political” threat men like this could have been to Indonesian power.

I remember taking a slight comfort in seeing people that were executed together, realizing that it would have been very horrible to die alone. There was one 20 year old village head who was allegedly “tied up and burned alive” by the Indonesian special forces. A number of women appeared on the lists. Two were young women who appear to have been taken to the district headquarters and killed long after the majority of men. I pushed the thought out of my head of what they must have gone through in captivity.

It is easy, even for those who study recent history on a daily basis, to forget the impact of these stories on people here in Timor.

We can quibble all day about the way people here or “there” in the first world relate to trauma and loss differently, or the total number killed violently during the occupation. But for the majority of people over 30, these abuses cut so close to their own life stories.

They lie under the surface of perception, memory and feeling. People’s ability to trust each other, to trust the unknown, to trust in political and societal change has been formed by the disappearances, the torture, the murders, the cycle of revenge and stealing.

I had hoped to refrain from using the word “evil” but it is not possible. When you see humanity’s capacity for unspeakable evil up close, it must be hard to live in the stable, crystalline world that we grew up in.

I got back late in the evening and talked with Gonçalo, the security guard who is deeply religious. I could see that “look” in his eye, this disquiet. He said when he got back from choir practice today, he learned that one of his good friends was seriously wounded in violence in Kolmera last night. Gonçalo wanted to go to the hospital to visit his friend. But even the man’s own brothers are too scared to go to the hospital, because they believe they will be ambushed by the same people who attacked their brother.

UN Trailer park

The smoke we saw on the Comoro Road on Sunday was probably linked to disturbances there that afternoon. From AFP:

VIOLENCE erupted on the streets of the East Timorese capital today as two groups pelted each other with stones, forcing residents in the area to flee their homes. The disturbance occurred between two groups of youths from different regions of East Timor near the Comoro market at about 2pm local time, witnesses said. They said the incident appeared to follow the beating of a man the previous day…Meanwhile, the civil registry office next to the Fatuhada police post in Dili was burned by unidentified men today, witnesses said.

Today I woke up what to me is bright and early, but only seemed to make it to the UN Agency Compound by about 9:30am. I remember biking across town at about 8am so I wouldn’t show up at the office all hot and sweaty. Nine am is already a sweating hour.

I was surprised when the taxi driver stopped short, just in front of the Palácio das Cinzas, Xanana’s shell of an office. On the other side of the street, there was a large gate, security check point and tons of ugly UNTAET-style pre-fab trailers. He explained that the agencies had migrated over to this trailer park a couple of months before the crisis.

Interesting, I thought. Does this not seem like a step backwards? Or maybe psychologically, working in trailers makes the UN feel less institutionalized here, like they could leave any year now?

I went in to talk to my old Boss at UN Agency. She was just heading out for a meeting with “partners”, which I took to be an epic meeting in 3 languages that would take up the whole morning. She introduced me to the person who was working on the Theater project they asked me to try to start up, which apparently has had a thriving life with the help of a couple of strong local NGOs. They told me that they were going to put on a theater presentation in “the camps” this week.

Yet the overall feeling I got there was that they were busy with the same old shit, planning and reporting.

My former boss clarified that it was actually the Timorese government who asked the UN Agencies to leave the old building up the street, and that shortly after they left, it was occupied by Petitioners and looted during the violence. Everything was torn out, even tiles in the bathroom. Now, she says, ironically, the new emergency UN mission has occupied the building (presumably with the government’s consent).

I talked to the drivers, including the Number One driver who, by the look of it, gets to sit around and shoot the shit.

They said a lot of the younger Timorese staff left to study abroad, this is true of my good friend and colleague there. But also of the young man who used to work as a sort of “office boy” doing random tasks and making coffee. Off in Jogjakarta studying.

I guess three years is enough to see even the “local staff” bail out and try something new, especially when there is little hope of promotion. The life of these institutions is quite incredible if you think about it. How do they create permanence, besides branding? Often one International staff has very little time, or no opportunity to handover to the next. There is a fair amount of reinventing the wheel. And what should the permanence of the UN in these places be, especially if it creates such a distorted economic situation?

Walking down through Caicoli, towards the University, I saw more and more pre-fab trailers. The Kiwis or Australian forces are camped out there as well, with these huge concrete barricades and sandbag installations. I got to thinking about the life of a city, the geography of “emergency”. It would be quite fascinating to map (1) The camps (2) The UN/Aid agencies installations and lastly, and more difficult (3) the residential map of “internationals” paying exorbitant rents.

Past World Vision, which at one point had shrunk down to quite a modest size, and is now a gigantic operation again.

Then I saw these big grease stains on the ground from wax with burn marks and bougainvillea flowers. A moment to recent dead I thought. Then I realized, this is where the 8 Timorese police were shot, on May 25. There must have been a candle vigil here last night. People on the street confirmed this to me, it’s been exactly four months since that heinous blood letting on a major Dili street.

Mountain people

Headed out of town early with Professor and family early in the morning. I was so happy to get out of Dili. On the road, I watched little piggies run in the mangrove mud, the people of Ulmera with their salt production, past Liquiça, which hadn’t changed much at all.

We were headed towards the Professor’s longtime fascination, the old kingdom of Maubara.

It was a Dutch enclave until 1859, where the Chinese and Timorese ran extremely lucrative coffee plantations and earlier sandalwood trade. After its entry into Portuguese jurisdiction, with the fateful (unauthorized) trade of Solor for Maubara in 1859 by Governor Lopes de Lima, Maubara became the site of constant disobedience and struggle. After Maubara was linked to the assassination of Governor Lacerda Maia in 1881, it had a bad name until 1893 when it rose up under the leadership of a rebel named Mau Buti.

Like many places in Timor, the coastal town was basically insignificant for most of history. The Portuguese constructed a fort there in 1860, and attempted to control the mountain peoples above from below. The large Chinese community in Maubara region was highly suspect to the Portuguese administration. The wealth and majority of people lived in the cool mountain areas above the port.

I had only previously visited the coastal town, known as Maubara. (And had one amazing party with the first year of Peace Corps volunteers in the fort!) The beach there is beautiful, with dark black volcanic sand. We blasted through the town, up a dry river bed and onto an old paved road.

Professor explained that this road used to be the main highway East to West in Timor. The Indonesians built the road that clings perilously to the coast, which we know today as the “main road”. This older road was typically Portuguese, with lots of S-curves and beautiful views along the mountain ridges. We passed through what is equivalent to “Outback” scenery. Dry, arid, dusty and seemingly ready to go ablaze with a spark. Only a few human settlements, where there was feeble irrigation.

Then we made it up high to the shady Acacia tree highlands. We started to see heaps of flowers, bougainvillea, a beautiful sort of wild lily, poinsettia (those Christmas plants that are poisonous to cats), and of course forests of waxy-leaved coffee trees. Coffee in Timor is shade grown, under the shade of large-trunked Acacias. This is one of the driest months of the year in Timor, and this elevated forest seems like an oasis.

To the dismay of my rear end, which was bouncing on a wooden bench, we drove all the way to the top of the mountain, not far from one of the most remote and formerly rebellious spots in the kingdom. I was happy to observe that Timor Telcom had its celluar tower up and operational, run by a generator.

Looking out to the north, we could barely make out the hazy outline of the island of Alor. Professor said the people of Maubara used to burn coconut husks on the beach when they wanted to trade with the island neighbors. The people of Alor would bring slaves to sell. To the south, we could see the dry expanse of the Lois River bed, which leads up on the other side of the valley to Timor’s most famous coffee plantations.

I try to follow Professor’s discussion in Indonesian with one of his local informants, a thirty-or forty-year old man with brown and red betelnut teeth. He tells Professor that there is a big party in town because one of his neighbors was accused of witchcraft and possession with the devil, and was forced to prove that he’s ok by offering tons of meat and booze to his neighbors.

Informant told us that people on the mountain had switched their allegiance from Fretilin to ASDT. Xavier was the first “smart” person in Timor, he said. He was a journalist, who traveled in Africa and America. (I thought to myself, nooooo, that’s Ramos Horta!)

He also tells us he learned “his Portuguese” in an Elementary school that was down the mountain that was run by Portuguese troops in the 1970s. He said they built in the middle of the jungle, on unoccupied land. The building was destroyed in the “war” but there is apparently still a very ornate plaque there.

Professor says don’t worry, I know who can tell us all about this school. There is a Portuguese man living down the road we came up. “Avo” José Serra must be about 76 now and arrived in Timor in 1964. He knew nothing about the place when he arrived, except that his brother was here for military service. Serra refused to evacuate with the other Portuguese in 1975.

He went grudgingly to the jungle with Fretilin in the late 70s, and waited out the militia violence in 1999, which was particularly bad in his region. He showed us the only thing that survived 1999, a yellowed photo of him and two friends in the early 1980s in his garden.

Serra tried to switch from a mixture of Indonesian and Tetum that he speaks with Professor to Portuguese to speak with me. At first his speech was literally half Tetum and half Portuguese, and I myself had trouble speaking in one language or the other! But Professor insisted that we speak Portuguese and I plowed on. It was like Serra’s Portuguese had to unmelt. After about 10 minutes he was speaking what he called his Portuguese from the “interior.” (He grew up in Castelo Branco, Beira, in the north, a poor region of Portugal.)

He told us quite interestingly that he did not suffer from one bit of saudade for the 40 years he was here during Portuguese and Indonesian rule. Only with independence, and a flood of peacekeepers and professors bringing him olives, cheese, chestnuts and even water from his family’s springs that he started to get nostalgic. He said that they brought him these things to matar saudades, to kind of quench his nostalgia, but that it only made him more and more thirsty to return to Portugal.

Tomorrow he said he would go to Dili to finally take care of his passport. His nephew, who was up there visiting, told us that Avo Serra did not have either Timorese nor Portuguese passports. Just a simple “bilhete de identidade”, probably issued by the UN.

Serra believes, especially after recent events, that Dili is an evil place. It really is torture for him to go down there. He is reminded more of the fact that the politicians, who spent most of the struggle in exile, are ruining this place at the little people’s expense. He also seems very hurt by the way that Timorese people seem to always resort to violence to sort out their problems.

He was born in 1930, and only remembers Portugal when it was “repressed” by the dictatorship. He says they tell him things are very different now, with nice highways, and a better life. But he also says he is shocked by the number of forest fires in Portugal recently. He can’t say whether he wants to return to Portugal. He fears that if people in Maubara find out he wants to go to see family, they think he will never come back. People already began to mistrust his motives for getting his passport, he said.

Serra never married in Timor, and it seems fled his married life in Portugal. Certain less “masculine” mannerisms he has makes one speculate whether Timor was simply a more friendly place for him than Estado Novo Portugal.

If you need any proof of what an amazing character he is, please watch the “One Cup” documentary indicated in the links bar to the right. He is featured prominently, and you can hear his amazing way of speaking!

We made our way down the mountain, giving a ride to three young men. One was walking with a sparkling new boombox on his shoulder, like the 1980s ghettoblasters. Professor said they must not have batteries for it, and there is no electricity up there, but hell, it makes a great statement.

In Maubara, we drove past the church and down onto the beautiful black sand. Time for a late afternoon dip in the water. After the Atlantic ice of the Portuguese coast, it felt like beautiful, waveless bathwater. I don’t think I will ever like any beaches as much as I love Timor.

On our way back into Dili, we saw a plume of smoke coming from a government repair workshop in Comoro. Two Australian cops were casually interviewing some young men by the side of the road. They didn’t seem bothered at all.

Maybe Avo Serra is right, Dili is a wretched place.

Sushi, embajada and malai boot

I was back at to the books yesterday, reading the parts of Xanana’s autobiography about the time on Mount Matebian, when the whole civilian population of the East was living there in bases de apoio. Fretilin/Falintil basically convinced and coerced the civilian population into the “jungle” to resist the military occupation. They set up communal systems including schools and agriculture. But it was a severe time, when disobedience was treated as “reactionary behavior” or worse, got you labeled as a “traitor.” Xanana describes how he repeatedly saved the pro-Indonesian kings involved in the 59 rebellion from death at the hands of their more zealous communist rivals.

Then Lost Anthropologist dropped by and we went to the Indonesian canteen next door. He said he had been at Xavier’s until 3am last night. Hard core! I wondered if he had been drinking palm wine and chewing betel nut.

I told him I was looking to buy a bicycle and we walked in circles looking for the legendary Australian department store “Harvey Norman” which apparently no longer exists in my part of town. I had 40cents left, and thought if we found a place like that they would accept a credit card. He he. How naïve. In Audian, which is the commercial neighborhood, there were two Chinese stores selling the $100 mountain bike specials. They are real garbage. I used one in 2001-3. It was not pleasant.

On the left, towards Becora from Audian, I saw the Cuban flag flying. I had to check this out! We walked over, and the façade on the first floor was tinted glass. A 3 meter fence in front. The plaque above, sure enough, read “Embajada de Cuba”. This is hardly the diplomatic neighborhood, but they got into the game late and maybe there were no houses left in Farol. Or maybe this is their statement, they didn’t want to be in that club anyways. I asked the security guard how long it had been opened. He claimed only a month. He said all of the Cuban doctors are based up in Lahane, to the South above town, where the Portuguese built Dili’s first hospital and the Governor’s house.

We headed past the site of the most posh Japanese restaurant in Dili, Gion, where some Japanese engineers, neighbors of Amerioca in Manatuto treated us to the best sushi I’d ever eaten. It was still there! At 2pm there was one table occupied. But I could tell they were holding on until the new UN mission sent the hundreds of new civilian staff.

Later in the afternoon, I headed to the ANZ Bank ATM down the street from me. I tried both cards. Neither worked. I was a bit nervous about that, because I had yet to withdraw money here. Then I saw Docogirl across the street. She was with her Fixer, this very ambitious and talented friend of hers of seven years. She said they were headed to the ONLY other ATM all the way across town at the airport. We all hopped in, and cruised across town at a lovely 20 kilometers per hour, as one does in Dili.

At the ATM, I saw my former boss at UN Agency. She was hakfodak, pretty shocked to see me, especially because I had dropped so much weight and had short hair. I felt a little embarrassed because I had been meaning to go over and say hi to everybody before I got caught out like this! Anyways, she has been here for over three years. I guess the “emergency” has kept her on longer than normal.

After the ATM trip, Docogirl and I went back across town to our internet café, where I tried to no avail to use Skype. The Chinese guys displayed a form of machismo yet unseen, which is to pretend you can fix a computer for a girl, when you clearly have NO idea what you are doing. I got frustrated and left.

I have yet to be able to properly upload photos, partly because the bandwidth I get at the café is so low, and photos these days are so big.

After the café, we went walking towards the old waterfront to have a beer. Passed a couple of real dives, that used to be decent places. Then we made it to Little Padang, which used to be a lunchtime favorite. They had a nice terrace, with views out over the quiet harbor. I had a beer, and they tried to convince Docogirl not to order an orange cordial (because it would take too long to make) but she insisted and 10 minutes later she had a drink. We watched the sun set behind the clouds over the lighthouse.

Then, surreally, the Malai Boot (Ramos Horta) walked straight across our field of vision across the street, in front of the assembled crowd of young men. His gate was very stiff, as if he was either out of shape, or straight off the plane. He had two Malaysian civpol with him and some Timorese close security. He was clearly heading towards Xavier’s place to compliment him on his lovely Congress/Party.

We were tickled. I thought it was a nice gesture to walk, and not to go in an insane entourage. We finished our drinks and both admitted to each other that we wanted to see the scene, so we walked towards the party. Still drum circles. People from Caicoli in Dili recognized Docogirl, and said their neighborly hellos. One man was speaking a mixture of Mambai, Indonesian, Portuguese and Tetun through his browned and reddened betel-nut stained teeth. The younger people around were giggling.

No sign of Malai Boot, he was probably inside having a chat with Xavier. Ironically, I had also been reading Malai Boot’s book this morning, where he really rips into Xavier as anti-mestiço (racista) and is pretty harsh about Xavier’s capacity for ideology and politics. I suppose that is all water under the bridge now. These are the only guys “left” that haven’t been dragged down with really ugly allegations in the post-independence era, having a Sunday afternoon chat.

Yoda’s Folk Rave Political Rally

Ok there is officially only one politician I still like in East Timor. It’s Yoda, Xavier do Amaral, whose party is called ASDT, which is actually the original name that FRETILIN took in 1974. He adopted this name for his party in 2001. (For background on the politics, please read earlier entries in this blog dedicated to him!)

The guy is amazing. Starting last night, there has been a growing camp of his supporters outside his house. They are staying on the nice patch of grass next to the ocean in front of his (relatively small) compound. The door to his compound is wide open, with a couple of men trying to keep an eye on the crowd.

Last night there was a live band there, playing typical Timorese music, but then a couple of songs with an accordion with a bit of Forró flare. There were not that many people there yet, but camps were already set up. There was a little muted drumming going on closer to the beach.

Today I woke to the sound of gongs and drums, it was carrying up from the beach about 200m away. The dancing started at the crack of dawn. Clearly the UN does not trust Xavier, or maybe their pilots wanted something new and interesting to fly over, because the whole morning, there were helicopters circling.

I had lunch at the “local” restaurant next door to Fundação Oriente ($1.50 for tofu, veggies, rice, noodles and ice tea). The place was very interesting, I think I will be going everyday now! Because the crowd was nearly all young people, 20 and 30 something mestiços and Chinese-Timorese, there was a nice atmosphere. A couple of flaming Timorese guys, with their fabulous (for lack of a better word) fag-hag girlfriends. Many of the people I swear I recognized. Most I think used to work for their parents in the various restaurants around town.

I decided I could not contain my curiosity any longer, I had to see the scene at Xavier’s place. I walked down to the waterfront and saw that there were two tebe dance/drum circles. The hypnotic sound of the gongs and the babadook, small drums in the middle of the group, surrounded by men with the rooster feather headdresses. Many were wearing the tais weaving sarongs. There were betel nut juice stains everywhere.

I was the only malai there except two Malaysian police and an Australian soldier. I couldn’t help but snap away photos. I’ve seen these events in 2001, and again in 2003. This is ASDT’s National Congress, and they had set up bamboo structures for the delegates from most of the districts. They had nice laser-printer labels tacked on them, and backpacks hanging from the back “wall.” Party officials had photos IDs hanging around their necks. I met a thirteen year old girl who looked about 8 who had her very own party ID!

The women were mostly gathered in the shade. A couple of people were drunk, but not many. Most were just buzzing on the drumming and the communal vibes! Kids were jumping into the ocean, which was at a nice high tide.

A huge water tank, about the size of my room, was available on one side.

The gigantic banyan tree in Xavier’s compound across the street was a hangout of choice for the katuas, old guys, with some status.

Xavier basically invites everybody to his place and it really feels like an open atmosphere. He was accused during the days of Marxist ideology of being “feudal” (and many of his followers were actually killed for this!)

But I cannot see this Congress as a feudal event. One does get the feeling that there is a certain “democratic” nature to this party. The people come, and Xavier gives them what they want. People are allowed to be crazy, to be themselves, within reason. I would like to see the actual “proceedings” of the Congress to understand the dynamics within the party, which started in one language group, Mambai, but appears to be expanding to other areas.

I bought two mini pineapples and a gigantic papaya on the street in the afternoon, costing a total of $3.50. If you think about it, papaya trees grow like wild fire and take little cultivation, and yet the fruit is quite valuable. The vast majority of Timorese live off of less than $2.

One of the common theories about the loromonu – lorosa’e conflict is that the Easterners (lorosa’e) are better entrepreneurs and sellers. That they dominate market trade and street selling, and that loromonu have always been more slack or less apt for commerce. And apparently one of the reasons more of the beleaguered lorosa’e have not returned to the East, their places of origin, is because they feel there is a lot to be earned with the new UN mission coming to Dili.

They have to protect their fruit vending territory.

A number of vendors came up to me on my way home trying to hawk phone cards and fruits. I thought I would have a laugh and offered them my papaya for $3, a bargain. A malai selling fruit, just what Timor needs!

In my head there is a Greyhound station

The past two nights I have woken up at 4am. And had that feeling, oh, I’m really not going to get back to sleep soon. For those who have taken a class with me, rented a movie with me, or ridden in a car or bus with me, it would be hard to imagine me as an insomniac! It’s actually laughable. Because I have been so prisoner to eight hours of nightly slumber for so long, part of me thinks it’s a blessing to be awake now because 4am is one of the most peaceful hours of the day. A good time to think and listen to Ben Gibbard’s voice, which has been making me sadly happy since I first left home in 1997.

I’m starting to get used to the strange feeling of being paradoxically quite alone but surrounded by people interested in me and watching me. I perhaps make the naïve American mistake of trying to be friendly with the Timorese staff at the house, when in the end, they are more comfortable in a hierarchy. Yesterday, the cleaning lady, who had previously been sprightly and friendly, was brooding, bringing her bad mood to me in the morning. The strange passive-aggressiveness around here. I tried to calculate if I could have possibly insulted her since the last time I saw her. No. So I offered a donut peace offering, which was of course, not refused.

In any case, more than ever, I just feel comfortable in my own skin here and now. I don’t get lost in Dili. I have a history here. Perhaps this comfort comes from not having to figure everything out, from having struggled through the hard stuff.

I spent the morning hours flipping through some of the canonical Portuguese colonial historians and anthropologists. Particularly two guys named Luna de Oliveira and Antonio de Almeida. The former was an army guy who did not spend much time here, but dedicated the latter half of his life to a detailed chronology of conflict and alliance in Portuguese Timor. (It is an interesting read, probably the most detailed of any source, recently republished by Fundação Oriente.)

Then Antonio de Almeida, a colonial “anthropologist” who published on archaeology, oral history, linguistics, social structure, material culture and art. The volume “A Expressão Portuguesa no Oriente” was also published by FO. It’s a real crap shoot. But today I located quite valuable pages: the etymology of one kingdom Afaloicai, and two accounts of the origin stories told by Naueti language speakers.

Professor had suggested, and rightly so, that I needed to understand the historical processes in the East of Timor that led to the late twentieth century landscape. It turns out the “kingdoms” which are my focus were never of much importance to the Portuguese, and while they are close neighbors, sharing both languages, they both consciously define themselves as having distinct origins. (This is confirmed by Almeida.)

Arriving in his rusting Landcruiser, Professor suggested we finally get to work systematically on a listing of the “kingdoms” recognized by Portuguese sources, starting from as early as 1703. It’s actually quite amazing that nobody had done this before us – there are a great many lists of this type, from a variety of sources. Our labor would be to produce a gigantic matrix of names of kingdoms by date, and by ruler. Easier said than done!

The Portuguese often had very little idea about their vassals and rebel kingdoms, and our growing matrix begs meditation on the early influence of Dominican missionaries in the creation of alliance between North and South. But what this exercise reveals more than anything is that the current “political” boundaries and balances of power, especially in the Eastern part of “Portuguese Timor” are extremely recent. Only starting 150 years ago do we really begin to see incorporation/subjugation of kingdoms around Mount Matebian.

I am really lucky to have Professor to work with here. He is tireless and extremely motivating. He studied under one of the most well known Southeast Asia scholars, who is read by most college undergrads, who was known for his capacity to collect and make sense of masses of information. Professor says, wisely, that I should not frantically dedicate myself to “fieldwork” here without writing a basic structure first. I need to know what it is I am looking for.

Unfortunately for my thesis (but fortunately for my health) I do not have time to hangout and let ethnographic detail dribble out of my informants.

There are birds chirping outside my window. I have matan dukur, sleepy eyes.

Nuns, Cubans, and basketball

A nun riding with her white habit under the motorcycle helmet. A soft gray blanket of cloud gathering on the dark and bruised hills above the city. The smell of burned grass ever present in the city, often a nice breeze running off the ocean.

Today I met up with a German anthropologist who is studying in the UK, currently doing fieldwork in the remote mountain town of Funar, which lies two hours walk from Laclubar. This is in Manatuto district, central mountain Timor. I think it’s near some of the towns Amerioca visited with nurses on horseback. This is the way the majority of Timorese live, when you look demographic patterns, aside from Dili the majority of Timorese live in a very disperse manner through the mountains. This is notable from the air, when flying in from Australia, because the zinc rooves are visible.

She helped me to basically officially abandon the attempt to discern group identity based on any kind of linguistic category. Here the term ethno-linguistic group is just a ruse. The Portuguese administration loved it, as is proven by the amazing Fontoura album from 1938. And the UN also seemed/seems dependent on it. There is no point in looking beyond self-identification when thinking of group identity here, because ritual authority and political authority are quite often overlapping, shared and extremely complex between two or more language groups. (The reason I have so clung to the issue of language, is because one of the groups I study has come to identify itself by its language group over the past 40 years.)

Docogirl showed up and told us about a hilarious run-in with one of hundreds of Cuban doctors now practicing in Timor. She had gone to film at the dust-bowl IDP camp set up across from the F-FDTL barracks in Metinaro, about an hour outside of Dili to the East. She had heard about the Cubans’ rather brusque manner, and indifference to their patients’ comprehension. And today, she witnessed the assembly-line activity firsthand. These doctors apparently listen to just the necessary amount of information and scribble off prescriptions incredibly quickly. No chat, no explanation. (To their defense, I remember meeting an Australian dentist here in 2003 who described her program as: arrive in town, wait for people to queue up and start pulling teeth like mad.)

I walked through the Liceu Antonio Machado, the first serious building the Portuguese dedicated to “higher education” in the 1960s. It was lavishly renovated by the Portuguese government in 2000, and is still well kept. Through the back part, coming through from the Parliament, I cut towards the tennis courts. No malais playing. I remember a time when by about 4-5pm there would be people warming up for a game before dark. Victorino, Mozambiquan tennis champion held court on these courts. Now it was a rag-tag group of Timorese kids, none older than 10 years old, with an eager young Timorese coach.

Before the courts is a rather nice basketball hoop. No net, but the rims are nice, and the court is level and uncracked. Nobody was there. The thought of shooting some hoops was really appealing.

I sorely miss Queen (of the Weekend), my partner in crime here in 2001-3. We used to go to Dom Bosco in Comoro and play with the neighborhood boys, I remember one in particular who we called “Dennis Rodman” – he had the jersey and everything. They were great sports, and mature enough to be able to play with us without a second thought. Dom Bosco is now full up with IDPs, I doubt there is the room or the patience for basketball!

I wracked my brain for anybody who can play basketball. I realize I really don’t know that many people here anymore. Living alone in Lecidere isn’t helping to build a “network.” (But then, neither is my aversion to the malai-magnet restaurants.) At night, it’s basically just TV, computer, kitchen and occasional chats with the security guards.

Tomorrow there was supposed to be a big rally, which was so hyped by the two daily papers, and by rumor on the street that it actually led to a mini-exodus from the city. This morning I overheard a funny conversation in Vila Verde on the street, two groups of ladies were talking about “tomorrow” and whether they would venture out, and on their parting one shouted to another, maybe I’ll just flee to Ataúro Island!

According to the two dailies and the international forces it has been cancelled. I think the biggest reason is because the Malai Boot (Big Foreigner), Ramos Horta is out of the country which is obvious because of the lack of security at the Palace. The organizers want to have leverage against Ramos Horta, but they also want the drama of the confrontation, and I suppose they want to give him a chance to respond in person to their demands. (Which are as of yet unclear: “democracy, justice, peace”.)

I need to start strategizing and planning to head to Baucau. Not only because that’s where my research is, but because Dili is just too heavy.

Alliance (and violence)

A confused rooster crows at 11:45pm. Until now, there’s only been one chopper fly-over. A quiet night, until now.

My social day had ended relatively “late” with a beer wrapping up slightly before the witching hour, my Lost Anthropologist friend making his way back past “Jardim” camp on foot, said he had to get moving around 6pm to avoid walking past there at dark.

Today I walked by the government palace building around noon. Before lunchtime. The place was empty. I had never seen it like this. There were a couple of cracked windows where protestors had thrown rocks. The site of a burned out car was marked by a square black halo in the parking lot. There were virtually no security guards anywhere, the doors of the palace open and empty. Even access to the UN annexes behind the palace seemed unguarded. Part of me wanted to follow the lone international advisor in and check out the lack of activity there.

I counted the cars in the parking lot that were not UN. It was shocking. Maybe 5-10.

Is the government actually working? It seems like they have simply thrown in the towel.

There were twee colorful banners along the balconies of the palace reading “Timor Ida Deit” (There is only one Timor) and other slogans of unity. As I continued towards Kolmera, past Toko Lay, I saw other posters promoting unity by Timorese artists. Some with crocodiles, people in their adat clothes holding hands. I realized that I am an extremely cynical person in relation to posters, reconciliation and the international community. I wondered who was naïve enough to foot the bill for these latest ones.

I stopped by the Ministry of Education, and was happy to see a fair bit of activity. It seemed the vast majority of civil servants were there. I think reopening schools has been made a major (and realistic) priority by Ramos Horta.

I then walked down to the Comoro road. Passing the Dili District Tribunal, I was even more struck by the dead aspect of the place, which by all rights should be the busiest of all government institutions! There were three people sitting on a bench in the foyer having what seemed to be a personal conversation. They could have been sitting on the beach, or on a bench waiting for a bus. The security guard made an effort to get up and check me out, giving up without a word, realizing I was just some crazy useless malai. I asked, “Are there any hearings today?” The answer “No”. I asked “Is anybody working here?” He said, “Yeah.” Judging by the three motorbikes and 6-8 cars (many of which looked “international”), not much work could be going on. But then again the work load got lighter when 57 people escaped in broad daylight from Becora prison at the end of last month.

Word is Alkatiri will have his day in court in early October.

My Lost Anthropologist friend was staying at the “Backpackers Hostel” which costs $8/night for a bunk. It’s one of the cheapest places to stay in Dili, it’s only competition the long-standing Dili Guesthouse near the Old Market, which is too close for comfort to the neighborhood of Quintal Ki’ik. The Backpackers was a bit grotty for my taste, but has a nice collection of DVDs, a decent kitchen and patio/eating area. Had another nice “café timor” and share gripes about our projects and the lack of useful bibliography on Timor.

His area is where two (sometimes three) languages meet and coexist, in his case Bunak, Mambai and sometimes Tetun. He is attempting to model marriage and inheritance systems in this context, which must be a fascinating, and well, extremely difficult task. He was explaining (and I forced him to explain the anthro terms I had never been forced to learn) that certain models for marriage and inheritance are more rigid, and hence dominate in a certain situation, and others are more plastic. That is how groups can so effectively co-exist here.

He also said something which I found fascinating, and was not aware of. That Bunak and Mambai are of course from “opposite” language groups (Papuan and Melanesian, in that order) and yet, in areas where they coexist, they seem to share a hybrid ritual language, which is unintelligible to most on both sides.

This is what anthropologist with their obsessions with separating, classifying and rule-writing have glossed over here for so long: the incredible power of social creativity of humans. Thank god we are finally allowed to study what for so long was considered the vexing “exception to the rule.” If we look more closely, in a place like Timor, with incredible patterns of marriage alliance across regions, linguistic complexity spilled across the challenging topography of the place, what old school anthropology defined as exceptions are in fact the RULE, and the glue which has kept this place as peaceful as it has been. 

The “West” sees peoples like the Timorese as war-mongering hot-heads. Is it because they headhunted, they seemed to have created a ritual scheme for conflict, which we interpret as a relish for blood and revenge?

Look at the twentieth century in Timor. How many bloody episodes can we count in Timor? Only a couple snafus related to taxation, and the autocratic rule of Governor Celestino da Silva before the big rebellion of 1911-12. Then the cataclysm of World War II, a violence from outside which triggered waves of violence from inside. Then 1959, also an “exterior” event which gained a life of its own. And then 1975. Given how complex this place is, the recurrent hungry season and periodic famine, I think that’s really not a bad record. Look at the “West” in the same time period. Let’s not kid ourselves, our lovely national system of the twentieth century has a worse track record than the Timorese systems of alliance and ritual-linguistic co-existence.

I suppose either way, looking at the question of alliance and violence, one can be accused of (gasp) orientalism. I’m just saying we should challenge ourselves to view the complexity of human relations here, and not necessarily buy either sanitized view that the Timorese are a proud, peace-loving people victimized by colonialism and occupation, or the view that without outside interference, they are doomed to keep killing each other in an endless cycle of violence.

The trouble with normal

After three days here, I think what has most disturbed me is how “normal” the situation here has been made mostly by international people. What do I mean by that? It seems Timorese people have not lost a sense of sadness, shock, disappointment and anger over what has happened to the city. But the humanitarian and “peacekeeping” community seems to work under a completely different Cartesian logic.

Scared urban people who refuse to go home? Ok: “Displaced peoples”. So, register them. Give them tents, jerry cans, food supplies. Hell, even hook them up to the electrical grid. In the trouble spots, throw some floodlights over them and send helicopters over every night in regular intervals to check up on the situation. Elaborate, regularized flight plans.

This foreign view of “intervention” seems to have been transmitted to the Timorese government, which seems to believe that signing attendance rosters is keeping things “normal.” What’s more, Department of Labor and Solidarity statistics apparently show that over 90% of the district of Dili is “displaced” and receiving aid, which is not only impossible. Even if it were possible, how can this situation be acceptable? Ramos Horta seems to have given up on his pledge to have the camps emptied out by late September. What exactly is the end game here?

Has it ever occurred to DPKO and UNHCR that this situation is basically unprecedented in the history of “peacekeeping”? Never has the population of a capital city collectively moved to the nearest park and street corner, often a stone’s throw from home, and begun to call itself “refugee” — earning the moniker “displaced people” and everything that comes with it. This is a city of fear-inspired Hoovervilles which are being endorsed and sponsored by international humanitarian aid! Not since the feeding and housing of the militias responsible for the Rwandan genocide in Congo in 1995 has the “humanitarian apparatus” lost its purpose like this.

Is it also acceptable and normal that gang warfare including the use of machetes, potentially lethal metal-tipped arrows and blunt metal objects spreads through the city like a contagion, and all politicians and the UN can seem to do about it is talk about “reconciliation” and keep the night sky buzzing with helicopters? (Which by the way have to keep flying anyways because many pilots only get paid for days they fly.)

What is needed is good intelligence on the ground, to infiltrate these groups, get evidence, find out who the people are inciting the violence, and bring them to swift justice. Let people see that this is NOT normal, NOT acceptable and that the government is taking dramatic and swift measures to deal with it in cooperation with the UN. Instead the ema ki’ik (little people) are seeing their ema boot (big people) seemingly incapable of doing anything but letting the international community bring their “displaced” logic to the situation.

Few people are out after about 6:30pm. Last night, on what I believe to be the main commercial and social block in Dili, in Lecidere, during a twenty-four minute period, I counted 7 cars passing, and 5 motor bikes. (With DVDs, sex and sleeping, the international community seems ok with nighttime lockdown — as long as the beach is still safe during the day. “Hell, it’s not Haiti,” one UN staffer coming from Port-Au-Prince told me.)

The security guards here say that when their shift ends at 3am, they cannot convince anybody to come get them in a car or motorbike, so they have to walk home alone through the city, which fills them with dread. For them the situation is anything but normal.

Flood lights and internet fleecing

Three years is enough for a “new” generation of kids on the street. One of my tasks here last time, in my second contract with UN Agency, was to mentor an NGO that works with these kids. I knew the situation then, most kids were on the street begging during the day, not sleeping there. They had poor families to return to. Sometimes I would see men “tios” standing behind them, seemingly running the begging operation.

The situation doesn’t seem like it has changed much. In Lecidere, near the out-of-fashion City Café, a group of about 6 labarik, none over the age of 8, approached me. They began bothering me. One had tried to pinch my ass earlier. This time I decided to talk to them. I started with the classic, “Where is your mother?” and they were evasive saying “We are hungry and poor.”

Then I got the information out of them. The mothers were at home, just two blocks down the road. They go home whenever then want. They claimed that they were too poor to pay the $5 school fees. I told them, if they want money from me, they would have to bring their mother and I would talk with her. They did not seem interested in that program.

The real problem is, tons of UN staff and police give these kids money. Mostly people from cities where there are children on the street. They do not seem to understand the dynamic in Dili. Their “donations” are just keeping these kids running around barefoot on the street all day, putting a value to them, which can easily be exploited.

A man wearing a shiny watch made eye contact with me and began to walk off after I sent the kids on their way. I couldn’t tell whether he was “protecting” me from them, or keeping tabs on them, verifying his profit.

Last night ventured out with Professor from his Vila Verde home (near the Cathedral) to get takeaway from the famous Tropical Bakery, which moved in 2003 from the Comoro road strategically to the foot of Obrigado Barracks.  The place, my malai colleages will recall, has always been an expat favorite. A Chinese-Timorese family with connections to Indonesia is behind the operation, and they have a real flare for presentation, service and quality baked goods and meals.

As we approached in the dark, in Professor’s insane rusting Landcruiser, I saw this bizarre “Close Encounters”-ey glow on the horizon. This was the light being projected onto the UNMIT mission headquarters (Obrigado Barraks), and, more importantly, on the refugee camp across the street. It looked like a ballpark, or a football stadium. A crazy amount of ambient light at night. (I wondered if Soweto used to be lit up like that during apartheid times.)

Professor had explained that one could call Tropical for takeaway at night, but they didn’t keep the café-restaurant open out of fear surrounding the IDPs and recent violence at the gates of camp. At one point there were choppers on both sides of the city, and it seemed like one was circling, which had me pragmatically nervous, after all, I’m new in town, not immune to this stuff!

Professor does not seem overly worried about the recent clashes, if anything, he believes that the good malais have more to offer than ever in terms of trying to shed some “objective” light on the situation. I find that view a little optimistic. Seems like foreigners have interfered in the situation substantially for the worse, including horrible reporting from Australia, inflammatory blogs by Portuguese Fretilin hacks.

During my ride back to Lecidere, the streets were particularly empty. I can see why expats have curtailed nighttime activity. It’s just spooky.

I went to post my first two blog entries from here this morning, at “Sugar Internet Café”. The people who run it are, I believe, mainland Chinese who have done business in Indonesia before. They are very precise about billing, to the minute (with some rounding up). Here is the scheme: $6/hr for a computer and internet, and a mere $5/hr to connect a laptop. No internet telephony is allowed. The connection is a 256 MBS broadband which the manager buys from a reseller, who is dividing larger bandwidth. I hope I’m not divulging trade secrets here, but he told me he pays $1200/mo. to get this connection, and if he went straight to Timor Telcom, he would be paying $1600.

All for a connection that would cost $15 in China or $30 in Europe.

Ouch. Now, is it clearer why the blogosphere is so dead in Timor? Only UN desk-jockeys have good opportunity. (I would know!!) Also clear why the Timorese papers cannot maintain presences online.

I packed up after 36 minutes ($3), I went across the street to an old hang out, Café Timor. It’s where I first lived in 2001. In fact I was there on 9-11. It was where I saw the twin towers go down, at 11:45pm at the bar. I got talking to Leni, the woman/girl in charge, she remembered me. I believe she said, “YOU still here?” I told her I had been in Portugal for the past 3 years, and she said “Me too.” She’s back for holidays to take care of the place while her parents take some time off in Jakarta.

They are gearing up for the big UN mission, they are at 80% capacity, most UN Agency people. It’s $20/night with A/C. The bar did not look the hangout it once was, I remembered it used to be where Africans, Brazilians and Portuguese would hang out. One time a UNPOL left a pistol on top of the men’s toilet.

Getting back home, I had a chat with Carlos, the security guard, who looked quite nervous. He said, “The situation is no good.” I asked what he meant. He said there was shooting in Taibesse last night, the southern reaches of town. I asked where he lives. “Taibesse,” the response I was expecting. He said they heard gunshots around 4am. He assumes it was the GNR shooting rubber bullets.

I used to live up near the Chinese cemetery in Taibesse. I always got the feeling that the neighborhood, continuing above us near the market, was kind of a powderkeg. It was the site of violence in WWII and during the civil conflict in 1975. Carlos claims that the problem in Quintal Ki’ik seems to have spread, that youth groups are “joining forces” across neighborhoods.

Carlos’ take on the situation was heartening. He said, look, it’s not a matter of running away, or fighting. What is needed is dialogue. He said the politicians have been debating the budget for months, then the needs of the “refugees”, but never the violence itself, its causes and consequences. He said, when the little people fight each other, they are losing the plot. What is to be gained with the little people killing each other? It was kind of implied that the little people should target their anger at the big people who have let this situation spiral out of control.

Saturday morning coffee and paper

Woke up this morning rather ecstatic that I live in a house renovated and used by Portuguese people. Why? Because they have a lovely espresso machine in the kitchen. The tekis, the little geckos, greeted me as I turned on the machine and got to work making myself coffee.

This place was tastefully decorated, with a mixture of Australian and local-made furniture, lots of weavings hanging in the dining room, and large photos by Gabriela Carrascalão. My room smells like mothballs. I wonder whether they repel mosquitos, or whether the Timorese cleaning ladies believe it smells fresh.

I have yet to meet the ema boot, the chefe, the head man here. Between his lunch and mine, and coffee with Docogirl, we missed each other. He apparently lives in the west of town, in a rather problematic neighborhood. Interesting.

I went out wandering to take advantage of the morning coolness. Bought the Suara Timor Lorosa’e (STL, The Voice of Timor Lorosa’e), which was a disappointing 8 pages for $0.50. Four of the pages are olahraga, or sports. Another two are occupied with wire stories about Brittany’s baby and Whitney’s divorce.

But the first page confirmed what the morning security guard Carlos told me, that last night there was trouble in the neighborhood I described yesterday. Quintal Boot, right next to Quintal Ki’ik, where we walked through, was scene of clashes last night. It’s probably 2-3km from here. Hence the helicopters buzzing overhead. One person was taken to hospital.

Other STL headlines “Parliament’s activity stopped” (they can’t make quorum in Committees because people come, sign the attendance sheets and head right back home); “Major Alfredo is not the root of the problem”; “Committee F Participates in a Dialogue with youth” (about some Parliamentary effort to bring youth leaders together); “Pakistan parliament reacts to controversial comments by Pope”; “Demonstrations must be known to the Government” (about the plans for big demonstrations in two weeks from now). This is as good a source of information as any here in Dili. I don’t blame STL, but I do think this should hardly be the best that Timor can produce.

People seemed friendly but subdued. Much less “Missus” (derisive or friendly). Quite a few street vendors selling mobile phone credit and newspapers. More than I remember from 2003.

I walked past the University, which already had quite a few students milling about at 9am. Then onwards to Kolmera, the Chinese and Indonesian shopping hub. The electronics stores had grown in size and variety. The street vendors had tons more “fashion” than before, tons of sunglasses, hats, hip-hop fashions, jewelry. The one thing that had not improved was the selection of books for sale. The same shitty Learn English books.

I bought my favorite $1 to-go lunch in Dili, tofu strips, coconut milk rice, half an egg and cucumber at the Aru Bakery. Happy that is still around.

I decided to cut towards Farol, towards one of my favorite places to contemplate Dili’s big blue bay. I sat on the crumbling rock wall there, looking up at the mountains, getting blown around by the strong breeze coming off the ocean for some time. I looked back towards the refugee camps at Motael Church and the nuns next door. (With the nice UNHCR tents.) Tethered goats were feeding on the weeds in front of me, probably refugees’ goats. In one of the camps, next to Motael, a family had laid out a huge 6-8 piece furniture set outside the tent.

That reminded me about the rains. When the rains come, I can hardly believe people will stay in the camps. If they do, it will be a humanitarian disaster.

The sidewalk around Alkatiri’s house has been cordoned off with huge zinc fencing, forcing the pedestrian to walk on the street on the bay side. Word is he’s pretty much holed-up there. Who can blame him.

I walked past my old house in Farol neighborhood, and was shocked to see that the NGOs there have heaps of tents set up on their grounds. Their employees are all living in tents, having fled their homes. Come to think of it, many of the biggest figures in the Farol NGO community are from the East, lorosa’e. It was shocking to me to see the tents, but confirms that the lack of trust and fear has spread to the intellectual elite as well.

Farol is a strange neighborhood. I have always tried to imagine what it must have been like in its prime in the early 1970s. Now it has a sort-of post-post-Apocalyptic feel about it, but still remains peaceful, relatively ordered and with some flowers. Back through the diplomatic residences along the waterfront, I could hear the generators humming.

The lighthouse was covered in rather clumsy posters made by the Australian forces with slogans like “We are here to help” and “Working together to bring safety”. They were taped up on the lighthouse with inappropriate electrical tape. I hopped a taxi back with a lorosa’e driver who said he was living in “Jardim” camp. Have yet to learn all of the camps.

Dili day one

From the air, compared to its neighbors, Timor is hard to miss the island, because of its size and the costal highway clinging along the dry, barren coast line, small fishing villages along the Tasi Feto. I was checking to see how much car traffic there was in the West, the troubled loromonu. Not much.

The tide was way out and the mangroves of Tibar were extremely muddy and brown, the water coming in bright swaths of green and blue green. There were white jeeps at the shooting range past Taci Tolu, I guess Police training has already started, or the international police were bored. No smoke over Dili – thankfully — just people burning the fields in the hills around the city, cleaning in preparation for the rains next month.

Airport (President Nicolau Lobato Airport): Strange commercial jet on the tarmac, then tons of uniformed Australian soldiers marching towards it, I realize it’s a charter. I guess they are going home. Passport control, no smiles, but no hassles either. The UN folks (half the flight) cruise right through, showing only their card IDs. I notice the Timorese “VIPs” — a member of the opposition Democratic Party, and a former Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission – appear to have their own exclusive entrance. Chinese Timorese, Indonesians, Timorese, Filippinos, Americans (North and South), Africans, all milling around the puny luggage carrosel that is so familiar to me. Now there is a Duty Free store, with red, yellow and black bags. Portuguese and Australian wines compete on the shelves. But mostly Chinese and Timorese were there loading up on whisky.

I begin to read as we wait for our bags. Finally we see an open topped truck drive up to the carrosel. Guys hanging off the sides like the streetcar in Alfama. Slowly we begin to recover our luggage.

The baggage carts are hand-me-downs from TAP Portugal, from the island of Madeira, with ads for the lovely Madeiran Coral Beer. How appropriate — from an island with really bad politics — I can’t help but see the sad humor.

I pass through the outer doors of the airport (the door jam is all cracked and broken and the trolley barely passes over). Docogirl and Professor are there hanging about, they barely recognized me with my tropical mullet. Professor is there for work, gives me his phone number. Docogirl helps me grab my stuff and we head towards the lovely Dili taxi waiting in the lot.

“Refugee” kids – technically IDP kids – who live a stone’s throw away in UNHCR tents swarm the vehicle, “helping” us put the bags in the trunk. None are over 8 years old. I’m in for a shock. Dili is living in camps, not the Dili I knew. Two GNR approach the poor taxi which is pulling out at the typical Dili rate about 5 miles per hour. “M BORA!!” they shout impatiently at our taxi driver, who probably speaks bad Tetum as a second language and definitely does not know what M BORA means. I laugh.

We had towards the first twee Indonesian-style roundabout outside the airport, and the UNHCR tent city comes up on the right side. Stylish, and ironically probably better than the shacks the IDPs lived in before, points out Docogirl, and the nicest of all of the camps in Dili. But it was the site of clashes and rubber bullets from the GNR only days ago. No wonder the GNR’s impatience. Docogirl says the refugee camp actually sprung up in the middle of the roundabout initially. They are all over town, close to the encampments of foreign soldiers.

To explain what has happened in Dili basically defies the imagination.

Locals spew a litany of dates, events, a kind of bizarre timeline of the conflict, which for outsiders seems to have sprung up out of nowhere. “They went to the camps, then we went to the camps, then they went to the camps. Now we occupy the neighborhood.” Nobody here can see middle ground. Nobody is impartial. You can tell immediately what “side” people are on. Interestingly, I’ve mostly run into Westerners today. I think people from the East are licking their wounds and keeping a low profile. Alfredo (he doesn’t go by Reinado here) is the defacto leader of the Westerners. Since he escaped a couple of weeks ago, the Westerners are feeling more and more confident in Dili. (The East/West line is subject to some discussion, as it used to be at about Manatuto, now it seems to be creeping west towards Dili.)

I told one Westerner today that I am a “mixed” person, half English, half American. I said what happens to people in Dili who are half Western and half Eastern? He made it sound like identity can be pretty plastic, but you’d better be saying the right thing at the right moment.

Dili seems empty during the day. First, I drop my stuff at my very generous digs in Lecidere, which is entirely peaceful, and seemingly the new commercial center of gravity of downtown. The man in charge is out to lunch. With Docogirl, I head to Audian, a formerly bustling neighborhood, seems dead in comparison. Have vegetarian fried rice at a Chinese Timorese café. Docogirl attempts to order banana fritters and ice cream at 2:40pm and there “are none.” We are the only people in the café. There are no bananas, we ask ourselves? Or is the deep fry chef out?

We walk towards Docogirl’s house in Caicoli, past the Central market. There is a crowd, mostly youngsters, and lots of little ones and girls, so not to be too scared of, at the top of the market. They are looking into the burned down neighborhood of Quintal Ki’ik. Docogirl explains that this was the site of the machete battle that led to the latest death reported in the international media, three days ago now. The body had just been taken to Santa Cruz cemetery up the road, reported an old Loromonu man. Nothing to see here, he said, in order to get us to move on.

Docogirl said there are a couple of Lorosa’e people huddled together staying in Quintal Ki’ik even after the neighborhood has been almost entirely torched. A very tense situation, although walking through, seems like nothing.

We have delicious coffee in the backyard of Docogirl’s landlady, friend and protagonist, a Member of Parliament who was complaining about the amount of dirty laundry she had to wash after a morning in Parliament. Her youngest daughter, in middle school, tells us that orientation begins tomorrow.

Walking in the late afternoon in Lecidere, I realize how much time has passed. Cafés and nightclubs have long come and gone. A restaurant I used to have “brunch” at with UN folks is now an ANZ Bank office. I approach the water front, to check out Xavier do Amaral’s compound.

Men are playing cards in the front yard. Back in the distance, on the front porch, I can make out Xavier’s small figure, in a white tank top. The few times I went by the house, he would receive guests on the porch. Often just like that, in white tank top.

I found it strangely soothing to see him there. I have compared him to Yoda in the past, and I’m standing by this analogy. (I imagine his position on all of this rancor and conflict is kind of passive, he doesn’t want to promote conflict, and yet his party stands to benefit as a decidedly “regional” loromonu alternative to Fretilin. His power base is in Mambai central mountain Timor, which is considered the heart of loromonu.)

After loading up on supplies at the Chinese grocery around the corner, I had beer and cereal for dinner. Couldn’t find matches to light the stove here, and I couldn’t be bothered on my first day to venture out in the dark. Watched RTTL news interview Ramos Horta with Gonçalo the security guard, who is for the record loromonu. RH is a good communicator, but he alone cannot be expected to bring Timor out of this mess.

Then RTP International came on, as it does from 8pm til morning, and the party ended. It was a show on organic agriculture in southern Portugal.

All night choppers were buzzing overhead. I asked Gonçalo about this, he said, naaawww, it’s normal. But they seemed to be really close by and circling. I figured, well, I’m safe here, there’s nothing to worry about.

Except ghosts of course. I’m staying in the house that was the site of the biggest single massacre in Dili in 1999. Docogirl had tried to reassure me, saying that the violence happened on the opposite side of the compound from my room.

Gonçalo asked me before dinner if I was scared to be here. Before I even brought the topic up. What do you mean? I asked. He said, you know… 1999. I said, well, what about you guys? Are you guys scared?

He said when they first started working in the compound they were frightened. After all, people were killed inside the house, the militia burst in and killed 13 people, including politician Manuel Carrascalão’s adopted son. The Timorese are scared of sites where people have died a “bad” death.

But when they inaugurated a memorial to 1999 on the site, priests came and brought peace to the place. I told him I thought a shaman (matan dook) might be a better solution. He said that is all hocus pocus.

Then he proceeded to tell me something that gave me the chills. A Portuguese lady who was staying here last year reported to have seen a ghost, a person in white floating above the ground. Its feet didn’t touch the ground. She had never been told about 1999 here, and I doubt she knew.

So I spent the night a little jittery, listening to the sounds made by the lizards, and the creaking of the windows and furniture, trying to focus on happier things.