As we got on the plane in Darwin for Dili I could hear some Timorese asking each other if they were going back to vote. This was the first indication for us that an election was happening and an insight into the seriousness with which locals regarded it. Apparently the existing government is a coalition where there are so many different agendas that nothing has happened and here was a chance to sort that out. The rules are that you can only vote where you are officially registered and for most that is in their home village so there was a short but intense migration going on. Also going on when we arrived was a very loud rally for Fretilin, the party from the freedom fighters, which blocked the road we were on with what looked like thousands of red attired mostly young people, all on motorbikes and crowded into trucks waving the party flag. Everyone who had a horn was using it and yelling slogans. It looked like it could easily get out of hand. It didn’t, probably because of the large numbers of armed police and military police. And they didn’t win. On our first day’s drive we stopped at the top of a pass and met an old man who was walking for two days to be able to vote, and that was just getting there. He was carrying a broken jandal in his hand and didn’t have a spare. Other people were doing 20 hour bus trips, one way. A couple of days later when everyone was going back to Dili after voting, we counted 400 motor bikes an hour heading that way, and 2/3rds had one passenger or more. See below about roads to find out why no cars.
Why so passionate about politics ? You need to know some history to understand. From the mid 1550s to 1974 eastern Timor was a Portuguese colony, apart from during WW2 when the Japanese invaded. When the Portuguese scuttled away in 1974 they left a country with no economic base, no educated locals and a recipe for chaos. Political parties formed, civil war broke out, then Indonesia invaded. The first independent president lasted two weeks. Indonesia already owned the western half of the island and had the nod from the major powers to take over. This lead to guerrilla war because this wasn’t just a political and military situation, it was also a cultural assault given 90 percent of people in eastern Timor are Roman Catholics and the invaders were Moslem. The Indonesian army established control with the help of local traitors who were formed into a militia, and when in 1999 an independence referendum was unexpectedly held they set about terrorising the locals to try and get a result for their side. That didn’t work so the Indonesian army went on a rampage, which included attacking the UN people who promptly shot through leaving the locals on their own with considerable problems. This included four significant massacres of civilians. Eventually the Australian-lead force with a NZ contingent took control and in 2002 Timor Leste got it’s own government. So having their destiny in their political control is not taken for granted and much valued. (The militias went to Indonesia with the retreating Indonesians and are not welcome back.)
We visited quite a few massacre sights including one known as Jakarta 2 because the Indonesian army offered scholarships to go Jakarta for close to 200 of the brightest local secondary school students, and then drove them to this site where they were killed and thrown over a very steep cliff. Other ones included burning a church full of people, and shooting nuns. It seems the locals now make a differentiation between the Indonesian military and the rest of the Indonesians who are are not regarded as the enemy.
On this trip we were a party of three as Melanie came along and I organised it through a local agency. We were there for 8 days, all of which involved driving with our very careful guide and driver, Luis. We had a well-aged Mitsubishi Pajero because without 4WD you won’t get far. The roads are horrendous in general but not all are. And there is a lot of roading reconstruction going on east and west of Dili with one continuous 120ks of roadworks on the eastern side. The problem for us was that these roadworks were very similar to drive on as the completely unmaintained lesser roads. There were plenty of times you looked at the shambles ahead and thought we can’t possibly drive on that, but Luis got into the lowest gear and we would creep through. He was good and we never did unexpected bounces or hit the ceiling with our heads. A consequence of the roads is that you hardly ever see a standard car outside of Dili. All the traffic is 4WDs, small trucks and buses, and heaps of motor bikes and motor scooters. Somewhere in Timor Leste is a future motocross world champion. The buses compete with colourful and descriptive decorations including seemingly covering the windscreen. One of the most difficult roads we went on was 18ks of WW2 vintage, Japanese made, originally cobbled with irregular rocks, which looked like it had never had any maintenance and is now a rutted mess. The 18ks took an hour and a half to cover. I calculated that the 1084ks we travelled in total was at an average speed of about 20 ks.
The good part of bouncing slowly through a country is you get to see plenty, and can exchange greetings with locals, as well as spy on what their lives are like. It is definitely third world. The people are small and there are no fat ones outside of the main towns, and not many there. They mostly live in a subsistence economy based on growing their own food and selling surpluses in local markets. An exception is coffee which is grown in the hills and is a commercial crop but doesn’t seem to be really industrialised. The two coffee experts in our group raved about the quality of the product. It is probably the only useful economic thing the Portuguese left behind. The housing ranges from plenty of traditional grass-roofed dwellings, to rusting corrugated iron roofed huts with split bamboo walls, to Portuguese inspired mini mansions with as many roof angles as possible. The latter are the aspirational standard and usually are under construction over a long time and paid for by remittances from abroad. The yards are dirt and populated by skinny dogs, chooks, goats, small but well organised pigs, youths with nothing to do apart from smoke and fiddle with motor bikes, old people in plastic chairs, heaps of small children, and women working. Of course. Dogs also sleep on the road and are loath to move for traffic. They probably know no one wants to run over them because if you do that you owe the owner $30. A chook is $15, a pig is $45 and a big water buffalo $1500. Every village has a couple of stalls in someone’s front yard where there are water bottles filled with petrol for selling to bike owners. Often we saw someone filling their bike with a cigarette burning in their mouth. The same stall also sells a white liquid in a water bottle and it is palm wine. I didn’t get to try any.
We were a bit of an event in most places because tourists are not common. You can tell because there’s really no one trying to sell stuff. Only once when we were visiting a local sight did anyone show up with a little tray of trinkets for sale. There was one place by a beach were an NGO had set up a small tourist market, and we were pleased to see it. Partly because a bit of shopping is fun and partly because it had a nice cafe (a rarity), where a school of dolphins we had been watching back down the road caught up with us.
You are not dragged to see “my cousins shop” anywhere, there are no beggars, and no kids want a school pen. One cheeky boy saw us playing scrabble on our hotel balcony one evening and sheepishly tried asking for money, in English, so I told him to go away and stop spoiling things. Our guide took us to a traditional village where the ladies did back strap weaving which was for sale. He hadn’t told them we were coming and they were delighted to see us, along with the chance to make a bit of cash. We were sent up into the first floor of a circular thatched house and all sat around looking at each other. After a bit of prompting from Luis some woven things were produced along with explanations of what they were for. I think the length of cloth I felt I should buy is for formal wear by a man, and would end up in his coffin. After that there was a bit of question and answer with Luis translating, and Kay asked if they had voted which they confirmed by holding up a black-stained right forefinger. I saw the chance of a cheap laugh so showed how difficult that would be for me. I did get a laugh but also the comment that if anyone in the village chopped off fingers like I had they would have bled to death long before any help arrived.
After a few days Luis told us a bit about his life. He is 34 and his father had died from Indonesian bomb wounds when he was 7. His mother then had 6 children to look after before she died when he was 14. One sister ended up in a church orphanage and is now a nun presently in the Vatican. The family were very poor and at times ate palm wood which they barbequed. Apparently it is used as stock food. At 15 he went to Dili to stay with family friends he didn’t know and it sounds like he paid his way there by cleaning and cooking. He then went back to school but didn’t have enough money to pay for transport to get there, so he took to selling single cigarettes and boiled eggs early in the morning at the local market and at cock fighting in the evenings. Eventually he managed to learn to drive, worked in a guest house and was offered a job guiding and driving as long as he could speak English. Which he has learnt to a reasonable standard. He now has three children and I suspect enjoys spoiling them and they know nothing about the “hungry season”, which is the three months of the year when it is too dry for crops to grow.
The locals all speak multiple languages with their local dialect plus the national language Tetun, also a majority speak Indonesian and about twenty percent speak Portuguese. The official language is Portuguese which is used for education and seems a strange choice when not many use it. Apparently Tetun has a lot of variations that make it difficult to standardise. And just to add to the picture the currency is $US for notes and their own coins.
If you read about visiting Timor Leste it’s all about beaches and diving. One problem is that quite a few beaches have signs featuring crocodiles. We saw only one and it wasn’t swimming. We spent time all alone on a deserted sacred island called Jaco, where we had lovely swimming but no loungers or staff with cocktails. Apparently the local women go there once a year to perform secret rites. Luis and I reckoned they probably drink palm wine and laugh about how useless men are. We were staying at a beach camp nearby on the mainland and agreed to buying a fish for our dinner, which was one of four all about a metre long, caught in fifteen minutes while bringing the boat over to collect us. When they told me the price I asked Luis if it was a tourist price and he said it was about double the local, so these guys are good learners. Our accommodation there was a very small bure with see through spilt bamboo walls and floor, which felt very fragile. The toilet had a western variety sitter but the bathroom was a cistern with a bucket. Only I used it. Kay remained stoic.
We had a similar ablution deal in our first “guesthouse” away from Dili, except it was a sqatter only and it was a long way from the very rudimentary room we slept in. Kay continued being very stoic and didn’t complain. The rest of our accommodation was good and included two nice restored pousadas which are the fortified houses the Portuguese built at each main settlement, usually on the top of a big hill. The local cuisine doesn’t have the definition of, say, Thai or Vietnamese, and the best part is extensive use of garlic. It’s ok but nothing to get excited about. Because of the colonial past, wine is available at reasonable prices and we tried quite a few Portuguese ones. Reds are better than whites. NZ was represented by Giesens.
The best part of the country is found in the rugged interior where there are spectacular mountainous vistas, really steep valleys, and views that made me say “wow”. Melanie got up at 3 one morning to climb a mountain and see the sun rise, but it had been raining and she went back to bed. An intrepid young man called Tom was also going to do the climb with another guide, who didn’t turn up, and we heard he had set off on his own but we left before he returned so didn’t know his fate. A few days later he walked into where we were having breakfast on the other side of the country and apparently he only got temporarily lost a few times, and made it to the top. The other sights we went to included several large religious statues, war memorials, markets, animist burial sites, pousadas, a very unexciting oil well, the Indonesian border, hot springs, Japanese WW2 caves and the aforementioned massacre sites. And one museum where the English translations were close to floor. The most interesting parts for me was the getting to these places, and the most exciting was when the roads were cut into the side of nearly cliffs and one could see the edge of the road wasn’t particularly secure.
When we got back to Dili it was at the end of a ten hour drive, and the end of the tour, so we were keen to get to our room and relax. We had our first night there and knew it was a nice hotel. I got to the bathroom first and when Kay went in it was flooded, which was not my fault because a plumbing fitting had broken and I had not touched it. Truly. After a short inspection we were shifted to another room where the air conditioning remote didn’t work, so went to a third where later in the evening the bathroom lights ceased operating. Having cleaned up and got into some clean gear we went to the open-wall bar restaurant on the first floor, ordered drinks (mojitos for some and beer for another) and reviewed what we had experienced. The things that resonated were:
The relatively small disparity we saw in economic terms among the population. Like not one really expensive vehicle.
The lack of visual pollution. No big advertising signs.
The apparent lack of any aggressive behaviour.
No high fences or security guards.
The friendly people.
That it had been a very positive and enjoyable experience even with some long drives.
Dennis.
PS. To buy a bottle of wine in Darwin you need photo ID. When I suggested to the person I thought he must be joking he said I should leave.