The end of a beautiful adventure

And then, despite the hours and hours in the plane, it feels like you are ‘suddenly’ back home. Suddenly there is the whole meal bread and the Dutch cheese you have been dreaming about, the pasta and the pesto, the family and friends, you can walk through the streets unnoticed... And there is the cold rain, the dark which comes just a bit after 4pm, the big anonymous streets and Timor Leste feels very far away, too far away at times. What is left is a head and a heart full of memories, a laptop full of pictures and videos and the eyes that are compelled towards that little island above Australia every time I see a world map.

Before I went, Timor Leste was a name, it was a place constructed out of that what I had read about it and out of the few pictures I had seen. Now that little spot on the map is connected to the people who live there, to the beautiful places I have seen there, to the emotions I have felt there. It is connected to a part of my life, and important part of my life. And so the world map is no longer the same as it was before, because there is this tiny bit of map that now, like other parts of the map, means much more than just a bit of paint. The last week in Timor Leste was full! Full of last-minute interviews, visits, packing, goodbye parties and a constant feeling of being split between sadness about leaving and happiness not only about going home but also as a form of thankfulness for all the important things the time in Timor Leste has given me… At Ba Futuru we had the last show case on the 14th of December and I had my farewell party there

And I listened for the ‘last time’ to the music that always surrounded me at Ba Futuru

And then I left those graffiti walls behind, I said goodbye to the people whom a few months ago had been strangers whose language I did not speak, now it was hard to part from them. But the music I take with me, it does neither need a bag nor a visa. On the 16th I had my birthday and farewell party at the university. To celebrate my birthday with all those people who in such as short period of time had come to feel so much like old friends was something very special. The day was filled by the bitter-sweet feeling that I was so thankful for having them and at the same time so sad about leaving them the next day. It was an afternoon filled with

Cake

Wishes

Singing

Eating, and even dancing!

The next day after a last round of hugs at Ba Futuru and touching goodbye at the airport with at least half of the Women, Peace and Leadership people and other friends I boarded the plane to Jakarta wondering when I would put foot on this soil, breathe in this air, and meet these people again. The only way to keep going forward was to promise myself it would not be long. The days in Jakarta, the hours and hours in the plane, the hours of delay due to bad weather conditions, they all seem like a dream now, the only thing that feels real about them is that they took me very far away from Timor Leste… In Holland I immediately stumbled into an ongoing family get-together and this is the first moment I have found the time and the peace of mind to write my last blog about this adventure… Looking back at the last five months, I feel that they have been an important part and time of my life and that the people I met played an important role in this. I have the feeling that in some future, when someone asks me ‘what brought you to be who you are today?’ that Timor Leste will be one of the ingredients in my answer. Whether I am one of those foreigners who lost her heart to this little half-island, yes, I guess I am…what that will mean for the future…I don’t know…stay tuned…you might find out on this blog in some near or far future!

Alice in Wonderland

After a very full month of November, packed with interesting national holidays, Ba Futuru showcases around Dili, a visit to the island of Atauro, focus group discussions, interviews and the final event of the Women, Peace and Leadership program I was rewarded by the spontaneous visit of my friend Floris who was ‘in the area’ while traveling around the world. Although I am in the very last phase of my fieldwork I decided that I had to show Floris a bit of the country I have come to love over the last few months, and in the process discover some new bits of it myself! As the road to the East is one of my favorites and as I had heard fairytale like stories about the eastern cape and its island Jaco we decided to head in the direction of the rising sun. Those of you who know both of us, know that Floris and I have a shared love for driving and so you should have seen our faces when we found out that the car that my host father had fixed for us looked like this!

And so we hit the road on Sunday, December 2nd. We enjoyed the beautiful coastline, the warm wind, the driving and catching up.

The nice thing about there being only one road to the East is that, after driving it two times I kind of knew the way and had Floris sometimes wondering how the hell I knew I had to turn right in the middle of this marketplace that did not even look like cars were supposed to drive through it! It is nice to have the feeling that you ‘know the way’ after four months in a new country. On the way we met two very nice Ecuadorians from the Galapagos Islands who had been left stranded in the middle of nowhere by public transport and who wanted to go to the same place. In the end we turned out to be a very good group: we had a car and they had snorkeling gear! Apart from that we just also had a very good time together, sharing stories, songs, knowledge, laughter and the little eco-resort at the far east point of Timor-Leste which we had completely for ourselves!

The little resort is run by a cooperative from the people from the village of Tutuala which lies high in the hills overlooking the ocean. From there it was a hell of a 4WD track down during which I was very happy that I could let Floris do the driving! Once you get down you get into a sleepy atmosphere were the bamboo huts stand waiting, the sea plays with the white sand, the gecko’s make their characteristic sounds, and you sit down to whatever is served, it will taste good anyways. In the evening we made a campfire on the beach and I had brought my guitar… In the end the bamboo huts were a bit too warm and I ended up sleeping in the car, waking up early enough to see the sunrise above Jaco island and the fishermen returning with the catch of the day, part of which was enjoyed by my travel companions later that day.

What fascinated me about the beach were the shells. Normally I am a compulsive shell-gatherer but this time I had to keep myself back, because all the shells were inhabited! By little bright red crabs! I had so much fun looking at all those shells walking over the sand and stones. If you would sit, they would all crawl around you, as soon as you would get up or move you would be met by an orchestra of shells hitting the stone they had been walking on because the crabs would have pulled back in the shell making it to fall and roll over. Immediately afterwards they would resume their ways…

After a slow breakfast we asked one of the fishermen to bring us to Jaco island through the incredibly blue and crystal clear water. For someone whose favorite color is turquoise this was kind of the place to be. I could not get enough of all the colors of blue, of the white sand, the silky water and the mountains on the mainland of Timor Leste. It was so quiet, so peaceful, so beautiful. It was one of the most beautiful landscapes I have ever seen.

But that was before I had seen what was under the surface of the water. I have of course no pictures for you of the wonderland I encountered there, but even if I would have had a camera capable of making pictures under water, it would by no means have been able to capture what I saw. I don’t know how to describe it, just all these colors, all these fish in different colors, shapes, and sized among the smoothly waving corals in that blue water. I felt like Alice in Wonderland, I was flying over that wonderland, hanging in the water, letting myself be taken by the current and then swimming back, completely oblivious of anything else existing in the world…I could suddenly imagine that you could get addicted to diving, to spending time in this wonderland where your body has no weight, were there is no noise but your own breathing, where you are carried by this crystal clear liquid that involves you, among all those colors. What do you need drugs for if you can have this! And when we thought the day could not get any better we got to see about 50 to 100 dolphins swimming, jumping and feeding on the tunas we had just seen swimming around at about 50 meters from us and turtles popping their heads up here and there once in a while. We spent two days on the island but the first day was absolutely unbeatable!

On Wednesday morning we drove up to Tutuala again where we enjoyed the views from high above, on the balcony of a Portuguese colonial villa. Those guys knew how to choose their spots!

On the way back we also stopped at the wetlands a few kilometers into the countryside, which are still reasonably accessible as the rainy season seems to be hesitant to arrive this year. Despite the high possibility of meeting crocodiles here we actually only saw herds of grazing buffalos and we did not dare to venture very far in, afraid to lose a lot of time if we would get stuck in the mud…

And so we drove back the long road full of holes, craters, beautiful sceneries, views of Timorese traditional sacred houses, buffalos, waiving children shouting ‘Malae!’, motorbikes, trucks, sun, see and warm wind.

Now that Floris has left and I have exactly one week left in Timor-Leste it finally really downed on me that I am actually really almost leaving!!! Before me lies a week with some last interviews, many goodbyes, many ‘last things’, and a birthday/goodbye party next Sunday among people whom I did not yet know five months ago and whom nevertheless it will be very hard to say goodbye to!

Being Young, Then and Now

12 November 1991. Indonesian Occupation. Timorese people, mostly youths, march from the Motael Church to the Cemetery of Santa Cruz in honor of a Timorese shot by Indonesian forces in a confrontation between Pro-Independence supporters and Pro-Indonesian supporters. On the way banners and flags are put out. It is the most outspoken demonstration against Indonesian Occupation since its start in 1975. Once they arrive, Indonesian forces open fire. More than 200 people will never return home from this demonstration. A British journalist captures the massacre on film, manages to smuggle it out of the country and slowly the world begins admitting something is terribly wrong in East Timor. 12 November 2012. Ten years independence. Timorese people, mostly youths, march from the Motael Church to the Cemetery of Santa Cruz in honor of the people who died there twenty one years ago while demonstrating for their right to self-determination, their right to independence. There are banners and flags, people sing, there are speeches and there is music. There is a lot of waiting in the blazing sunshine. There are candles and flowers for the dead. There are foreigners filming and taking pictures, not under cover this time. And there are youths, many, many youths. On their banners they no longer ask for Independence, their forefathers achieved that already. But they are asking for justice. They are asking for the remains of lost freedom fighters that were never looked for. They ask for recognition for their forefathers. Today, I was both: a youth with a banner and a foreigner filming and taking pictures. And the whole day I carried with me the feeling of contrast between this day and the twelfth of November twenty one years ago. While getting ready, both in my house and while waiting for the march with my friends and our banner I though how the people back then had been preparing. They knew it was dangerous but they had no idea that they would never get back home. While we were having fun preparing and taking pictures I wondered how people had felt while getting ready. While we waited in the shade, I wondered if in 1991 there had also been such a contrast between the temperature in the shade and in the sun

While joining in with the multitudes (at some point I did neither see the start nor the end of the marching people) I enjoyed the fact that shouting “Viva Timor Leste” would cause nobody problems today, that the police cars were there for us and not against us, that people were able to sing and laugh

And that waving a flag and being proud of it was allowed

They waiting, in the sun, did actually not really feel as waiting. We were just being. Standing and sitting in front of the Santa Cruz Cemetery was an activity in itself today. We did not have to run for our lives.

But the strongest feeling of the coexistence, in my mind, of these two days, separated by 21 years but unified in sense of place was when I saw the entrance of the Cemetery. From the footage of the massacre I have seen, what had most impact on me were not the images of young people holding bleeding or dead friends, it was the image of the entrance of the cemetery with people jumping or climbing over each other in an effort to get out of there, in an effort to run away from death. I could not find a better picture than this still of the video, but I still want to put it here…

The same gate, separated by 21 years

And somehow I felt thankful. Thankful that today the military were there to guarantee our safety instead of threatening it. Thankful that people holding banners were given priority instead of being killed. Thankful that the flag of an independent Timor Leste was allowed to be carried and joked with today. Thankful that I am in Timor Leste today and not twenty one years ago.

Being young, then and now…that is a central part to my research, and it was a central part today. Talking with youths in Timor Leste about their own generation and the generations before them, I have often noticed that youths feel tiny and insignificant in relationship to those youths who fought (and often died) for achieving the independence of their country. Those were the heroes, those were the people who educated each other in the bush, who survived in dire circumstances, who had nothing but achieved everything, who liberated the country. However, that is not completely the whole story. Because history does not end with the liberation of the country. History goes on. And so the generation that liberated the country is also seen as having settled too fast for the soft chair of power, as having been seduced by power. And so the struggle is not yet finished. There is independence alright, but due the powerful position of Indonesia vis-à-vis tiny Timor Leste , there is not yet justice. People in power have focused on reconciliation and state that the biggest justice of all is to have self-determination and independence. However, although many youths agree and focus on going forward, many also disagree. And that is why the youths of today also had their messages on their banners, this time not addressed to a foreign occupier but addressed to the youths of back then: “Justice is the only alternative to achieve dignity for the dead of 12 November”

I guess it is the very newest generation who caught the essence of what today is about, because the kids in my street apparently got inspired and they keep shouting to each other “Viva Timor Leste!!!”

The Primitive of Timor

Although I made this picture in Bali it struck me as the perfect illustration of the contradictory realities in Timor Leste. It is about these contradictory realities that I want to write this blog. Before I came to Timor Leste I was afraid. Afraid because most I knew about the country came from the news, so my associations were mostly with war, occupation and turbulence. I was also afraid because when I said that I was going to Timor the reaction of most people was a brief silence, followed by an ‘Oh…’ and sometimes they ventured to ask further ‘Why?’ Sharing this with my Timorese friends I noticed that it hurts. It hurts when the only thing people think about when your country is named is people killing each other. It hurts that ten years after independence people are still afraid to come here. It hurts that people ask ‘Why? Why the hell would you want to go to Timor Leste?’ And so in the course of the previous blogs you have been witnesses to me falling in love with this country I had at first feared. In an unconscious attempt to set the image straight I have felt the necessity to share the beauty of this country, the pure happiness I can feel here, the life that flows here as blood through the veins of a vital body, the music, the laughter and the idealism that are as much part of this country as the stories that have made their way to Europe through the mainstream media. Because I wanted some people, the readers of this blog, not to say ‘Oh…’ the next time someone says he or she goes to Timor Leste. I want you to so ‘Oh! Nice!’ And still, finishing to write my previous blog, I realized that it was exactly because nobody had promised me paradise, that I was able not only to find it in the little things, but also to cherish it above anything else. And so I realized that, although I have tried to be fair to my Timorese friends and communicate the beautiful things of Timor Leste to the outside, it would be not fair towards the readers of this blog, to speak only of paradise… And so the image of the dark and ruin-like building with the shiny white SUV in front of it struck me as the perfect introduction for two realities coexisting around me. Yes, Timor Leste has a past of conflict, it is inscribed in the land and in the places, people tell me about it when passing by, making beauty sometimes seem out of place. And yes, Timor Leste is still one of the so-called Least Developed Countries. But Timor Leste is also a country with SUVs, with a fast growing capital, with gas and oil and rich people, with students who dream of a bright future. It is a country with traffic jams but also with goats on the road. And in some aspects I really have some symptoms of being in love, because I can be completely delighted in seeing this part of Dili

And its seems not to have any effect on me that my street looks like this

It is a really interesting phenomenon! Sometimes I find myself smiling because I feel only the warmth of the evening and I ignore the dust that swirls around me, smiling because people around greet me not seeing the piles of waste I walk past, smiling because some of the youths at Ba Futuru are such good actors, forgetting that they play scenes of domestic violence because people actually have to learn that beating their wife up is not the best way to solve a conflict… Most of the times I am struck by the beautiful color and form combinations

Only sometimes I really notice the surroundings

But I do have them, these moments in which I see reality as it is. In those moments I realize that the Ministry of Solidarity looks like this

While across the street university teachers sit in an office like this

Where you are lucky if internet works, where power falls out just on the moment you have forgotten to click on ‘save’, where students have no access to internet, books or computers, no money for lunch, where they sit in hot and noisy classrooms if their teacher comes at all…On those moments I feel like an incredibly spoiled child. And it is in the middle of these contradictory realities, which sometimes can be a bit exasperating, that the people impress me, especially the young people who dare to dream. That doesn’t cover the whole population, but still they are there: youths who invest their time in bringing people together, in learning not only from the books but also from the reality around them, youths who are not only interested in building careers but instead have a commitment to their communities. To be invited into their midst as a sister, to be given the possibility to see a bit of this world through their eyes, to share in their moments of pure life, that is more than anything else, what has made me fall in love with this country…

Paradise Revisited

After quite some considering about what way to choose to extend my visa it all ended up being quite spontaneous anyway: Karlien (my classmate) was going to be in Bali with her parents and asked if I didn’t want to visit them. Thinking that maybe some distance and a break would be good for my fieldwork I booked a last minute ticket and so on Monday afternoon I was boarding the plane to Bali. Boarding the plane inevitably gave me a preview of how it will be to do the same in December and somehow I was very happy I was not leaving for good yet! To meet Karlien like this, on the other side of the world, had something very strange and very normal at the same time…It was really nice to be able to catch up and share experiences, worries and joys with somebody who is going through roughly the same although Singapore and Timor Leste share little more than the same side of the world I would say…I was very hospitably taken into the family and taken everywhere with them, which gave me the chance to see some things of Bali I would not have gone to on my own. The highlight was something that according to Karlien we could actually not miss as anthropologists and that was a Balinese Cockfight! (One of the most famous Anthropological texts ever written is about the Balinese Cockfight, written by Geertz) Now, as a vegetarian I found it actually a bit hard to excuse myself to go such a thing, but in the end I thought that this was a once in a life-time experience and that watching a cockfight fought between roosters that have been pampered all their lives is probably better than eating a bio-industry chicken and so I gathered enough arguments to get myself to go. Actually I surprised myself with not finding it that hard to watch at all… The scale of it (a reasonable arena), the fact that they do it every (!) day and the intensity of the betting took me by surprise! It was absolutely fascinating to watch how men, with hand movements that most of the time escaped my comprehension, agreed on sums of money and on the rooster they were betting on. After a fight, while the loosing rooster was already being prepared for dinner so to say, money would be given, passed or thrown through the arena to settle the bets… Here you see men who are offering their bet for the preferred rooster, trying to find someone who is brave enough to bet on the rooster who is thought to be the weakest

What also fascinated me was the relationship between the men and their roosters. Roosters are pampered, put in and out of the sun, fed special food, massaged and spoiled around half a year until they start their fights, but then it can be suddenly over in one fight, and if the rooster loses, the owner seems to have lost any affection for the animal, drops it to the floor and somebody else will take it to be slaughtered. Somehow I found this a cruel and fascinating loss of affection. If you look well on this picture you can see the size of the knife the roosters get tied to their paws (it is huge!) and also you can see that probably the owner is more nervous than the rooster (even though this rooster won its fight after this picture was taken)

And the rooster of the previous picture deals a fatal blow to its white opponent

And here are the two anthropologists stepping in the footsteps of Geertz who was actually directly or indirectly responsible for us being here!

After the cockfight our journey took us past endless rice fields and the green everywhere astonished me after the brown of dry-season Timor Leste

What also fascinated me about Bali was that people, everywhere, all the time, seemed to be engaged in some religious ceremony! I have never seen anything like that…It was Tuesday morning but everywhere we passed ceremonies taking place, people walking in a procession, people celebrating various marriages or people bringing little offerings in their domestic temples. That devotion towards the spirits, towards Mother Earth and all the other things I have no understanding of had something special. I was particularly amazed by the roof-architecture of the temples

And here are two boys taking a break from a ceremony to fish in the lake at 1.700 meters altitude

Bali is famous for its resemblance to paradise, at least that is what people say. And I have to say that if you chill by the swimming pool of your hotel, while the flowers drop from the trees, the sun shines in a blue sky and various Buddha’s and Shiva’s and Vishnu’s gaze serenely over you, it comes quite close

But that is not the whole story…after spending two and a half months in Timor Leste I was shocked not only by the wealth but also the opulence. I was repulsed by how fat most of the tourists were, how loud they spoke. I was scared away by the eternal smile on the faces of people offering you all the things that you can imagine to buy with money while they are rudely rejected by tourists who want to enjoy paradise…after visiting parts of Timor Leste in the back or a truck, in the middle of Timorese with guitars and laughter I felt isolated in that car, with air-conditioning, and a friendly tour guide who takes you from one rice-field-view to the other rice-field-view…I felt like I was locked up in a bubble I could not see clearly through, I was looking for the paradise everybody talks about but I couldn’t find it, it was not my paradise…and when I got ill on the last day all I wanted was to go back to my own paradise. A paradise that is not perfect, a paradise that combines beautiful views with garbage in the streets, a place that combines people’s friendliness with stories of the dark side of humanity, a place that both feels like home and like very far away from home. But at least nobody there ever promised me anymore than there really is. Nobody told me it would be paradise there, and still I found it in some places…