Sea, Sun and Everyday Reality

Dear all, Three weeks have passed since I arrived in Timor Leste. Somehow it seems much longer ago that I got out of that plane! I am very happy here! My research is going well. I have met some invaluable people already and interesting people keep showing up everywhere. Contrary to what I thought people do not seem to be very tired of Malae (foreigners). They are tired of the presence of the UN, that is for sure, but if you walk on the street and take public transport (both things that other foreigners do extremely little) people always seem very happy to see you. Children scream “Malae!” and wave and in the microlet (small bus packed with people) people keep gazing at me as if I were a ghost and asking me how long I am in Timor Leste. When I say three weeks they seem very surprised at the fact that I already know how to take a microlet! At times it is tiring to always be a foreigner and be confronted with that. However, to be called Malae does not necessarily have a negative connotation and the fact that people are mostly friendly and interested in where you come from and what brings you to their country helps a lot! Many people speak English, some speak Portuguese and I still do not speak Tetun. I am working on it but it takes time to remember words and understand sentence construction, but it is improving everyday a little bit! My main activities at this moment are two. I volunteer at an NGO called Ba Futuru two to three afternoons a week. This organization works with youths at risk through all kinds of artistic projects to inspire them to bring positive change in their communities. I also volunteer at the Peace and Conflict Studies Center of the National University. This is a very inspiring place where I am helping in setting up an extra-curricular program for bachelor students called “Women, Peace and Leadership”. I will also be able to assist classes on graduate level in Peace and Conflict Studies and I am very excited about that! For the rest I hang out with the people from the Observer Mission (FOM) who have turned into friends, I walk around the city, I read,

I play on my Timorese guitar, (sailors have a love in every port, I have a guitar) and I take trips! My favorite bit of Dili is the coastline. The city has a kind of esplanade by the water that goes from the port (in the middle) to the East end of the city where it turns into a line of beaches. On the esplanade there are big trees that provide for some shade and the incredibly blue sea, with the fresh wind, the fisher boats in front of the coast and the island of Atauro at the horizon throw a spell over me each time, inhibiting me from seeing the garbage everywhere, the stinky cars and here and there a ruin. There is also the Parque de Lecidere (picture below) where there is free wifi for everyone which makes it the meeting place for young people.

I went two times to the Cristo Rei which was a gift from Indonesia, given during the occupation and is now a Sunday outing place occupying the cape that marks the end of the bay of Dili.

One time I went with two friends from FOM and the other time with two host-cousins and a FOM friend. On the way, there are some pretty nice beaches

Only a pity that…

Exactly: the chance to meet a crocodile (although apparently it is very rare)…

The way back to the city is also a very nice walk of about an hour, all along the sea. Oh, and here are some pictures of where the work happens because I am not on holidays here (deze is voor jou Ilse). This is the University, the Faculty of Social and Political Sciences where the Peace and Conflict Studies Center is located. The buildings have been restored since everything was burned in 1999. Nevertheless our office is still in an ‘emergency container’ (although it has aircon and internet which makes it more luxurious than the rest of the buildings which have neither). Some classrooms are falling apart, students have to come to university a few times to find out when they have class as there is no general email system (some students do not have an email address) or something like a digital information community (without which Utrecht University would not seem able to function)…But at the Peace and Conflict Studies Center (PCSC) the spirit is idealistic and the possibilities are plenty relying on the law of improvisation and good will.

The biggest lecture hall and the patio

From Ba Futuru I have no pictures yet as I only start to work there tomorrow. Those and some more from University will hopefully follow soon! So now some holiday material. This weekend I went with my host-father and the nanny to the east of the country (Los Palos) to pick up his daughters who had been on holidays at their grandma’s. It was about 300 km but we drove for about 7 hours because the road is in a pitiful state. This is the road connecting the main cities of Timor Leste, and this is a part without holes so let me tell you it is not representative…

The good thing is that we found out that one of my host-father’s annoyances is one of my delights and so I got to drive most of it! Give me a Toyota Hilux 4x4 and this is the look I will have on my face for the rest of the day!

And ok, I thought that, when I had seen the Great Ocean Road in Australia I had been somewhere special…but that was because I had not been to Timor Leste yet! Despite the holes it was one of the, if not the most beautiful road I have ever driven on! Mountains turned into rice fields, and rice fields into sweeping views over the ocean and beaches. Because I was driving most of the time I did not make as many pictures as I wanted but here are two of the way there, just on the other side of the mountain from Dili

Because it was such a trip we slept the night in Los Palos and drove to Com, a beautiful beach resort, the next morning to have a look around. There we were delighted with blue sea, white sand, bright sun, fisher boats, and beautiful coastline and dolphins!!! Just swimming like that in the bay!

Com beach and port

And us tourists :) And then we drove back, speeding up on straight bits of asphalt, slowing down for moon-format craters or tight curves. The good thing is that there are not many other cars driving around. The bad thing is that the cars that drive around do so as if they were the only ones…especially the minibuses whose drivers know the road (or better said, the holes) and some crazy UN dudes drive like hell and I still think it is actually quite special that we got home safe and sound. It led me to the conclusion that I will never travel this road by minibus and if I drive here, preferably with my own hands on the steering wheel and my own feed of the gas.

The road to the East, along the North coast, was extremely beautiful and most of the time I was just gazing about me in amazement, but then there were the points where my host-father started to tell stories…about the nuns who were killed and burned here by militias, about the Indonesian convoy that was ambushed in this curve leaving hundreds of Indonesians dead, about the mountain over there were he had lived as a child for four years among the guerrilla, suffering from what the Indonesians called the ‘encirclement and annihilation campaign’, bombing with napalm, burning whole areas were people took refuge and destroying crops. On those moments the rough beauty of the landscape seemed out of place to me. How can such beauty go together which such monstrosities, with such grief…And although I do not like to conclude a blog on such a tone it is the reality of this country. A weird reality that combines extreme beauty with extreme ugliness, a reality that combines idealism with trauma, a reality that combines the incredible friendliness of people with the memory of the monstrosities people are capable of. And that is actually why I am here: because I am fascinated by the coexistence of these extremes.