Timor Times

I’m aware that more people are reading this blog now than I can really keep track of, so I’m going to have to stop using names of friends in Dili, I think. Anyway, I spent this afternoon at One Dollar Beach* at a fabulous picnic with a bunch of, I believe I can identify them as, lovely AYADs and others. I’m sad my friend’s going but the nice thing about friendships in Dili is that the friends I’ve made here are people I would want to know anywhere. So lovely girl, I’m sorry you’re going, I really appreciated that you were there with hugs or the right thing to say at a couple of crucial moments over the last 6 months. But I’ll see you again, I’m sure.

Anyway, about the afternoon. Apart from the constant bumping-into-people-one-knows Dili is a bit like Canberra in that you attend as many farewells as all other social events put together. It was a fabulously relaxing afternoon, with a marvellous spread, we have some talented salad-making cooks here (all the more talented because of the situation with limited ingredients). We stayed until sunset and it was a magical, with silvers and purples and pinks.

I really appreciate the friends I have in Timor.

• Beach at the back of Christo Rei, or the Christ Statue. I really prefer to think of it as Christ’s Butt Beach.

Turns out I did know someone in the Tour de Timor – another volunteer. And another friend who went to watch the finish said the crowd control was a tad overzealous – i.e. hitting and forcing the crowd back when they weren’t particularly doing anything more harmful than milling around. Oh dear. Not just Timorese forces either.

...except me!

Another example of how small Dili is: I called a friend (Timorese) the other week (she heads up an NGO) and she answered the phone to whisper, I’m in a meeting with the President, can I call you back?

Um, YES.

I can’t go to the Posada in Baucau and stay there anymore like I was planning because I found out from the exhibition what happened there... it was a place of imprisonment particularly for women, women were taken there and raped and tortured.

‘Chega’ means ‘enough, stop’ in Portuguese. I’m not sure how empowering it is to use the language of one oppressor to tell another one to fuck off (cukup, jangan mean something similar in Bahasa) but I guess it’s not the Timorese’ fault that Portuguese stunted Tetum’s growth.

Anyway.

The Chega exhibition is a museum of sorts, chronicling the human rights violations in Timor. It was a prison (the Comarca) under the Portuguese and also under the Indonesians. It was abandoned and basically turned into a farm with walls, until an organisation called CAVR was formed to chronicle human rights violations (‘lesser’ ones so that the court system would not be flooded but people, both perpetrators and victims / survivors, would have a way to tell their story and resolve the issue). There are timelines of Timor, the story in the country and its place in world history, there is a library, there are photos. The ‘dark cells’ where people were confined in the dark and starved, beaten, raped for months, have been preserved in all their their grotty, graffitied glory.

The dark cells also have a larger-than-life-size colour photograph of a Timorese woman with a blindfold over her face, naked except for a pair of stark white blood-spattered underpants. She lies on the floor while soldiers snarl over her. You can see blood on her body, blood on the floor, and their bootmarks on her body.

It is in fact stunning how many places around Timor were used as places of imprisonment by the Indonesians and the Portuguese. The Indonesians win for creativity though, using hotels and a museum as impromptu prisons, police headquarters, interrogation units etc. While I was reading the eclectic selection of examples, I thought of the Postu, that mountaintop broken-down Portuguese paradise in Same. How I looked at little rooms and worked out which were the abandoned cells. All over this land dead and tortured girls, boys, women, men have screamed; I hope Timor's version of ‘free’ today is enough for you now.

I do wish I’d seen this earlier in the piece; it would’ve been useful (and maybe I would’ve been able to get over the Posada prison palace and stay there). I love a lot of the buildings they’ve mentioned, they’re very familiar to me and they’re places I see almost daily.

The exhibition's ‘end’ has a garden and meeting space with ‘What will you do to preserve human rights?’ painted on the wall (in typical garish Timor style, in yellow with green outline) in Tetum and English. When I see these challenges I’m fervently grateful that I decided I wanted a career ‘helping people’, something I made up before I originally started working in development, and never dreamed it would take me to the kind of work I do today. I need work that helps people.

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As I left the building, I asked a woman carrying too much stuff if I could take some things for her. It looked like a lot and also she was pregnant, not that approximately half the adult female population isn’t pregnant at any given time, but still. We chatted in Tetum while we walked out to the gate (I love that I can say this, ‘We chatted in Tetum’). When we got to the gate, she said to her friend, ‘Malae ajuda’ which is ‘Malae helped’, in pretty much the same tone people often say ‘Malae bulak’ (Malae are crazy) in. But they smiled in a friendly way at me so I am taking it as ok that I helped.

OK. Sports – not really my thing. But the Tour de Timor thing is (I believe, after listening to Ramos-Horta talk on Radio Australia about how peaceful and stable Timor is now*) an event to showcase Timor, not just a bike race. Symbolic, like. It was also a chance for the national police forces to have a go running something (instead of international / UN police always being in charge).

So I happened to get into work early on Monday morning and (naturally) the net was not working. Neither was the aircon. So I thought I’d get some air on the balcony while waiting to see if the aircon could be fixed.

And, oh my, lack of aircon has never been so fortuitous before. I walked out onto the balcony right as the Tour de Timor riders rode past the Palacio do Governo (they’d started from the President’s palace, which had just been hastily finished and spiffed up in the last week – actually, it wasn’t quite finished, haha).

And I’m a sook, and I have super heightened emotions this year, so tears did come to my eyes when I watched everyone riding by, including the Timorese riders. I can’t imagine how tense the country must have been ten years ago this week, waiting for the independence referendum; and then the violence and destruction afterwards... I have heard other malae say this week that some Timorese people have said to them, they don’t feel that the parties and big events is what the 30th of August is about; it’s a time of reflection and remembering what came before. I get that.
But it’s nice how everyone can come for a (gruelling) bike ride and parties to celebrate, too.

• SEE Mum, Dad, all those times I have told you I think Timor is really peaceful and stable, well now the president of the country is backing me up!