Mastodon!

Tonight I am celebrating: I’m lounging in my pilates clothes, music turned up, mining all the red and green jelly bits from a bag of dried fruit and reading “Would you wear that?” on People.com. After two week of working to piece together a translation of the proposed election law accurate enough to base my comments on, an excellent translation from the UN Development Programme has landed at the office.

Karlito brought it in, and I felt like he had just dragged home a still-steaming mastodon. The UN has a policy against disseminating unofficial translations of legal documents, which really is just a peevish attempt to shake off free riders. Everyone knows that the UN has the translation, but NGOs generally have to grovel and work connections raw to squeak out a copy.

Getting a decent translation of an important law is therefore hard for two reasons: language and territoriality.

First, language. Timor Leste has a population of roughly one million people. These one million people speak at least one of the seven major Timorese languages, as well Indonesian, which was taught in schools until 1999. When Timor Leste became independent in 2002, it had to choose an official language. English was out because of tensions with Australia, Indonesian – a practical choice – was ruled out because of history. Tetum, the most widely spoken local language, lacked the technical vocabulary to do the legal heavy lifting. That left Portuguese, the language of pre-1975 colonial times.*

So when a law is released in Timor Leste it is in Portuguese. The ideal translator, in this case, would be a native English speaker with fluent Portuguese and legal experience. Not easy to find, and not cheap. I was warned of prices as high as .65 Euro per word (.20 Euro would be more accurate, though hardly a give-away).

The second problem, territoriality, is an old story – most people have heard about NGO turf-wars and clucked at the loss of focus on the organizations’ altruistic missions.

In the next two weeks Parliament will be hearing testimony on the proposed laws from political parties, the Catholic Church, and local and international NGOs. While a coordinated and forceful message would be ideal, each organization is holding its cards close to the vest.

This posture contrasts with the tremendous help that I have received from peers – whether it be workout clothes or the names of a translator.

I like living in East Timor – the language, saying good morning to all the people at the office, the beach on weekends, ex pats unceasingly arguing politics and development, piglets everywhere, and turning onto my street after a long walk.


* A parallel process unfolded concerning currency. East Timor is too poor and small to create its own currency. According to a UN old-timer, the Portuguese government tried to unload a whole shipping container of dead Portuguese currency before the decision was made to adopt the US dollar. Without a mint, US dollars in East Timor are invariably filthy and limp. According to a friend, much of the currency here is also counterfeit.

Tasitolu

When I got my spotting scope - the massive lens that I use for bird watching – I professed no interest in “digiscoping” (attaching a converter for a digital camera and photographing birds). My interest in perusing stamp collections is limited, and I respect others’ kindred disinterest in plopping down with me and reliving my riveting morning of birding.

So please, feel no obligation to read on.

As is clear, I broke down and in the face of nameless waders sliced up a water bottle to jury-rig a digiscoping system. I quickly learned to let go of photographing unknown plovers, and to stick with the big, charismatic, and sadly, easily identifiable.

The pictures are taken at Tasitolu (“three seas” because of the three shallow, brackish ponds), which is now protected as a Peace Park. During the Indonesian occupation of East Timor (1975-1999), Tasitolu was a popular place for the Indonesian military to dump bodies. In 1989, Pope John Paul II visited Tasitolu. And now it is frequented by boys catching fish, foraging pigs, men gathering wood and me.



This morning I caught up with an Australian-based shorebird researcher with whom I had been emailing for the last couple of weeks. Unfortunately he is off to the districts today (he is only in East Timor for two weeks). He promptly pulled out Broad-billed, Curlew, Common, Marsh, Wood and Tereks Sandpipers; Oriental, Red-capped, Little ringed, and Kentish Plovers; Common Greenshank, Spotted Redshank, etc. etc. etc. He was most excited about a lone Sanderling.

With Tasitolu so close, I hope to take full advantage of "spring" migration.

The birds featured in the pictures are White-headed Stilt and Australian Pelican.

File under...

Tonight I am thinking critically about filing systems.

Taking a break from trying to figure out what the heck the proposed electoral law says (it is, as is de rigueur, in Portuguese), today I ran a meeting on NDI program activities. The meeting was part of a larger project that should be titled: What is NDI actually doing? I thought that previous interviews with NDI field staff were for my benefit, but now I realize they are also for Telibert’s.

When Telibert became the director East Timor operations, he took over a ship already under sail. He was then promptly evacuated.

Now that things have settled down, the office is trying to get moving both before the rainy season makes roads impassible and the elections gear-up. The substance of NDI’s work is to train suko – the equivalent of city councils – to be more effective. The office in Dili, however, is away from the action, as trainings take place in the districts; today’s purpose was therefore to take stock what we are doing on the ground. I have come to NDI during a period of review – a process made candid by the fact that the director’s ego isn’t married to existing practice.

The agenda for the three-day trainings is set by a government agency (INAP). During the meeting the field staff went through two days worth of material on formal letter writing and filing systems. It seemed like such a crock – sukus get $50 per month, often have no offices or computers let alone secretarial staff, and key members may be illiterate. Why are we sitting the community down to talk about heading format?

Camillo, one of the trainers, said that when he asks the participants what a filing system is people respond that it is a type of rope. Telibert interrupted and asked why they made this connection – were the words similar, perhaps? Camillo responded no, people say ‘rope’ because in order to explain filing systems he used the metaphor of collecting eucalyptus wood, a common way for people to make a living:

In East Timor, men go into the dry, open eucalyptus stands and gather the tight bundles of wood that one sees on all the roadsides. Filing systems are ways to collect papers, tie then together and then stack them neatly. Not bad. Camillo also added the clutch detail that after teaching participants about using the hole-puncher he makes them clean up.

Overall, however, I think that Telibert shared my incredulity, and he asked the trainers how they felt teaching the sukus how to use hole-punchers, etc. “Senti contenti” said Mana Domingas – “I feel contented.” Her perspective is that the sukos don’t have some basic skill, skills that NDI can teach.

It reminded me of how I felt earlier when Elsty, the office manager, brought me my own business cards, or earlier in this year when I pieced together a suit. While I understand that these are party favors for joining the larger, capitalist system that would eventually require long days in an office, they also sing of importance. Sukos should have a filing system because it brings them into the club. I would argue that the system makes the correspondence worth saving, rather than the reverse.

And why shouldn’t suko have decent filing systems and have the skills to write letters requesting funding? There has been some writing pushing back against the mandate to use “appropriate technology” in development projects, calling it a euphemism for out-moded junk. So I say, give them the good stuff! (Or see Borges's example of afiling system.)

So tonight, I am trying to think critically about filing systems. Do they communicate respect? Do they discipline a Western mode of communication and memory? Are filing skills relevant? To whom? To what?

This is what a curfew will do to you.

Note: The pictures are part of a new project entitled “A Photographic Guide to the White 4x4s of the Democratic Republic of Timor Leste.” Top – Portuguese Embassy; Middle – ICRC; Below – UN, rare utility variant.

Demo's Cancelled

Dili has breathed a sigh of relief: the demonstrations scheduled for tomorrow have been cancelled. Last week the Prime Minister, Nobel Peace Prize winner Jose Ramos-Horta, said that he would resign if protests occurred, and his threat seems to have worked. The leader of the demonstrations has opted for a "dialogue." While this does not mean that we are out of the woods, it certainly makes me feel better.

The picture is of the government buildings - the site of May's protests. The banner says "Give Me Peace." Amen to that.

Security Update

Last night, standing barefoot in the courtyard, I had a long talk with Eugenio, one of NDIs security guards. The conversation started with mangos; they are becoming ripe and during the night they fall onto the roof and make a loud "bang." This wakes Eugenio up and reminds him of the sound of shooting and rock throwing during the crisis. At night we also hear the sound of helicopters.

That evening Eugenio said that he might have to return to his district, and today he left. He is the youngest guard, with the best English skills, and he liked to hang out and help me with my Tetum. I am sad to see him leave.

In Dili, East-West tensions are not easing. Large demonstrations are scheduled for the 20th, so many Easterners are trying to leave before then. Australia just issued a new warning, so the office is in touch with Washington and Princeton has been in contact with the Prime Minister. While no one is jumping the gun, we decided to hold onto my passport for now rather than to hand it over to the Ministry (it needs it to processes my work visa) as had been planned. I am getting together tonight with some other Fellows and we will compare notes.

The situation is difficult to understand - Why after suceeding to depose Prime Minister Alkatiri is the new Prime Minister now a target? Why when calling for a better justice system may demonstrators seek to disolve Parliament? Brown did a good job in teaching me to stop thinking about political action as instrumental, and to intsead see it as potentially expressive, group-driven and the product of social constructions. Those question, in essence, are not the right ones to ask. The emergence of the East vs. West discourse reminds me of excellent scholarly work on the construction of identity in the Balkans. A more productive question may be: How is identity constructed and enforced in East Timor? And who benefits?

It is incredible to think that East Timor - a state the size of Connecticut - is ripping itself in two.

Eugenio blames political leaders for the ongoing insecurity by using the analogy of two elephants fighting: both elephants end up unhurt, but the ants get trampled. Political leaders, the rich, and foreigner can all afford private security. The collapse of the domestic police forces (replaced now by UN-led forces) meant that public security disappeared. Eugenio was trained to join the police, but has now decided not to join becuase of concerns with ethnic tensions within the force.

This has been a frustrating day - Eugenio leaving, a logy English class, hours spent translating electoral law from Portuguese, and negative security news. The day was not frustrating becuase any of these activities were vacuous - to the contrary, they now seem to have mass.

Plan-plan

This has been a week of milestones, most notably: my first full week of teaching English and the procurement of a Timorese driver’s license. Getting the license was a multi-step process. First, I went with one of the drivers to a near-by soccer field (see photo below, click to enlage) where I got used to shifting with my left hand – Timorese drive on the left. We then drove around Dili for a while. Key words: 'plan-plan' (nice and slow) and 'rem' (brake/clutch). The driver summarized my abilty: “Your driving is fine, but your steering – not so good.”

Despite his critique, with the help of $10 I was able to get the license without a driver’s test. At the DMV we waited in line and watched motorbike drivers practice swerving around tires.

Now that I have the license I will be able to go out in the evenings and on the weekends. With no streetlights and sporadic power, it gets really dark in Dili really fast. I am glad that I'll have the option - once I feel more comfortable - to go out after dusk. Regardless, my new plan is to go to bed at nine and wake up at 6 am – getting out and about before work starts at nine. I took a walk around the neighborhood today and was happy to see that more kids are in school.

Right now, I am trying to find a way to make the curfew work for me. Tonight Telibert (my boss) and I went on an outing to the two "big" supermarkets. In Dili this counts as an exciting friday night.

I plan to take the car to a good birding area this weekend and have a look around. I have been emailing with a conservation biologist who has worked for Birdlife International in Dili, and he recommended a nearby area for waders. He wrote: “migrant waders that are landing now. 2 weeks ago there was Ruff (1 male), Little Ringed Plover and c. 100 Australian Pelicans there.” He also mentioned that a Kentish Plover has been around. I have no idea what a Kentish Plover looks like, but tomorrow the plan is to go find it!



Note: As per request, I changed the blog’s settings so that anyone can post a comment

Nuts and Bolts

I have been getting a few emails asking about the basics – what is my room like? Is the food any good? So here are a few photos.

First, my bed, bug net and “desk.” The bed is comfortable, and I get wireless internet access. In the mornings while getting dressed I listen to streaming WBUR.

Second, the south wall of my room. This is like a shot out of “Cribs: East Timor.” What you don’t see is that I also have a toaster and a TV that gets one Portuguese channel. If this picture were in a Timorese magazine, I would tear it out.

Finally, my dinner (and feet). Mana Betinha cooks for Telibert and me. Twice a day she puts little, cellophane-covered dishes of rice, salad and a cooked vegetable in my room. Sometimes there is a little tofu, sometimes there are two dishes of cooked vegetables, sometimes she makes mung beans in sweet milk. The food is fresh and delicious. The only thing I have missed is yogurt, but a tub costs $7. So not much protein, but at once a week I go to a beach restaurant for whole grilled fish.

Zitting Cisticola

Today I went out in search of a bike. I thought that the problem would be finding one that was long enough for me. It turns out, however, that there are no bikes and I will have to wait for the boat that carries bikes to come back on September 23rd.

The first few days I was here I used one that another Fellow had left at NDI. One morning, I rode it up the beach road to look for birds. Coming around a corner I saw a huge turquoise kingfisher perched on a light pole. I slammed on my evidently ear-piercing brakes and managed to flush not only the kingfisher but also to clear all the waders off the surrounding mudflats.

Over the summer I sent my binoculars away to Texas to be fixed. When they came back I thought that they were okay – not perfect but fine. Now that I can’t identify birds just by the way they move or their under-tail or voice, I feel differently. Here, as with most things, I need all the details and perhaps someone holding a sign reading “it’s a Zitting Cisticola (Cisticola juncidis) you twit.” I want power! Super-sharp Leicas! Nitrogen-purged, locking-diopter, crystal-clear Sworovskis!

I usually explain my interest in birds as connected to the desire to know where I am. Birding gets me out walking in the early morning, checking things out. At the farm Jess pointed out that I also just like to make lists, and she’s right. I remember being embarrassed to tell Prof. Tennenhouse that I liked bird watching because in his seminar we had discussed acts of mapping, listing and describing as forms of domination, colonization. So I do understand a town by searching out its birds, but I also use the lists and guides to break it down into little pieces that I name and then check off.

I have not read enough theory to think clearly about signs, words as signifiers, etc. But what I have been experiencing is the dislocation of words and their content – I hear a Tetum word, but what does it mean? The opposite is also true, I see a chair but I don't know the Tetum word. This latter experience is similar to that of seeing an unknown bird, except for the crucial fact that for me the bird never before existed whereas "chair" has been sufficient for the last twenty-odd years. The idea of getting up tomorrow morning, walking to the mudflats, and for an hour affixing names to birds seems appealing. For me the bird is unknown, and I just have to find the name, write it down, and move on.

And Jess, even with the likes of the Fluffy-backed Tit-babbler (Macronous ptilosus, see right) in the region, I will be keeping my eyes peeled for the Scarlet Humper.

Diving and Security

Today – my first without work since arriving – I took a long walk up the beach road to check out Dili’s two dive shops. The first place was fine; with its peeling undersea murals, overflowing ashtrays and over-tanned Aussie proprietor, it could have been any shop in Mexico or the Caribbean. The next place, Free Flow, was a different breed. Anne, who runs the shop, describes it as a place for “nerds who like to eat well.” Nirvana.

I spent the afternoon chatting with Anne on the shop’s porch. Anne and her husband both worked as journalists in the UK, her husband in particular specializing in war coverage. Burnt out, they decided to start up a dive shop in a developing and post-conflict country – a way to contribute to the economies of places like those that they had swooped in and out of as reporters. Anne really likes the idea of ‘swords to plowshares’ and even offered me her collection of spent bullets that she had gathered from the UN ranges to sew into dive weights.

Anne and her husband (a dive master and a nudibranch fanatic, see photos) came to East Timor in 2000, right after the Indonesian withdrawal and before full independence in 2002. They have, in short, seen it all.

Conversations here always cycle to the “crisis” (the violence that erupted early this summer). Despite reading about its origins – East/West tensions, political divisions, lack of salary for soldiers – I have had trouble understanding why, after four years of calm and steady growth, did East Timor lapse into violence. It was surprisingly comforting to hear Anne say that she also didn’t fully understand the still unfolding situation. Journalist’s instincts still sharp, she described the money that it took for the opposition to stage May’s protests. “Where” she asked, “was it all coming from?”

Since the crisis, Anne and her husband have begun calling East Timor a pre-post-conflict state, and it is hard to disagree. On one block, troops hang out in behind sandbags and an IDP (internally displaced persons, e.g. refugee) camp fills the park across from the über-fancy Hotel Timor. With the sun out, flowers blooming, and cute kids play in the park’s semi-defunct fountains, things don’t look so bleak, however the camp evidences that many Timorese are still too afraid to return to their homes or property.

Concern with returning home is also evident at NDI. A guard has been living in the small library and yesterday his brother joined him. Another man, an NDI driver, has been living with his brother. Other staff members have sent their families and children out of Dili. While things had been improving, over the last week there have been more stone throwing incidents and one shooting near the IDP camp. The US State Department issued a warning about crime, and tonight, for the first time, I received a text-message (trés 21st century) from the US embassy advising not to go out tonight.

Thankfully, the where I live is very safe. The “compound” is a white, single-story, u-shaped building with a few office rooms, a kitchen, small library, Telibert’s apartment and my room arranged around a mango tree. It has a large gate and 24-hour guards (whom I teach English along with the gardener). My situation, with 24-hour power, wireless internet access, cellphone, security, access to a car, a microwave and mini-fridge, is ideal.

When I arrived, I asked Telibert if it was OK to walk around Dili during the day. He said it was – better for me to know the place and for the people in the neighborhood to know me. I have been taking this advice and walking around town to buy groceries, etc. At night, unless you have a car (no taxis after dark), you stay home. I am feeling comfortable, and this pattern will probably remain my M.O. while here.

I am going diving with Free Flow tomorrow, and I look forward to getting to know Anne and her husband. Anne loves East Timor, and I think she will become a good source of information and insight.

Ex-pats on Mats

On Monday, while out to lunch with Telibert and Karlito, I ran into Lilach - the other Princeton Fellow working in Dili. It was nice to see her and the timing could not have been better: I had been wearing the same clothes since the 31st and she lent me a few things. My bags are due to come in this afternoon, weight-limits permitting.

Lilach is friendly and high-energy, so I was not surprised when she told me that she led weekly fitness (pilates) classes. I went last night and it was great, in part because she played Shakira and I had really been missing music, and in part because I got to flail around and curse my abs. The class also brought out more white and ex-pat women than I had seen all week. The Irish ambassador was even there. (On the street I see a fair number of non-local men, usually soldiers/international police and UN/NGO folks.) It is nice to know that this community exists. Now all I need to do is find the birders.

Estuda Tetum

Now that I am in East Timor, I have a much better sense of what NDI is doing and who works here. The organization is currently working on three projects: to establish and train suco (village) councils, to work with the Parliament’s Committee B (governing security issues) and to contribute to a coalition devoted to elections monitoring, get-out-the-vote initiatives (known as “GOTV”) and voter education.

Yesterday I spent the morning, with the help of a translator, interviewing one of the field trainers about her work with the suco councils. While I am glad to have taken Indonesian classes, it is becoming more and more clear that this office operates in Tetum and English. Indonesian has been helpful for informal conversations and when buying groceries, but in meetings Timorese staff members (that is everyone but Telibert and myself) speak in Tetum, which is then translated into English by the office manager.

Because of the jetlag, I have been waking up around 5 am each morning and using that time to study Tetum. It is not a difficult language, and mercifully, like Indonesian, verbs are not conjugated. It is, however, turning my linguistic world upside down. I spent the entire summer trying to banish my Spanish and think in Indonesian, and now, because of the heavy influence of Portuguese, I have to coax back all that vocabulary. So far it seems that 2/3 of Tetum is either derived from Indonesian or romance languages (e.g., “le” is to read in Tetum, “leer” is to read in Spanish). The question is, when I don’t know word, do I go East or West?

Hau hakarak komensa estuda Tetum! I want to begin learning Tetum!

White Houses

I am doing some retroactive blogging because I have already arrived in East Timor. The trip went well, despite the fact that my luggage stayed in LA as I flew on to Australia. Hopefully it will come in today.

The highlight of Washington was a walk to the White House before my flight. The NDI office disabused me of any interest in working as a Washington intern; each day I dressed up to go sit at one of the ten computers in the "Intern Room" and check email, read the newspaper and wait for meetings. The meetings, however, were generally helpful.

I flew non-stop from Dulles to LAX, and then to Sydney where I had a seven hours (after I spoke with United about the luggage) to stretch my legs and get some sleep. I walked from the hotel room in Chinatown to the Opera House, through the botanical gardens. All the birds were new, and I spent the afternoon hiding behind trees and stealthily sneaking up on the equivalent of city pigeons. Before heading back to the hotel, I joined 20 others resting on the steps in the triangular shadow of Opera House. It was one of the first hot spring days in Sydney and people were talking about how nice it was to be outside and, in the park, cooing at the ducklings.

My next stop was Darwin where I met up with Carlito, who works for NDI. We flew to Dili the next morning on a tiny plane that reminded me of flying in the Caribbean. Actually, East Timor has reminded me much more of St. Eustatius and Saba than of Indonesia. It is very dry, with steep hills rumbling down to the ocean. People have been wonderful, and I am excited about living here. I will post pictures ASAP.