Odds and Ends

This journal has been quiet for a while for a few reasons – first we lost internet for a week, then my laptop power cord fried, and I also have been a bit busier. So there are a few odds and ends, starting with security and rambling onward:

After being so sanguine about the events of the 12th, I have been disappointed to see that violence has resumed in Dili and also picked up in the districts. A week ago a 25 year-old Brazilian evangelical missionary was shot with an arrow and died. He was traveling with his sister and three Timorese orphans. Unbelievable – la fiar.

He is the first ex pat to have been explicitly targeted. The gang that stopped his car made threats against Australians, and the next morning many ex pats showed the limits of their solidarity by slapping British and American flags onto their SUVs.

The violence in the districts has been between martial arts groups (massive youth groups that practice loose forms of martial arts together) and at least one youth group (Kolimau 2000) that has been active since the Indonesian occupation. Houses were burnt and a half-dozen young men were killed.

I hung out with the guys last night at the office (a bunch of staff are staying at NDI right now, for a variety of reasons) watching a tiny television. The main report involved the leaders of these groups renouncing violence.

Politics in Timor Leste is more emotive than in the US. The President has cried on a number of occasions, and the language of the Prime Minister’s office is often about how he is feeling. Headlines in the newspaper say that The Government it is “sad” about the violence. Perhaps because of the influence of the Catholic Church, narratives of guilt, contrition (confession), and forgiveness predominate. These public outpourings are even more affecting when viewed in contrast – or maybe in concert – with the brutal history of Timor: the repression, the sacrifice, the fight for freedom, etc.

But I have to learn to be less of sucker – to recognize that the emotion behind Timorese politics is akin to the bravado that flavors statecraft in America.

The bravado of American politics goes hand in hand with a culture of confidence, speed, individuality and litigiousness. I mention the later because NDI recently fired a driver who is now contesting his severance pay. He has come to the office over five times, often bringing his wife and other family members, and always bringing his polished and politically connected brother-in-law.

They are advocating what translates to a “family solution” – meaning that NDI should consider him a member of its family rather than an employee. By contrast, my reaction has been typically American: follow the employee manual, don’t be brow-beaten into breaking step with the minimum obligation, don’t set a bad precedent, put your foot down.

In a place where the script of confession and forgiveness is so strong, this approach perhaps interrupts the natural flow of this kind of conflict. But again, I have to remember not to be a sucker – not to romanticize and unduly elevate alternate systems of reconciliation.

Timor is a hybrid, complex and changing, a fact made abundantly clear, when, in the last meeting, smiling and surrounded by all the NDI staff and driver’s family, the brother-in-law announced the driver's intention to sue.

So it still will be a “family solution,” just American-style.