Ford's Legacy in TL

I have been out of the US, world and Timor Leste news, and today I heard of President Ford's passing through an article from the ETAN listserve (subscribe at the bottom of the page) about his legacy in Timor Leste. Ford took power right before the bloody Indonesian invasion, giving it the go-ahead before jetting out of the archipelago with Kissinger.

I would be interested to hear if this element of his presidency is being discussed in the United States; according to the article, Timor Leste was neither mentioned in the New York Times nor Washington Post obituary.

The radio program Democracy Now did a long piece on this issue which is available as a transcript, MP3 file or a file which needs RealPlayer. The piece also features Alan Nairn who is one of two Americans who witnessed the 1991 Santa Cruz massacre. While he got out alive, his skull was fractured. His testimony is available through Mother Jones.

To sea

On the 26th, too stiff for more yoga, I headed back to Benoa harbor and the buzz and grime of ship maintenance. Amidst trying to help where I can - cooking, cleaning etc. - I have been reconnecting with ship folks, and taking the time to talk about living in Southeast Asia, hearing about the community and getting good support and feedback about what I doing and learning in Timor Leste.

This has been a tumultuous year for them, and their stories of rebuilding and adjusting since leaving the RV Heraclitus feel particularly present, or at times poignant, because this has also been a year of transitions for me.

Tomorrow morning we will be sailing out of Benoa and heading north-east towards Candidasa where a friend-of-the-ship, Emerald, lives. There the sea will be clean, and we will be far enough off shore to escape the mosquitoes. I am very excited to be on (and in) the water.

Christmas Day (Photos Added)

Merry Christmas! On the 25th, I woke up early and used a local telecom to call the family and get a report on the Christmas eve menu. I then headed off to a sweaty, invigorating yoga class overlooking a gorge in Campuan.

On my walk back, the teacher offered me a ride on his motorbike and then invited me to a Christmas party in the New Kuning section of Ubud. Forty-five minutes later, bearing crackers and the smoked gouda I bought the day before, I again jumped on the back of his bike and cruised to the residential neighborhood that I never would have seen on my own.

Robin Lim, who has run the Healthy Mother Earth Foundation/Yayasan Bumi Sahat birthing clinic in Ubud for over a decade, hosted the party at her traditionally constructed home. The crowd was great: tons of beautiful little kids, pregnant women and young couples, mostly with one western and one Balinese partner. It was a great hippie crowd and conversations in a mix of Indonesian and English segued from the topic of wild encounters at South Indian ashrams to Renaissance fairs in the US to organic farming in Timor Leste and Aceh.

People played music; I chatted in bahasa with a middle-aged Indonesian woman who, clasping my hand, said I reminded her of Princess Diana; a thirteen-year-old searched for unopened presents; it rained a little; and everyone waited for the turkey to finish cooking.

It was a great Christmas day, and I owe a debt of thanks to those there for their generosity and for drawing a stranger into the warmth of their community to celebrate the turning of another year.

Below: View from my room in Ubud.

Uluwatu Festival (Photos Added)

Yesterday I checked out of the hotel in Legian and taxied down to Benoa harbor. It was the same place that we had docked in 2001.

About thirty minutes after arriving, RV Infinity's masts appeared above the trees of the spit of land that encloses the harbor. The ship made a gentle turn and slowly slid into Benoa. It is a much more elegant ship that the RV Heraclitus – longer, with sharper, cleaner lines. The hull is a deep blue and does not have the lumpy, rounded look that gave the RVH the aspect of a ceramics project. Inside it is much roomier and more polished; in Singapore the crew finished the woodwork, sanding and varnishing all the floors, doorframes, etc.

I spent much of the afternoon with Heather, and then around 4 pm I headed to the Uluwatu temple at the western tip of the peninsula that dangles to the south of Bali. Riding on the back of a crewmember’s motorbike, keeping up with Orla and Michel in front of us, we quickly moved through touristy strips, between rows of furniture makers and wholesalers, past new developments, and out into farmland.

We arrived at the temple for the final day of a three-day festival. Hundreds of Balinese had come to pray and give offerings. Temples in Bali are not covered, and instead they consist of a complex of courtyards with chest-high stonewalls and small towers and thatch pavilions inside. Even though foreigners are denied access inside the inner gates, we could still listen to the gamelan orchestra, and hang out between the courtyards as people came and went and left offerings in tiny, square, palm frond baskets filled with flowers, bits of crackers and intricately cut and tied palm leaf ornaments.
We were going to leave before it got dark, but we started talking to a lady whose son was performing in the Kecak fire dance put on nightly. Balinese dance, no matter how abridged for tourists, is fantastic and instead of gamelan the music for the performance was made by the percussive chanting of an all-male chorus seated in a circle around the dancers.

I have been absolutely loving being around music and dance. I arrived in Ubud today and wandered into a book exchange attached to a cultural center. After brousing, I hung out and watched a dance class for young girls. Near where I am staying there is a temple and I listened to people playing the gamelan all afternoon.

Bali ho!

I arrived without any problems in Bali and I have spent the last two days walking tourist streets with Sally and even *gasp* going to a mall complete with escalator.

What makes Bali so cool though is that when we came out of a big shopping center at about 9 pm the streets were absolutely packed with people going to temple. Hundreds of women and men, dressed in the formal Balinese style (see photos, from the net) carried painted baskets and bundles of incense through one stone gate, and filed out anther one onto the backs of motorbikes. The scene was lit with the mall's neon lights, and the air smelled of frangiopani, incense, rotting orange and exhaust.

I saw Sally off at the airport, and I am excited to begin part B of my Bali vacation. Tomorrow I am going to head down to Benoa harbor and find the new ship!

Security Update

Not such a great day in Timor security-wise. Today a man was shot,* and the main road heading east was blocked. I ate dinner with some Aussies from UNPOL on Friday and they think that Timor is in for a little rough patch - another good reason to jet to Bali.

According to them, the main problem is that aid was discontinued to IDP camps on Friday - an effort to close off camps that will flood once the rains begin in earnest. Also of concern has been the arrival of small explosives: one home-made device and a couple of Indonesian-era grenades. Rock throwing and darts still predominate however.

The officers' other major concern is internal; UNPOL now has representatives from 22 countries, many of which (e.g. Fiji, Thailand and Bangladesh) domestically are struggling with maintaining rule of law. They said that can't rely on the other UNPOL and when things heat up they immediately call one of the other 50 Australian officers.**



Photos: Top - soldiers buying DVDs in Kolmera, a main shopping area. Above - the Jardin/Port IDP camp in the park across from Dili's "five star" hotel, Hotel Timor. The Jardin camp is slated for closure because of flooding and the attendant sanitary concerns.

* I originally wrote that two men were killed; news reports, filed six hours apart, described shootings at two different locations. Now it is clear that only one man died. Thus in news here.

** A clear distinction must be made between the UNPOL and the Joint Defense Force, which includes over 1,000 highly trained Australian and Portuguese military (rather than police) personnel.

Slouching Towards Bali

In the last week or so I have been drifting, anticipating my nearing vacation in Bali. Work has been good - I still really enjoy the people at NDI and my projects have become more interesting - but when it comes down to it, I sit at a desk, and a break from the routine, more so than from life in Timor, is distractingly exciting.

The plan is to fly out on Tuesday afternoon, December 19th, with my friend Sally. We will split a hotel room in the Legian area for three nights, after which she will fly home to New Hampshire and I will start to scan Benoa Harbor for the arrival of the RV Infinity, the latest incarnation of "the ship." Seas willing, I will stay on the ship from the 21st to the 2nd, heading back to Timor Leste on the 3rd.

My plan for Bali is modest: buy a few new shirts and new sunglasses, go dancing, go birding, recapture my Indonesian, pick up imported foodstuffs and maybe a blender, grab some books, walk everywhere, and most importantly, reconnect with ship folks.

I have not been to Bali since December 2001. It was my first stop on the RV Heraclitus following a 30 day voyage from Phuket, Thailand. I rented a car with Heather and Carol and went through Ubud and then to the cooler north. In the extensive botanical gardens, I remember standing in a greenhouse and describing to the orchid-curator my mother's gardens and great grandmother's roses. Bali was also my introduction to food "expediting," and I did huge shopping trips with Reka, stocking up on 9 mo. worth of frozen meats and specialty foods, and then buying fresh foods from Denpasar's indoor market, which, like a parking garage, featured big ramps connecting three levels of fruit and vegetable stalls.

In 2001, tourism in Bali had been hit hard by 9/11 and people were having a tough time. The bombings in October 2002, which killed over 200 people (including 38 nationals and 88 Australians), further depressed the tourist economy. US travel warnings still caution against going to the clubs in Kuta.

Despite my current preoccupation with getting to Bali, I am leaving Timor after a nice weekend. On Saturday I ran with hash again, and on Sunday put my Tetun to use and helped distribute over 700 excellent Christmas packages (shoe boxes assembled in Australia containing sweets, stuffed animals, soap, toothpaste, sparkly colored pencils, hair clips, etc.) to kids from area orphanages.

I then headed to Tasitolu to watch Timorese-style horse racing, perhaps fodder for another post.

Note on the graphics: Bali has long been subject to American fantasies, and was the subject of a numerous of exploitation/snuff films, known (acording to Wikipedia, natch) as "goona-goona epics." The poster featured above is from the 1933 film "Legong: Dance of the Virgins." I will be taking this time to bone up on my Said!

Below, two maps.

OMI: Bread shop

As I am crossing the 3 1/2 month mark, I find that I have gravitated towards describing events that defy the norm - public ceremonies, security breakdowns, hikes - and writing less about day-to-day life in Timor. This is good; this means I am adjusting, but it also gives distorted view: just the peaks and the valleys.

Traveliing with Nonnie in Austria in my early teens I kept a journal and in it illustrated the different kind of light switches used in Europe. It is easy to either pretend to be unsurprised by new things or, more commonly, for me to be surprised, and then forget that surprise as I click the light switch each day.

So in the spirit of the quotidian, and recording the small things, here is the first "of minor importance" (OMI) post.

The small loja where I buy bread some mornings; it is about a ten minute walk from NDI. The care taken with the shop is typical.



The best bread place is actually closer, just a window in a small building, but they are always sold out before I get there.

Kill-ah

Last Sunday I went on what in my family would qualify as a "killer" hike. Crack of dawn start? Check. Multiple summits? Check. Bushwhacking? Hell yeah. Blood loss? Claro que si. We ended up following a dry river bed up the hill, hiking across the ridge of the hills cupping Dili's most popular beach, crossing by the Indonesia-era microwave towers, and then descending into a pig farm.

While there were no bloody, impacted toenails (Matterhorn, c. 1998, Mt. Orsorno, c. 2000) or steigeisen (Mt. Cardigan, any year) or breakfast food involved, I believe that Timor has limitless potential for many more enthusiastically conceived, "killer" activities.



Above: Looking west at Dili. While the coast usually follows the curve of the hills, Dili sits in their span, as if the bay had been filled in.



Above: Looking east down the other side of the ridge. From this height the reefs are clearly visible. This beach, known as "the backside of Jesus" (in reference to the large statue) is almost always empty.



Above: Again looking east.

Thank you!

A second package arrived today - thank you to those who sent photos, collages, news of PVD, computer parts, dental floss and the New Yorker to the other side of the globe. I am over the moon!

And the rain has come, confirming that all good things come from the sky.

Who's Who (Updated: Photos added)

A quick addendum to the last post: The medals were presented to the veterans of the struggle for independence by Timor’s political heavy weights – the President Xanana Gusmao, Prime Minister Jose Ramos-Horta, President of Parliament/President of the majority party (Fretilin) Francisco “Lu’olo” Guterrres, and the Acting UN Special Representative to the Secretary General Finn Reske-Nielsen.



In UN news, Atul Khare of India has been appointed as the new SRSG in charge of UNMIT, replacing A-SRSG Reske-Nielsen. Reske-Nielsen, then Deputy SRSG, took over at the end of September when the appointment of SRSG Sukehiro Hasegawa of Japan expired. The new Deputy SRSG is from the Philippines, reflecting the surprisingly strong ties - religious, educational and now military through peacekeepers - between the two nations

The distribution of the medals continued last Friday, this time in the shade of Independence Park. The ceremony was part of a week long celebration of the ten year anniversary of the Horta-Belo Nobel Peace Prize.





Above: F-FDTL

28 November

When I took the pictures of Laclubar off my camera I noticed that I had pictures from Independence Day. A little retroactive posting is in order:

On the 28^th we had the day off to celebrate Independence Day. The holiday commemorates the 1975 unilateral declaration of independence made by the Fretilin movement during the brief gap between Portuguese rule and Indonesian occupation. Timor Leste again will celebrate its independence - this time from Indonesia - in May.

I spent the morning at the stadium, where political leaders awarded medals and President Xanana (Sha-nah-nah) Gusmao spoke. The national military and police stood in the field absolutely melting, while I pretended to have an invitation and took a seat among the ex pat diplomatic corps in the shade. (The Timorese leaders were in an adjacent section, and hoi poloi in a third).

I had come early and I only realized what a big event it was when outside the stadium looked like a white SUV dealership – the car of choice for the UN and other higher-ups.

Note: Almost all the pictures on this blog are high resolution. If you click on them they will open in a new window and you can see more detail!

Trip to Laclubar (Updated)

I spent the weekend in the foho - what translates to mountains but really means boondocks.

I drove up to Laclubar with my friend Sally where we visited Judith, who is doing research towards her PhD in anthropology. Judith is a student of of Timor Leste's culture, language and history; since spending time with her I have been making resolutions to improve my Tetun, read more history, and work diligently to learn this place.

The afternoon we arrived we went for a walk around Laclubar. Everyone knows Judith, so were thrice invited to sit in people's home, drink coffee, eat snacks and talk a little. Much of the conversation involved asking where people were - Is your wife's sister in Dili? Has the man who lives in the yellow house gone to Manatutu yet? Laclubar lacks electricity, and at night, when two young men came to return Judith's cellphone, we all drank coffee, ate snacks and talked by candlelight.

I liked being up high and feeling the mountain air, and that night I felt cold for the first time since coming here.

After spending breakfast we walked to the town of Funar, which is where Judith lives. It was the market day and people with tiny rugged horses and lots of packages were winding their way up the steep paths back to their villages - some more than nine hours away.

We left around 2 pm, and as a favor, gave an acquaintance of Judith's a ride to Dili. Laclubar is a center for palm wine production, and the guy put two big containers of the spirit in the back of the SUV. The road is terrible, and after four hours of bumping and jostling, by the time we got back to the big city, the whole car smelled as if we had gone on a weekend bender. Back in Dili, I fumigated the car with bathroom spray.

The next morning I told Elsty (the office manager) that it might smell "not so good" and we went together, opened the car, and sniffed around. She agreed it smelled "not so good." A little embarrassing.

Regardless of the palm wine issue, the most significant thing about the ride back was that it rained. Ten minutes of hard rain - now the second time I have seen rain in three months. The rainy season is almost a month late and in the foho people are worried about their corn; they must have been pleased. I can only hope that dusty Dili gets the same relief soon.

Photos: On the way to Laclubar.