Fila Fali Dili

It's official: I'll be touching down in Dili on Saturday, ending my three-week psuedo-evacuation. And it's just in time. My lungs deserve a break and my eyes need those sea views.

Wallacea

Timor Leste hangs at the very end, and slightly below, a chain of islands that stretch east from Bali called Nusa Tenggara (lit. southeast islands). In the late 1850s, while definitely not doing battle with Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace drew the Wallace Demarcation Line, separating Asia from Australasia. He sorted bird and tree species and in the end snipped Bali from Rinja, and then Borneo from Sulawesi.

According to Wallace, Timor Leste (ecologically) belongs with its southern neighbor.

Before leaving Timor Leste for Jakarta, Australia had been on my mind, and in the mornings before work I had been reading The Songlines by Bruce Chatwin. Written in 1987, it is Chatwin’s story of his introduction to bush Australia and his search to understand the songlines – what he describes as the foundation of Aboriginal cosmology.*

In Timor Leste, Australians are stationed on the corners and dominate international headlines. Australia also takes the flack in this region that the US gets everywhere else – in both cases deservedly and undeservedly – so I empathize. My attention to Australian politics (J found my timeline of PMs penciled in front of my book), economics, environment, pop culture (Kenny), reflects the nation’s enmeshment in Timor Leste’s past and future (as well as the influence of good friends).

But as I sat in the Bali airport, about to jet to Jakarta, I worried that in squinting south I have paid too little attention the pull of Indonesia to the north and west of Timor Leste. Indonesia remains Timor Leste’s only land border, major trading partner and source of TV programming and music. Waiting for my plane, The Songlines, with its stories of hitting kangaroos with Range Rovers, suddenly seemed like a very strange book to be reading.

Spheres of influence do not follow the ‘rules’ of biology, and continents are much more easily articulated through tables of tree species and deep-sea trenches than by culture, history, language and power. Timor Leste is of Wallacea – sitting somewhat uncomfortably at the geographical cross roads of Asia and Oceania, and forever looking towards Portugal.

In Wallace’s time the assumption was that the border area between Asia and Oceania that now bears his name would be less diverse and ecologically rich than its coherent neighbors. This has proved false. Timor Leste occupies an area of hybridization, cohabitation, and cross-pollination.

So over these last few weeks I have traversed diverse Wallacea – from Catholic to Hindu to Muslim, from tua and espresso to tebotel, from Dili through Seminyak and Bedugal to the metropolis Jakarta. From where Australians patrol the streets, to the bureaucratic heartbeat of Indonesia.


* Chatwin writes: “Aboriginal Creation myths tell of the legendary totemic beings who had wandered over the continent in Dreamtime, singing out the names of everything that crossed their path – birds, animals, plants, rocks, waterholes – and so singing the world into existence.” I am not sure how this analysis holds up 20 years later.

Flying out

Enough of malls and macet, extra-deluxe movie theaters, Dunkin' Donuts and living at the Formule1 hotel - I am coming back to Dili! Despite the problems last Thusday, I received the OK from Washington, and I will hopefully be touching down before the week is out. I am excited to see friends, jump in the water and get back into work.

Return to Dili?

Despite having warmed up to Jakarta - although not the inescapable pollution - I have been gently pushing to return to Timor Leste. Yesterday my boss requested that I return this weekend, and in response Washington has asked that we hold off until the middle of next week. If everything remains normal in Dili I should be back in town for the elections.

I hope that others in similar situations will soon also receive good news - or any news - on getting back into Dili.

Below: On my walk to work.

Public Holiday

Monday was a public holiday in Indonesia (Nyepi - Balinese New Year and day of silence) and I decided to leave my 10 kg guidebook at the hotel and go for a wander in the general direction of Soekarno's National Monument. It was hot and clear, and hundreds of people had come to the park to fly kites, play in a soccer tournament (very Jakarta cool - American hip hop blaring), and nap in the shade.

The plaza follows the proud tradition of authoritarian architecture: the central monument is particularly impressive because it is surrounded by sweltering concrete - people are forced back under the palms at a perfect viewing distance.

I circled the monument and moved through the park's 'neighborhoods.' My favorite section was dominated by paths of raised river stones - some set on end. People here are very keen on reflexology, and men and women, shoes in hand, walk or lie on the stones for therapy. I gave it a try and was impressed by how enjoyable yet lo-tech it was. In the same area some masseurs had spread out blankets and when I arrived a veiled woman was receiving a shoulder rub under a tree.



Apart from those calmer moments, I spent much of my weekend going in and out of shops picking up some new clothes, buying books (including the former Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas's excellent and frustrating The Pebble in the Shoe on Timor Leste- wow does he hate FRETILIN), and getting a trendy haircut. There is something in the mall-loving, music and media-obsessed, city culture that reminds me of America. Maybe it is not bad to jump back into the mainstream for a while - especially when it is flowing with such hyped-up energy.

Stawberries, Unicorns and the Orchid Man

En route to Jakarta I had one free day in Bali, and I decided to go back to the botanical gardens in Bedugal that I had visited in 2001. Bali was my first port-of-call (reached after a month-long voyage from Phuket), and I have since fixed on my unsteady description of my great grandmother’s rose-gardens to the man who tended the orchid collection as an early attempt to negotiate how I fit in Southeast Asia.

On Monday morning I hopped a bus with the idea of checking out the orchids and seeing the orchid man. Heading due north, Bali’s auto-parts and wholesale decorating stores gave way to rice fields. Climbing higher, foggy slopes replaced the rice paddies. In Bedugal, I got off at the market amidst sturdy ladies in sweaters moving baskets of wet cabbages and corn on and off minibuses.

Bedugal was as I remembered: a little dour and rough around the edges, up high in the volcanic mountains. While I warmed up with a cup of ginger tea and a plate of fried noodles, it started to piss rain. Undeterred, I bought a small umbrella and a half-kilo of mangosteens and headed off for the botanical gardens.

There really is not much else to the story. I ate the inevitably ununicorn-like* mangosteens under a shelter and then walked around for two hours in a massive, cold downpour. Everything was slippery, dripping and Jurassic. I made it up to the orchid house but it was closed and empty. No orchid man.

I walked back into town past small fields of carrots, Brassicas and, of all things, strawberries. The only thing I could think of was Snow Falling on Cedars and the strawberry farms in the cloudy Pacific Northwest. Strange to see strawberries on a wet Balinese volcano; strange for me to be wandering around alone up there in the rain.

After some concern that I had missed the last bus out of town, I clambered into the back of a microlet and we sputtered back down towards Kuta - the sunshine surfer capital of Bali. I was cold and I didn’t mind the steamy, close heat of bodies or the smoke from my neighbor’s clove cigarette. That night I slept hard.

* Tantalus: Mangosteens (see bottom photo) cannot be imported into the US. In a rapturous New York Times food article I read before coming heading to Timor, a chef said tasting one was like “Seeing a unicorn.” Way too much build-up for any fruit.





Note: Top photo, a sign for the Balinese 'Rosela.'

Room with a View

I arrived in Jakarta yesterday. The ride in reminded me, comfortingly, of banal Orlando, Florida where I used to go in the spring for pre-season lacrosse. Wide, clean, elevated highways; swampy medians flocked with white wading birds, and glass towers on the horizen.

After shaking hands all around at the bustling NDI office, I checked in at the Formule 1 hotel and slept for 14 hours. Oddly enough, I stayed at a Formule 1 in Brisbane after leaving the ship in Madang, Papua New Guinea - a parallel, meloncholy experience of reentering the mainstream. The Starbucks in the lobby makes me miss drinking espresso in hot, dusty Dili while low-slung taxis crawl by.

Before I went under for the night (err, afternoon) I pulled aside the curtain to see the view. Out there was none other than the one Jakarta landmark I know: the Wisma.

To Jakarta

The building at left is the Sakura Tower. It stands proud as the tallest building in the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste.* The building at right is Wisma 46, located in Jakarta, Indonesia. At 48 stories, it is the second tallest building in the southern hemisphere. Timor-Leste has a population of just over one million.** Jakarta's population: 13 million. Yikes.

On Sunday I will be flying to Bali and then on to Jakarta. NDI is pulling me out of Dili and transferring me to the Jakarta office for the next 2-4 weeks. This was a conservative decision and it comes at a time when many of the Australians who were evacuated last week are pushing to come back into the country. The last week (admittedly following a very bad weekend) has been quiet. However many unresolved issues remain, and with the elections on the way, Washington is playing it safe.

My greatest concern is that NDI will be reluctant to send me back to Dili until all the elections are over. The presidential elections are slated for April 9th (with probable run-off election following); the latest scuttlebutt is that parliamentary elections will be held on June 30th. For now, my fingers are crossed that I will be allowed back in before the presidential elections. I had planned to be an observer.

Those worries aside, I am looking forward to a change of pace and coming out from under the thumb of curfews, movement restrictions, and daily worry. I am going to practice my Bahasa, hoard my per diem, buy some new clothes, and hopefully take the train to Yogyakarta to see Borobudur and connect with the Princeton Fellow working there.

It will, undoubtedly, be a real change of pace.


* If any Dili resident has a taller submission (4+ stories), please leave a comment.
** The CIA World Factbook lists the population with convincing precision at 1,062,777 but also notes that a 2006 estimate was as low as 800,000.

Sitting Tight

After a rough weekend, Dili quieted down on Tuesday and for the first time in weeks I did not receive a single security text message. The only violence reported in the media was directed at the President's residence, reflecting the continued anger over Gusmao's authorization of the use of force against the fugitive leader Alfredo Reinado in Same.

Telibert, Rui (a Portuguese officer) and I went diving at Tasitolu this morning. The visibility was poor and there was a bit of current, but it was just ecstatic to get out and into the water. The beach road had yet to be cleared from the night before, and we had to drive around tires that were still smoking, large rocks, and long sections of bottle and auto glass. Since Saturday night, I had not left the NDI compound except to go around the corner for groceries.

Australians and New Zealanders are continuing to be evacuated. One very close friend is being flown out to Darwin tomorrow and will continue her project "off site" until thing smooth out in Dili. Another friend, my wonderful Kiwi tennis partner, has been told that he will be evacuated on the 12 March and the remaining 9 months of his contract cancelled. The logic is that the risk will remain high through the elections (April 9 - Presidential, TBA [possibly late June] - Parliamentary).

Unfortunately, today's lull may not last. The highly anticipated verdict in the Rogerio Lobato* trial is due out tomorrow (although the release may be delayed), and a large-scale anti-government protest is set for Thursday. As I told Jenny, I am hoping for more rain to keep people indoors, clean the streets and cool everything down.

I am quickly adjusting to this new level of uncertainty and after a calm day, a dive, 3 hours of Seinfeld this evening, I am feeling positive about being in Dili and like myself again. Let's hope this respite lasts.



Photos: Road trip up into the hills of Dare on 25 February to beat the heat. The buildings are part of a Portuguese-era seminary.

* Lobato, the former Interior Minister, is accused of distributing weapons to civilian hit-squads during the crisis in April/May 2006.

BBC News Clip

This latest episode has reached the BBC (no sign of it on CNN, yet). The news clip's resolution is not great, but the analysis is decent.

Last night was a quiet one. I did my laundry, called home, checked in with all my friends in Dili via text message and watched "Running with Scissors." A friend crashed at NDI and it was nice to just have the company. This situation is leaving me sad and a bit shaken.

Photo credits: LSmith

Security Update

First, my apologies for not posting in a while. It has been a busy two weeks and the security situation in Dili has become fluid - more difficult to predict and understand. In the last two weeks, Timor Leste has been hit from all sides - a second jail break, a serious region-wide rice shortage, drought, the killing of two Timorese IDPs by Australian Defense Force personnel, and the seizure of 25 weapons from a border post by the fugitive rebel leader Alfredo Reinado (see below photos: top from this week, bottom with the much-discussed rocket-launcher from a month ago).

There are so many moving parts, especially when counting the gang and East/West violence from earlier this year, that to write about it has felt a bit overwhelming.

Over the last two days the violence has been the worst and most indiscriminate since I have been here. Friends have been been hit by stones while driving, and last night houses were burned near where other friends live. They found rubber bullets - used by Portuguese or Malaysian forces - in their backyard in the morning. There has been serious talk of evacuations and both Australia and the United States have increased their travel warnings.

Today I pulled together my "grab bag," a small backpack with travel documents, clothes, and a good book in case I need to leave. I am receiving good information (much of it in text messages, see photo) and NDI remains a comfortable, safe place to be.

The major concern for the next 72 hours is that violence in Dili will flare up in response to news of the large-scale raid in Same on Reinado's camp by the Australian Defense Forces (ADF). Four Timorese were killed during the operation and Reinado escaped. Reinado is a Robin Hood figure for many here, especially in the West, and with the breakdown of relations following six months of negotiations between Reinado and the government, it seems unlikely that this issue will be resolved without more violence. Problems today have included stone throwing and illegal roadblocks.



In the meantime, I am sitting tight.

For more information on what is going on, please check out the links at right. The news link includes international coverage while Xanana Republic and Dili-gence both offer good local analysis.

I will keep everyone posted and call home on Sunday night (Monday morning in Dili). I am thinking of everyone and send all my love from this troubled country for which I have come to care so much.