Screaming Dinosaurs
My final breakfast on the balcony is a veritable feast of noodles and fried eggs. A fine way to say goodbye to this little dusty corner of Dili. The sun is rising in a clear blue sky, as it has done every day so far. Dominguez, my Mega Tours driver, is there to pick me up just gone 7am. Our car, like most in Dili, has a smashed windscreen. Dominguez, as he will do for most of the coming day, pleads ignorance.
We make the sharp climb out of the city, passing scores of schoolchildren heading down the hill to school. It’s difficult to tell what time lessons begin. Some kids are loitering outside the school gate, others – looking no less languid – are still miles up the hill.
Great threads of mist hang between the hills around which Dili has taken shape. Towards the crest, I stop for a picture. An old guy with a white beard and great trenches around his eyes stops me and implores me, in Tetum, to take a portrait picture and send it to him. He kneels down in front of stack of wood and puts his hand together in prayer. The pose should be ironic, I think, but this guy is deadly serious. Dominguez says that he is very, very drunk.
High up on the hill there’s a point where you can look all the way to the southern coast, 80kms or so away. North and south coasts in the same field of vision. It’s beautiful. Before we know it we are winding through shady coffee plantations, seemingly growing naturally in the undulating forest. The whole forest is rendered in a lovely deep green and there’s a wonderful fragrance in the air.
A short while out of Dili we come across a military checkpoint. Every car is coming under scrutiny. A young bloke with a wispy moustache interviews us. I should say that his moustache is the only facial feature that I can see beneath the khaki, the sunglasses and the helmet. He asks me what I am doing in Timor. He too fails to conceal a smirk when I say I am here to write about Timor travel. ‘OK, mate, keep smoking the draw,’ he says. Actually, he only said the first two words of that sentence. The rest I extrapolated from his tone of voice.
A short while later, in the town of Alieu, we come across another Australian unit sitting around in a couple of the destroyed buildings, looking very bored indeed. Nothing is doing. The village is out in the coffee fields and rice farms. The Aussies eye every passing car without a feigned attempt at interest. I don’t think they want to be here.
Up on another ridge, I stop to photograph a guy selling water and lollies out of his tiny hut. There may be metal bars across the counter, but the rest of the walls are made from nothing but mud. He too loves to idea of me taking his picture. He poses inside the shop, and – when I retreat to get a wider angle – he comes out and loiters in shot. The people of Timor are certainly not shy about being photographed. On the contrary, they bloody love it.
Dominguez and I chat about the problems that plagued Timor in the Spring. The reasons for military and geurilla frustrations, he says, are understandable. So many men gave the best part of their lives fighting the Indonesians. Now they have a country, but they have no job or money. And they see cars coming out of Dili, people with money and power, and they want a piece of that. Democracy is not easy. People shouldn’t expect immediate change. But, sadly, in this country, they do.
Before long we are on the crest of a hill overlooking the scenic town of Maubisse (pictured). It’s a stunning scene. Equally stunning is the view from the Pousada. ‘Pousada’ is Portuguese for ‘hotel’ but the word is often used to refer to the converted residences of old Portuguese governors. There’s a network around the country, though finding out which town has an operating pousada can be tricky. They tend to open and close, especially in this time of near zero tourism.
Maubisse’s pousada is located on top of a hill that lies in the middle of the mountain basin. Steep hills completely surround the building and there’s a constant interplay of light and shadow on the land. It feels like a bigger, deeper, more spectacular version of Northumberland. It’s more like Austria, Dominguez says, despite having never been to Austria. Apparently a Singaporean visitor once told him this.
Compared to Dili, Maubisse is wonderfully cool and there’s a constant sound of wind soughing in distant trees. I’ve used the word soughing a lot in recent months. I now realize that it’s never been used properly before. THIS is real ‘soughing’. It’s an eerie sound. Over a coffee, Dominguez tells me that it can be truly frightening if you are out along camping in the mountains. He sounds like people talking, he says. Timor is a land of myths and legends, and superstitions – the kind of place where Rai Na’in (Earth Owner, or Spirit) might well object if you camp up in the wrong place. I make a mental note never to go out there alone.
On the way down the hill into town, we stopped at the local catholic church. Many locals paused to watched me prowl around outside with the camera. They become very curious when I fell to the floor to get the adjacent picture of the cross which stands outside the church. Dominguez explains that this is a good example of how a devout catholic faith still co-exists with more ancient ancestory worship. At animist shrines, this kind of three-pronged piece of wood is integral to the ancestor-worship ceremonies. It’s now used to represent the cross outside Timor’s churches. Nevertheless, it still looks distinctly indigenous. More obviously native, is a pillar of rams’ horns just across the square.
Despite the abundance of coffee in these valleys, it’s only drunk seasonally by local villagers. In June, July and August – harvest time - they can all fill their boots. The rest of the time, they go without. The poverty is so chronic that growers must sell everything they have if they hope to see the rest of the year out. I wonder if they know there’s no seasonal shutdown at Starbucks. Two quid for a cup back home in the UK. These guys get next to nothing I bet. I guess I am not to first to lament injustice in the global coffee industry.
On the road outside Maubisse we come across a couple of young lads on horseback. The oldest is probably about six. There are no adults in sight. It’s a remarkable sight, similar to a snatched glance I get a bit late of a couple of young girls washing each other in a little ditch at the end of a wooden run-off pipe. Shortly afterwards there’s a woman grooming her daughter, peering around in her wild, vertical haircut for nasties. It’s real back to basics stuff, and rather beautiful to witness.
The road between Maubisse and Same is tough going, but it’s the most rewarding part of the trip, view-wise. This area has two of the highest peaks in Timor. Locals say the biggest, Rameilau (2,930m) is male and the other, Cablaque, is female. The peaks rear up and can only be glimpsed sometimes by pressing the nose to the windscreen. These are real mountains. Dominguez stops and points across one valley. That’s where Xanana hid out, he says. The Indonesians were here, and he was over there. It’s a lonely, desolate looking place. Rocky, and barren. You can sense the admiration in his voice. Xanana is East Timor’s Che Guvara. Only Xanana is now President. Che died before he could be exposed as human, I guess. Judging by the state of this country, there’s little danger of anyone getting too holy about Xanana.
Kids scream and shout as we pass, smiling and waving. They have nothing. They loiter at their doors and grin a grin that is so instinctive, so pure, that it makes you want to cry. They wake up each day to this poverty. There’s nothing to do in a day, no school, no TV, no books, no Playstation. They just kick around and stay alive. That’s it. Staying alive. There are an amazing number of kids. Apparently East Timor has the world’s highest birth rate and you can believe it. The number of old folk is few. The kids are everywhere. The elderly ladies, however, are particularly noticeable, with their rictus red smiles, teeth and lips thoroughly stained from years of berry chewing. They look like they might fall apart as they smile and wave. Truly remarkable characters.
We breeze past Same, the place we will lodge for the night, and head straight for the south coast. The road suddenly becomes flat and smooth as we race through a weirdly barren forest, totally devoid of leaves. The villages close to the coast have some of the most spectacular Bougainvillea blossoms I’ve seen yet, and I’ve seen so far.
At the sea, I put on some trunks and head into the surf with my snorkel. The waves are tall here and I bob around, peering over the top occasionally to glimpse an old burnt out Portuguese building back on the sands. A group of local kids are bobbing up and down on a rubber ring which has a dangerously protruding valve. They smile and wave and offer me a ride. I accept, and offer them a go on my snorkel. They clearly have never seen a snorkel before. It takes about fifteen minutes, and several dives beneath the surface, before the begin to get the hang of it. I have to laugh as I watch them dive down before surfacing spluttering and coughing.
We drive back up towards Same, with the gorgeous mountains looking large. They hang on the horizon majestically. We stop at one village to get pictures in the lovely evening sunlight. It takes only a moment for the mob of kids to gather. They can’t get enough of it, virtually fighting each other for the opportunity to take centre stage in my viewfinder. I make the grave mistake of trying to give them a couple of mangos that I have in my bag. Chaos ensues. I spot one girl, with especially wild hair who giggled gorgeously in one of my pictures, and try to give her a mango. She’s at the back and is staring into the car curiously, but she hasn’t asked once. Something puritanical is stirring in me, obviously. Those who ask, don’t get.
Dominguez takes the opportunity to buy a eight-dollar, five-litre plastic container of the stinky homemade palm wine. ‘The wife won’t like this,’ he says. Neither do I as, immediately, the entire car smells of the stuff. It’s horrible. It’s a double whammy for him, for as he goes to buy the alcohol, a local lady accosts him and accuses him of running over her chicken about half an hour ago. Indeed, Dominguez did run over a chicken half an hour ago, but he feigns complete ignorance and, somehow, gets away with it.
Back at Same, we head up the hill to a lovely colonial square which, with views like this, just needs to be developed. When it is, it’ll be gorgeous. Europeans pay thousands for a lot less. As it is, a solitary Timor Aid project is in residence, making tais to sell to nobody. Nothing else is stirring up here. Apparently tentative plans have been made, but what’s lacking is the money, and the investment. I guess first must come stability, then improvement to the infrastructure (notably power and roads), and then the businessman can come.
At sunset, I am invited to play basketball with a group of local teenagers. The mountains that rise above us are lit in a gorgeous golden glow. The girls call me ‘Mister Graham’ and giggle like good’uns. I feel so very, very lucky to be here
I wash myself down from the water in the cistern and dry myself on nothing. I’ve forgotten my towel and the hotel (15 USD a night) certainly isn’t providing one. I eat with Dominguez in the hotel’s very own restaurant. Given that the power only comes on at 6.30pm, I wonder how they manage to keep things refrigerated. Clearly, they don’t, cos the only thing on tonight’s menu is chicken. Chicken with rice. The bugger was almost certainly killed within the last hour. Or maybe not. It’s dry and chewy. I only get two tough wings. It’s disgusting. Timorese cooking is certainly not one of the attractions on this country. Oh well, I guess, out here, I should feel lucky to get anything at all. I wouldn’t like to be scavenging for food myself. With no water, no electricity (for most of the day) and no menu, I feel fairly luck to have anything at all. Oh, did I mention that this is the best restaurant in town?
Behind Dominquez’s shoulder a fire is raging out there in the darkness. Nobody has any idea why. After spending the ‘eating’ part of the meal in utter silence, we spend the ‘beer drinking’ part chatting. ‘We’ve got 32 political parties, and 16 different dialects in this country,’ he says. ‘We only have 900,000 people. We’ve spent so much time fighting others, the Indonesians, the Portuguese, the Japanese, that we’ve forgotten about what’s inside. There’s too much arguing inside our own people and political parties. We need stability, and unity. After 2002, the government should have gone out and talked to everyone, including the people in the districts. They should’ve bought the country together, but they failed.
‘At the moment, we’ve got most of the country sitting around waiting – people with nothing to do, no jobs and no ideas. We should be so rich, but we need the technical knowledge to make the most of what we have got. The election’s next year. If things can settle down, then in 20 years we have a future. If it’s still like this, I can’t see any future.’
His words are serious, and sobering. In Timor right now, it’s inevitable that you will get into a conversation like this. Politics is everything, and everywhere. That’s the problem, I guess. Too much politics.
‘All our people came together to fight the Indonesians. We had unity then. Now people say, “Back then we fought side by side but why, now, have you now got a big car and a house in Dili, and why have I got nothing – no job, no house, no future?’ The government needs to be active to give people hope – to give them jobs. But in the future, people need to have options. I hope they can decide to take a factory job with maybe a private company. They need to think about themselves – for example, “If I take this job, I can buy myself a motorbike next year,” stuff like that. Only that way will things improve.’
The conversation with Dominguez, in the silent Same night, gives me a better understanding of the meaning of ‘development’. I realize how far along China already is, and just why it wants to ‘develop’. To have a country with so much potential in such a poor state is a real tragedy. And yet, the people out her seem so very, very happy. It’s hard to make sense of it.
As I drift off to sleep in the darkness, I can hear a perradactyl scream. Either that or the owners of this hotel keep monkeys. Of course, it could just be the squeaking doors? I prefer the flying dinosaur line.
