Jaco, Goats, and Tin Roofs

Driving from Baucau to Dili

A rather empty Timor met my mom and I after returning from Bali after Christmas, as all of the international community was on vacation, and the many citizens of Dili had taken off to visit their families in the districts. I took a relaxed first day back at work, and even had the time to think that it'd be nice to have a bit more work to do. Luckily, this country has a few ambitious ministers to take care of such things. Showing up to work Friday morning, I was rather surprised to find the office locked and empty. The minister had called all staff to attention at the ministry of justice, and whooshing in only slightly in disarray, I was ushered to the front row, and had an excellent view for the next two hours. In short the minister wanted us to know that while the plan is to finish the registering of property in Dili by June, she would really rather have it done by March. Of course, a ministerial decree results in much hectic office activity as plans are rescheduled and staff moved around to make the puzzle work. And voila, come Friday the following week I was feeling pretty trashed.

Many months ago I bought a one way ticket to Timor-Leste, with a plan no more developed than to try to get a job. It seems a very long time ago now as I work my 40 hour weeks, getting used to the rigid structure of the working life compared to that of a student. My job is still much the same; I am managing the auditing team of Timor-Leste's cadastral procedure, and I spend my days looking at maps, at land claims, at whiteboards and excel sheets. I make plans, and organise and coordinate, solve problems, and try to get my head around the many new complicated things that I am learning, because lets be honest, I had no idea what a cadastral procedure was before I started working here, I wasn't even sure I knew what it meant to audit. (It is the process of mapping and registering land properties, and to audit is to evaluate and control the procedures of for example a project)(Briefly speaking) Nor did I know that it is a good idea to confirm your meetings before showing up to an empty room, or that its good double check all numbers since it seems a lot of people have trouble calculating here. I have for example been presented with data that demonstrated that 513% of 100%. I've never had so steep a learning curve that covered everything from practicalities, to technical knowledge, to how to deal with ministers.

Shell of an old Portuguese market

My job has recently expanded though; for one, the gender specialist on the project has expressed her desire to resign on account of her child. This process has led to a very long delay on a gender seminar that should have been held a year ago. Perhaps with an overestimated sense of competence I took it upon myself to sort this out, and am currently treading water much too deep, trying to organise a seminar with the state secretariat on gender equality (SEPI), with the ministry of justice, and with participants from various civil society groups ranging from the World Bank, to the NGO's for women, environment, or even UN agencies, as well as local police, village chiefs, and village women's representatives. The objective? Apart from dissemination of information to create policy development options for both the civil society but also for government. So yes, I am trying as rapidly as possible to get my head around this enormous task, hoping I can pull it off. What it really shows though, is that there is always work to do in Timor. There is always a new project to do, and new tasks to accept, and there are never enough people!

This brings me to another point. Most of these entries have been about my adventures and about the beautiful country, but I feel like I have to include some other things too about Timor-Leste to balance your impressions. For sure, Timor is a country of beautiful white beaches, palm trees, and beer with friends, but it is also one of the poorest and most under developed countries in the world. I know that when I was writing my bachelor project I subjected a lot of you dear friends to a running briefing on development facts about Timor, so bear with me while I make a little update;

In Timor-Leste two thirds of the population are less than 25 years old, and 49 per cent live under the poverty line which is set at 0.88 dollars a day. Only 39 per cent of the population have their own sanitation facilities, and only 34 per cent have access to their own drinking water facilities. In regards to housing 67 per cent have floors made of earth or bamboo, and for 31 per cent, the roof of these hovels is made of leaves, wood, or grass. Simultaneously Timor-Leste's women give birth to an average seven children, life expectancy is very low, just around 60 years, and infant mortality is high. What few health clinics and schools there are experience low utilisation rates, and many kids have to repeat grades, or just drop out completely. And this is just the social side. Timor-Leste ranks in the absolute bottom as a business investment environment in the world. As a new country, it can hardly boast of established democracy or even political stability, and I do believe it hasn't even passed its own Law on Land in parliament yet. And don't get me started on access to justice, agricultural development, or gender equality. 

Traditional Buildings - these were mostly burned down during the occupation

Water buffalo - not so much erratic as muddy and shy

Goats munch on an old grave

It's very easy to forget these things when you stay in the capital Dili, which, while not in much better shape than a small city in Indonesia is a world apart from the rest of the country. This past weekend I travelled up to the very north of Timor-Leste, to a deserted tropical island called Jaco. Getting there is a 6 hour drive, plus a half hour of four-wheel-driving-it on a rocky slope to the coast, and a ten minute boat ride with the local fishermen. As you drive through the country your mind starts to pick up a whole new set of information, for example, I am becoming quite an expert on Erratic Goat Movement (EGM). Larger goats will happily lie in the middle of the road, and lazily and reluctantly move as your cars comes near. The kid's however always panic and fly off the road and if possible all the way to the end of the rice field, before zooming back to their mothers. Why do I mention this? Well, if you get a kid on one side of the road, and the mother on the other, it is important to be cautious that the kid wont risk all to get to the right side. And so, progressing through the country you memorise the EGM, or EBM in case it's buffaloes, or EPM in case of pigs. And dogs aren't erratic at all, they are usually so starved that they can only skulk to the side, and you wonder whether there might be a silent death wish in the living skeletons, but they always just manage to get out of the way.

You also learn that Timorese people like to sit on the sides of the road, making driving a bit hazardous, as you can never know if there will be a group of farmers around the corner, hanging about on the asphalt. And then of course, you adjust gradually to the slalom it is to drive in this country. I raise a silent plea for improved infrastructure as soon as possible. Some places the road is filled with many small holes, and in other places, the roads are more holes than asphalt. This is okay, so long as it doesn't rain, because when it rains all you can see is a puddle, and have no way to gauge whether this hole is 5 centimetres, or 1 meter in depth. In some places, you'll be crossing a bridge, only to discover that the lane you were driving in ends in a bottomless pit, three meters in diameter. Or, as I experienced, that the stretch along a mountain that was fine on Saturday is simply gone on Sunday, and you are forced to inch yourself along the mountain wall, while you shudder at the bite sized chunk that is missing in the road, and has landed somewhere further down in the land scape.

Some roads have asphalt, some have limestone, others, are simply a jumble of loose rocks, and bits of concrete that have splintered and collapsed down the steep sloping roads. I can recommend seatbelts as an elementary precaution. The roads wind through little village after village, clusters of houses, built with bamboo or bark, roofed with grass or palm leaves, and in some cases, a whole village that has upgraded to the sturdier concrete bricks and tin roof. It sends my mind back to times I never experienced in Denmark, the really rural society, where the kids are making toy cars out of plastic bottles and seem to be raising themselves, and where goat herders are in no rush to get their flock off the road. Where farmers sit by their paddy fields chewing betel nut and mend their tools.

Grave on the roadside - the length of the horns will tell you of the man's status

When you pass through a village, all the kids get excited and shriek and hoot the classic “Ai malae!” and if your windows are open, for sure hands will be raised for high fives. I had passed through a few villages where I had seen groups of up to 20 children carrying their 30 cm knives (parang), high fives were exchanged until one girl raised her parang instead of her hand with a huge grin. What exactly her objective was I'll never know, but worry not, all fingers and limbs are still intact, though all travellers were significantly more careful before high-fiving the armed kids. Its hard not to smile a bit at this scenario when I think back on many a cross teacher that has told me off in the course of my life for running with blunt scissors. Perhaps we should be less cautious and pre-emptive to the worst case scenario, and better at instilling a sensible relationship with scissorly weaponry. Likewise kids here are often happily scrambling around on the backs of lorries, or as my friend Bernardo once told me, clinging to some wood dangling off the back of a lorry. 

Well arrived at Valu, the beach village that is the last stop before Jaco, a price of 6 dollars a piece was negotiated to be sailed over to the promised tropical paradise. And yes, it was incredible. Nobody lives on Jaco, though one of my staff members, Carlito told me that if you walk into the centre you will find some deserted buildings that used to house the Indonesian intelligence operations. The island is small, it might take about an hour to walk all around it, and the centre is cropped with trees and shrubbery. The island is rimmed by white sand beaches, which plunges into turquoise and azure waters. The water is warm too, and swim out just a few meters and you can look at corals and fish, turtles and little sharks. And so, the early evening was spent with beers, sitting in the sea, while the sun set. And it really doesn't et much better than that. 

Valu in the distance

The only shelter available is a little eco-lodge in Valu. The little bamboo cottages, raised from the ground by poles, are largely open air and contain no more than a mattress on the floor, and a mosquito net to save you from malaria and dengue. The huts are nucleated around a little restaurant which offers dinner and breakfast, if you ask for it, there's no menu involved, but the meal of rice, eggs and a most peculiar but delicious bean was highly satisfying anyway. As the lodge is eco friendly, there is very little electricity, and if you go out onto the beach after your meal there will be nothing but darkness, and then as your eyes adjust you will be surrounded by a starlight luminosity. And the longer you sit and gaze at the sky, the more stars appear, until you feel immersed in a great glimmering ocean. And trust me, because I'm no stary sky romantic, but this was an exceptional experience. So, for those of you still in doubt about where to spend your hard earned money, come to Timor and help a sustainable tourism industry grow here.

Minuscule hermit crabs fight over territory

And with that, its time to get back to work, a desk full of scattered reports on gender and land access, data about land parcels collected, half finished Timor coffee, and notes for the layout of a report that needs to be written. 

The very last picture is one that I took about two weeks ago, not so far from where I live. There are often wild rain and thunder storms, and so one night I went out and photographed the lightning, or tried to, because it's no easy feat. But here's a lucky shot complete with the Christo Rei statue.

Slightly less biblical