Photo by policewoman Kendelle Clark

Note: I wrote this in 2005; it’s only ever seen the light of day in the Saffron-produced ‘how to sell East Timor’ book I wrote and directed for an identity project in this tumultuous country. But I loved Timor. The country has just celebrated 10 years since its people voted for freedom from Indonesia (a brave move with some violent and tragic consquences). As a toast to that anniversary, I wish to share these notes and observations with a wider audience.

Day 1

After landing in Dili, I shared a taxi into town with two American girls – Peace Corps volunteers on their way back from a holiday. They’d been in Timor-Leste for a year and loved it. I asked if they thought people would come here to visit. ‘Definitely,’ they opined in unison. We then stopped to get money at the one ATM in the country that will dispense cash to foreigners.
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When the light clicked on I saw him run and I put my foot out and crunched him. After teaching me how to work the A/C, Lino, the bellman who’d shown me to my room, pounced on the cockroach’s carcass, picked it up by an appendage and carried it out with him as he left. In more than a week’s stay, that was the only bug I would see at the Hotel Timor.

At US$135 a night, this hotel – and there is none better in town – is clean and nice but not sharp (for example: there’s an in-room safe, but it’s not bolted down and I had to put my own batteries into the electronic mechanism in order to make it work). But the staff are helpful, the breakfasts are hearty, and Portuguese tarts served at the bar downstairs would be worth crossing a continent for let alone the lobby. For evening R&R, there’s a brilliant black-bottomed swimming pool out back, which is surrounded by meaty dark green grass on which are arranged a dozen pillow-topped teakwood chaise lounges.

Reclining on one of them, you’d have no idea you were in one of the poorest countries in the world (average annual wage: US$400, according to the CIA World Factbook).
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On Lonely Planet’s recommendation, I went to the City Café for dinner, reputed to be a hangout for UN workers and other international types. I fell into conversation with three middle-aged Australian women who had just finished a two-week package tour of the island run by Melbourne-based Intrepid Travel. They loved Timor, too. When they heard that my project involved giving advice about tourism, they asked that I pass along some advice from their experience. ‘Tell them to put up mosquito net hooks in all the hotels and inns’ said one. ‘Oh, and they need better postcards. The ones they’ve got are appalling.’

I walked the unlit streets, anxious but unmolested, back to hotel. The biggest threat, it felt, came not from potential criminal activity but from the treacherous condition of the pavement. From then on, I’d never go out without a torch if I thought there was a chance I might return after dark.

Day 2

After breakfast and a morning meeting, my colleagues and I piled into a 4×4 for a spin around Dili. We requested first to be taken to the Santa Cruz Cemetery, where a peaceful protest became a scene of violent tragedy in November 1991 as Indonesian soldiers opened fire on the crowd. Though more than 250 people were killed, the massacre was captured on film by a foreign journalist. Broadcast globally, it became a turning point in the independence struggle. Santa Cruz got the world’s attention.

The Timorese, however, can’t really understand why visitors have any interest in seeing what for them is a) a place of tragedy and b) just a big cemetery. Frankly, I thought to myself as we walked among the gravestones, I’m not sure I can explain the interest either. Yet I know it’s genuine. It occurred to me at this point how important the ideas of hope and overcoming are to the Timorese story. In some ways, the tale of East Timor is like the Killing Fields of Cambodia but with a happier ending. Something extraordinary happened in Timor – and that’s interesting. And already, on the first morning of the trip, I found myself forecasting that people will come here to experience that.
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We met that afternoon with a presidential adviser who impressed us. He knew what he was on about and also had a handle on the things that made Timor interesting: the variety of ethnic groups in such a small place, the idea of a Christian nation lying at the base of the Asian archipelago, the “point of connection” (his words, as I recall) between the South Pacific and South America. On the latter point, he had two striking observations. The first was the similarity between Timorese tais weavings and Central American weavings. The second was that when he went to New Zealand, if someone from the native Maori population spoke very slowly, he could understand what was being said, so great are the similarities between the Maori tongue and Timorese Tetum.