Timor of the Rising Sun

I got a lot of strange looks when I told people I was going to East Timor. They told me the borders were closed and I’d be denied at the border, that all foreigners were to obey a strict curfew since the recent assassination attempt and that there was a lot of anti-Western sentiment. Fortunately, I found none of this to be true. I had only planned on going to East Timor in order to renew my Indonesian visa and then return to Bali. What started out as a four day trip turned into a nearly two week vacation walking around the capital city, Dili and meeting with people from all over the world who work for various NGOs and the United Nations.

My guidebook says the UN presence has left East Timor. If so, I can’t imagine what it was like before. UN police and peacekeeping forces are everywhere. Seemingly every other vehicle is a nice Mitsubishi SUB or Toyota Hilux bearing the giant UN letters or the symbol of any of a number of non-governmental organizations. As a tourist, I was somewhat of a novelty. Instead of being asked, “How long have you been traveling?” I was asked, “Where do you work?” I met people from China, Japan, Philippines, Cambodia, Malaysia, Norway, Britain, Jordan, Australia, Fiji, New Zealand, the United States and Portugal. Some had legitimate jobs; some were nurses, policemen or advisors. The others, when asked what they did could only state they were initiating dialogue. The topic of dialogue and the members and perceived outcome were usually quite vague.

I made a few good friends while I was there. Some Chinese policemen cooked me dinner a few times and let me use the internet in their office. I visited a local school and counted beans with some of the students (it builds focus and concentration is what they told me.) And I met the advisor to the Secretary of State who showed me around Oecussi and was an exceptional host. That night over a glass of red wine as the sun set, he told me the history of this, the youngest nation in the world, from the Dutch, Portuguese and Indonesian influences up to independence only eight years ago. I have never had much interest in history, maybe it was walking the streets in Dili or visiting the site where the Portuguese first landed on the beach or maybe it was the buildings in Oecussi still fire scorched from the plundering and tyranny of the exiting Indonesians, but I held on to every word that he said that night.