June 9 – UNMIT, Elections, Preparations for the Districts

Tomorrow we head off to the districts, which are basically like states or provinces.  We will be going to two in the west, Ermera and Alieu, and two in the east, Baucau and Manatuto.  We go west first, with Ermera our first planned stop, probably to the Suco Hatolia before a couple of others.  We’ve been told that there is a good example of a gravity-piping project out there done by the Austrian Red Cross, so we are looking forward to seeing that.             

What I’m most excited about though is the district itself.  For about a decade (since independence), Timor-Leste, with the help of USAID, has had a partnership with Starbucks.  This is prime coffee growing country, and it’s harvest season, so we should be seeing Ermera at the most exciting time.  I’ve never been to coffee plantations or anything like that, or seen it harvested, so I’m hoping we can take some time to really see what it’s like.  A man we met today from the UNMIT – the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste, warned us that Ermera is a bit of a political hotspot.  As he put it, “if you see a political rally and people start picking up rocks, you should probably move away quickly.”  I thought that was good advice.             

His name was Fahim Eqbali, a really nice guy from Afghanistan that does GIS mapping for the UN mission.  He looked my age, but was probably 8-10 years older than me, a bit of a surprise.  Since UNMIT basically deals with security and governance, I’m not quite sure why we met with him, but it was really interesting to hear a bit about the UN mission there and its history.  He has been in country for almost five years and said he has been to Bali 19 times in those five years.  I guess it isn’t too expensive to go to and is a great way to relax.  Timor-Leste might be beautiful, but it also ranks 147 out of 187 countries on the Human Development Index.  I’m sure sometimes you just want to get away from the poverty, it can be overwhelming.  Apparently in 2002 when the country first got its independence, they had a giant sort of floating hotel/recreation area where all of the people in the UN mission lived.  They had to because of the security.  The fact that now people get to choose wherever they want to live in Dili tells you a lot about how much the country has changed in that decade. 

 Our second destination is to Alieu, which is actually kind of on the way back to Dili from Ermera.  There are three general kinds of water systems near as we can tell, and we would like to see at least one example of each.  They are water piped to a house (very rare), water piped to a public place (the most common), and other than water piped to a public place.  What we are assuming that means is people who have to walk to get water from wells, tributary streams, river, and the like.  However, we could be way off base, we’ll see when we get there. 

I probably won’t be able to post another blog during this trip, we get back to Dili on the 15th, but we did just buy a 3G wireless Internet thing.  It’s only 256kbs though, which I think is 1993 dial-up modem style, and it costs $2 an hour, so we’ll see.  I would hazard a guess that there definitely won’t be any pictures until I get back. 

Right now in Timor-Leste is really a time of uncertainty.  The parliamentary elections are coming up quickly, July 7, and people are really nervous.  They don’t know whether or not there will be violence – there was during the last elections five years ago.  The elections were actually supposed to be held right now, but were pushed back for some reason.  In a way that is good for us, our work would have been a lot harder to do during the elections, but it is also kind of disappointing, I would have liked to see them. 

Don’t worry, there is still a lot of excitement.  Everywhere you go there are billboards and posters for certain candidates, everything from the communist party to several democratic parties.  Today was a big rally day.  The traffic was insane; since there are no real lanes, one main road (including the sidewalks and shoulders), had four lanes going one way and one going the other.  Of course our taxi driver just pulled right across all four, blocking a huge truck, until we could go the way we wanted to.   I got some great video of it.  For hours afterwards there were huge trucks with dozens of people in each one waving flags and shouting for certain parties.  At times they started yelling at each other and using threating gestures, which was a tad concerning.  Either way, definitely an interesting time to be here, I hope the elections happen without violence.  Ruth was talking about this yesterday.  She thinks that there won’t be because the 10-year independence anniversary went off without a hitch – I hope she’s right. 

PS - Even as I am writing this I can hear the shouting and honking of the people cheering for their candidate. 

Fahim Eqbali from UNIMIT, told you he looks young.

Timorese electioneering

Some of the cabs are quite decorative and fragrant.  I think this one had about 9 air fresheners.  The smell made me nauseous

Typical Timorese housing

A statue, apparently of the old president Jose Ramos-Horta (who looks nothing like this) breaking the chains of oppression.  I can only hope that one day there is a statue of me like this.