WHY VISIT EAST TIMOR?

Image by Nic Dureau

Jess O'Callaghan  - Farrago

For a country so close to our own, East Timor conjures up some pretty garbled images in my mind. A televised benefit concert when I was ten. UN peace keepers on Dateline. David Wenham. Anthony LaPaglia. Nothing particularly accurate. As much as we in Australia complain about being isolated from the rest of the world, most of us are strangely uninterested in the nation, only one hour’s flight from Darwin.

Before researching this story, had someone asked me if it was safe to visit East Timor I wouldn’t have been able to say “yes” or “no”. I wouldn’t have been able to tell you if fighting there had stopped, if the poverty levels were high, or if you should hire an armed body guard before booking your flight.

I would have probably said ”That guy with the aviators from Balibo? He’s the president now.”

It turns out that East Timor has come a long way since it was declared the first nation state of the new millennium. 2012 will mark the tenth year since East Timor became independent of Indonesia, after a 27 year struggle. It will also see the withdrawal of 1500 UN peace keeping troops, and the country’s third democratic election in a decade.

East Timor is one of the world’s poorest countries, ranking 120 out of 169 in the UN’s Human Development Index. 44% of people there are malnourished, a full 13 percentage points higher than the average in Sub-Saharan Africa, according to AusAid. However, in the past year poverty has fallen an estimated 18%, and the economy has seen steady growth since 2007.

Change comes quickly to such a small, new nation and it can be hard to get a grasp on what really makes up East Timor(apart from “a nation we are freakishly geographically close to”). This is by no means comprehensive, but here is a taste of what a ten year old East Timor is all about, sans stereotypes and Balibo references.

It’s a good place to visit

Caroline Pemberton, TV presenter and Tourism Ambassador for East Timor, has just returned from two months in East Timor. She was filming their soon to be released tourism campaign, which aims to transform the image of East Timor in foreigners’ minds from one of conflict to leisure and adventure.

This was Caroline’s seventh trip back to the country in four years, and she can’t believe the transformation she has witnessed.

“The first visit, Dili was full of displaced persons, 100,000 people living under UNHCR tents in the capital. Now they’ve all returned to their homes, they’ve all left, so it’s a very different place.”

Caroline’s reason for visiting the country reflects its own changes. While initially visiting to assist at an orphanage, Caroline says that East Timor “got under [her] skin as a destination.”

Surprised by how safe she felt in what we often picture to be a dangerous location, the humanitarian nature of her trips has increasingly given way to a desire to discover and explore East Timor in a myriad of ways. She now continues to return for “the world’s best diving”, motorbike tours, and the “rich history” that comes from its tumultuous past.

“If you go now, you will be a pioneer traveller,” she tells me, explaining that the East Timorese “haven’t quite caught on to the fact that tourists have money”. That tourism is so new adds a genuine nature to the interaction with local communities which is unrivalled.

It’s really, really young

I knew that East Timor was young as a nation. What I didn’t know was just how young it was demographically. While we worry about baby boom retirees and superannuation, our Pacific neighbour is facing a population problem of the opposite kind. Nearly 80% of East Timor’s 1.1 million citizens are under 25, a likely consequence of the Indonesian occupation, and subsequent conflict during the struggle for independence.

This means unemployment is high, with about 16, 000 new young people ready to enter the workforce each year. Although it takes significant youthful vigour to build a nation from the ground up , these people are still only vying for the same 400 jobs.

It’s excited by politics

I guess when you fight for something for a really long time; you appreciate it more when you finally get it. Caroline tells me that the East Timorese “follow politics like we follow cricket”, which is perhaps hardly unsurprising given that many of the political figures in East Timor are heroes from the independence struggle.

Because East Timor is creating its political identity after so long being subjected to foreign occupation , the parts of politics which many Australians find arcane and boring, are, in East Timor, exciting. Constitutional dilemmas? Thrilling. Basic legal and economic structures? Calm down.

Perhaps after 110 odd years dwelling on political process, it is no wonder that all we have left to talk about are things like “What is a promise?” and “Why does Tony Abbott feel the need to draw attention to his Speedos in public speeches so often?” East Timor is far from scraping the bottom of the barrel of political conversation, and while such a heated political climate always inspires problems, it’s a little enviable.

Not to pretend there aren’t still problems stemming from such a new regime. Disagreements between the army, government and police led to an outbreak of violence in 2006 and what was thought to be a ‘half-baked coup’ in 2008. Jose Ramos-Horta, the President of East Timor, was shot in February 2008 (Oh, that was the last time I heard about East Timor in a context that wasn’t “shall we dump our asylum seekers there then?”). This was an assassination attempt by the Rebel leader Alfredo Reinado, who played a large role in a 2006 flare up of violence. The rebels also launched an unsuccessful attack on the house of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao.

It still needs our help

While writing this article, a group of mothers in Fitzroy appeared in the media breastfeeding together. Related? Yes. They were raising awareness and money for natal care in East Timor, and are part of a group called the Aloha Foundation, which focuses on issues in East Timor especially those relating to families and children.

Alola Australia partners with the East Timorese organisation Fundasaun Alola. Its Mothers Unite for East Timor (MILK) campaign in August this year saw $14, 000 of their $20, 000 target raised, through morning teas, online campaigns and the aforementioned breastfeeding event.

The MILK campaign is a response to the high rate of infant and childhood mortality caused by malnourishment. One in 16 East Timorese children die before the age of five, compared to one in 200 Australian children. One third of East Timorese women have no access to antenatal care, and only half the women in East Timor are educated.

It was an issue that Caroline described as particularly troubling. Maternal issues, and infant mortality were atop the list of humanitarian concerns she saw as pressing in East Timor. Clean water for giving birth with, for example, is in short supply causing problems for the health of both mothers and infants.

It makes infrastructure interesting

I’m the last person to be excited by roads and electrical grids, but there’s something about watching a nation being constructed from the ground up that makes even this, the driest of subjects fascinating.

The current Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao, is determined to bring electricity to 80% of the nation by 2020, Because of developments in solar power. This is a project which is being tackled in ways which wouldn’t have been possible when building most other nations. UNICEF has provided solar panels for health clinics throughout the country, and plan to provide small solar panels for some appliances and single lights until houses are attached to any sort of electricity grid. On a large scale, this process is highly unique.

It’s really, really close

Take out your phone. Click on Google maps. Type in East Timor.

Now swivel your thumb down a bit, a tiny bit, a little to the right. There. You should see Darwin.

The distance from Darwin, Australia to Dili, East Timor is 640 kilometres. That’s about 230km less than the trip up the Hume Highway from Melbourne to Sydney. The hard to reach part comes not from the distance, but from the lack of direct flights to the country. All flights into Dili’s one airport from Australia come through Bali or Darwin, which can up the price of an otherwise inexpensive trip.

Still, the proximity of the Timor Island to our own is important in more ways than just trivia and travel. Border disputes over natural gas and oil sources between Australia and East Timor are important politically and economically for both countries.The agreements made before and after East Timor’s independence play an important role in their economic development.

The fact that we’re neighbours is one of the reasons we should care about East Timor, and talk about the issues that surround it more often than we do.

It’s great for volunteers

If you’re currently scouting for a humanitarian holiday, East Timor seems the perfect place to start.

When it came down to it, everything I found out about East Timor pointed to that fact that it was a country building itself. Being only ten years into the colossal project of building a nation means that there is plenty of room for volunteers, with everything from teaching, consulting, working in health, fundraising back home to quite literally building.

Contacting campaigns such as MILK (milk@alola.org.au) or East Timor Now (http://easttimornow.com.au/) would be a good place to start.

So there it is. East Timor. With so many noteworthy things happening in a country which is, I think I may have mentioned in shock a few times, extremely close, it’s bewildering that we hear so little of it.

I’d like to say, for the sake of my bank balance, that all the research into East Timor was purely for the sake of this story, but the truth is, now I have a few more garbled images in my mind (images that aren’t just war and David Wenham) it’s a little hard not to want to visit myself.