Unspoiled East Timor is beautiful for all the wrong

Unspoiled East Timor is beautiful for all the wrong

Text by Dini S. Djalal, photos by Arief Suhardiman

DILI, East Timor (JP): "We don't get many tourists around
here," the taxi driver said as he took a turn down another empty
street. I smiled sheepishly and asked him to head to the souvenir
shop.

Feeling safe with my guidebook-carrying identity, I continued
taking photos of the dreary sights. But at the traffic light,
reflex prompted me to drop my camera. Two soldiers stood
imposingly on the curb, glaring at my now twitchy face. The
driver wasn't kidding. This was no ordinary tourist town. This
was Dili, capital of East Timor.

The latest government quip about this troubled place, other
than the ire of ongoing clashes between the authorities and
disaffected Timorese, claims that Indonesia's youngest province
has great tourism potential. They're not wrong.

East Timor straddles two hemispheres of tropical Asia and
temperate Australasia, thus enjoying six micro-climates, from
cool mountains running through the center to savanna nearer the
coasts. The landscape is stunning, worthy of Swiss chalets.
Standing on a cliff overlooking the rolling valleys south of
Maubessi, it seemed Julie Andrews would pop out from behind the
houses and start yodeling at the gaggle of blond children.

But the houses are straw shacks, and the children's blond hair
is caused by malnutrition. This otherwise idyllic postcard
picture is also marred by the most powerful detail of all; the
cluster of graves, each bearing at least half a dozen names,
nestled on the hillside. East Timor is dramatically ravishing,
but it's this drama that will hinder tourists from coming.

Damned beauty

Dubious is a kind way to describe the attraction of East
Timor. With its clear air, no traffic, empty white-sand beaches,
undeveloped countryside, and "quaint" villages, tour planners may
see East Timor as the perfect getaway for weary urbanites.

That is until you realize the destination is not easy to get
to. Foreign journalists are still restricted from the area, and
the few adventurous visitors are often greeted with suspicious
interrogation. There are daily flights from Denpasar, but the
outgoing traffic often outnumbers arrivals.

Those able to leave Dili are those who can afford to. For the
typically poor East Timorese, it's hard to get away. The fields
of acacia trees cannot camouflage the tragedy that East Timor's
beauty is damned.

I stared in awe at a woman pounding maize in front of her
home, a simple but grand traditional house with thatched roof,
with the entire Ainaru valley as the view. I said to my
companion, "This is an amazing place. I'd love to live here." To
which he replied, "This is a hard place. She has a hard life. You
wouldn't want to live here."

He's right. East Timor is beautiful due to all the wrong
reasons; war, poverty, isolation. It is beautiful because there
are hardly any factories, which would bring pollution but also
income. It is beautiful because it has not been "spoiled" by
large-scale tourist development, although hotels and restaurants
would bring badly-needed jobs. It is beautiful because there is
so little "corrupting influence" from money-hungry entrepreneurs.

But the East Timorese pay a high price for their seclusion.
They may not have a drug-trafficking problem, but they don't have
that many drugs, of the medicinal variety, period. However, the
government argues, correctly, that East Timor has seen more
development in health and education in the last 20 years than in
300 years of Portuguese rule.

Development of tourist facilities is still lacking. What are
there -- a few hotels in Dili and Baucau, guesthouses in
Maubessi, Hatubuilico, and Suai in the south -- are expensive for
what they offer, which are spartan rooms with basic services.

Transportation is just as spare. In Dili, it's easy to get the
same taxi driver in one evening, so you can have him overcharge
you not once but twice. It's just as easy for the driver to leave
you for another order as you're about to hop aboard. Life doesn't
go by the usual rules in East Timor.

That doesn't mean there aren't any rules. There are plenty of
police and military to keep people in line, but the line varies.
It's certainly not traffic lines. I bit my nails the first few
times the driver raced through Dili's stoplights. Then I realized
everybody ran the many red lights dotting the city's deserted
thoroughfares. "Why stop? To avoid cars that aren't there?," said
my very astute guide.

My guide's savvy was not limited to driving skills. He spoke
freely of the alleged Fretilin rebels in Ermera and Los Palos,
and of soldiers in every village, but would not offer opinion on
the rebels' cause. He described the Japanese occupation during
World War II as vicious, but turned quiet when asked about East
Timor's integration into Indonesia. He often spoke of the days of
Porto (Timorese for the Portuguese administration) but defined
himself as West Timorese (his mother came from Atambua). He told
you not what you want to hear, or what he wanted to say, but what
he thinks should be heard.

Although he, like all other East Timorese, shies away from
answering sensitive questions, there is little hesitation about
turning the tables. Everyone I met asked me who I was, where I
came from, where I was going, what I was doing. They posed their
questions warmly -- for all their hardship, East Timorese are
amazingly friendly and generous -- but not nonchalantly.

The queries are not simple conversation to pass the time; the
curiosity is tense, urgent. Economic and political instability
are not the only sacrifices of the last 20 years of conflict.
Trust has also been lost in the crossfire.

Loss of trust has also taken away the freedoms outsiders view
as a right. In Aileu, I wanted to photograph this resettlement
town with cement housing and irrigated rice fields. The driver
told me to put away my camera. "This is a military checkpoint,"
he warned. "It's not safe."

No wonder East Timor sees few tourists -- no visitor wants to
travel under threat and suspicion. Developers can construct
countless hotels to lure tourists, but unless trust among the
East Timorese, and the authorities, is rebuilt, no amount of
development can make them come.