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.