About time to catch up on things, as we wait in Kupang [Indonesian Timor] for a ferry this afternoon to the next island, Flores [volcanos and Komodo dragons await us!!].
Our trip aboard the Kathryn Bay was wonderful fun…. except while we were vomiting. Captain Lino and his crew of 12 treated us as special guests. We were the first passengers they have carried. Kathryn Flynn [after whom the ship is named] would be proud of the spirit they carry on board. I first met the Flynns in about 1983, and over the years it was always a thrill to catch up with them in Darwin or in Melbourne. Tragically Kathryn contracted MND and all too recently died. Her spirit lives on, in many ways - one of them by sailing the high seas! A large photo of her watches over the bridge as she keeps an eye on things aboard the ship named after her.
An hour of paperwork and cranes lifted our car off the deck and onto the wharf and eventually off we drove, into the anarchy that is Dili traffic. Jack says not to dwell on chaotic road conditions - he says it is boring to hear every travel writer and blogger giving their version of road angst. Suffice to say he has decided not to drive here at all. Actions speak louder than words.
Dili is awash with UN personnel. No one we spoke to knows what they all do. The brothel owners would prefer we do not ask. Business is booming. A thin layer of resentment is easily penetrated. An entire aconomy exists to service them. Tourists do not exist. Every westerner we met was there to do a job, to train, to organise, to liaise….
Marie-Gabriella Carascallao is teaching in Dili at a school training journalists [see www.icfj.org ] and insisted that we be her guests. We could not have asked for more - overwhelming hospitality and treated like family. It was a privilege to be asked to speak to her trainees. ICFJ Director David Bloss then asked me to spend Monday at the University speaking to journalism students. This fledgling nation will do well to nurture the talent and ambition I met that day.
Antonio, their marketing director, was about to take the bus to Kupang for a wedding. We offered him a ride and set off on a glorious coastal road, potholed, washed out, sometimes even managing 60kph. Balibo is a tiny mountain village that would remain as unremarkable as all of Timor Lestes other subsistence villages but for the slaughter of 5 Australian journalists there in 1975. It has become a point of pilgrimage for Aussies ever since. The deaths of thousands of Timorese is remembered here as well as 5 Australians and I am sure my tears we not the first to moisten the soil of Balibo.
Overnight at Maliana, an hour inland down a goat-track masquarading as a road into the valley beyond. We found the Hotel Risky, not in any guide book that I have seen, but notable as the place to stay with running water. A NZ flag flew from the balcony, and we met some NZ police on UN duty who were staying there for a few months. Two Australian soldiers came in to the ‘restaurant’ in the main street to buy Coca-Cola, carrying machine guns and in full battle gear. Comically, one of them greeted us with a ‘G’day, how yez going’ before chatting and admitting that when he was on duty in Baghdad they wore less protective gear than required here. An inappropriate and heavy-handed approach to peace keeping. But orders are orders. It took the NZ policemen and the Australian soldiers more than a few minutes to process that we were not there with any NGO or government agency - just tourists. “Bloody hell” was the reaction.
A tortuous day driving, dodging goats, dogs, kids, pigs, monkeys, scooters, people wandering aimlessly into the path of the car, potholes that would break a wheel, washouts where the road gives way beneath us…. ooops, Jack said that was boring. Stunning moutain views and rain forest interlaced with rice paddies and dirt-floor thatched houses built like bee-hives, unique to this part of Timor.
The border cossing into Indonesia was uneventful, and showed no trace of recent conflict. Bored soldiers are the same all over the world. Offer a cigarette [neither of us smoke] and artfully leave the full packet on the counter and walk away.
Kupang by nightfall, deafening techno music blaring from swarms of ‘bemo’ mini bus taxis, people hanging out the doors, flouro lights winking and horns blaring. We wait now for the weather to improve. Ferries to Flores have been cancelled for the last week because of rough seas. This a good sign - they used to sail regardless of the weather and with occasional fatal consequences. Hundreds died here just in 2006 when a ferry sank in rough water. Now let me just look out the window….