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| The dining room at the Pousada de Bacau |
At breakfast, we meet the Australian ambassador’s wife and her 2 Aussie friends and had a discussion about life in Timor Leste. She shared some observations of her time here and the frustrations of convincing DFAT to alter the travel advisory which warns against traveling here. It appears that many people and organisations in Australia support Timor Leste in many different ways.
We did see some practical examples of Australian aid in our travels. Mainly the construction of public meeting places in villages to facilitate community discussions and involvement in decision-making in the villages. We also saw examples of where the Indonesian government removed or destroyed infrastructure when Timor Leste achieved independence.
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Community centre provided by
Australian AusAid |
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The grand but abandoned market
building in central Bacau |
For example along the road from Bacau to Tutuala and Jaco Island in the far east, there are telegraph poles, but the wires have been removed by the departing Indonesians.
The Indonesian government has since offered aid along with a number of other countries, but much of the aid seems to be driven by the prospect of future commercial opportunities. One exception seems to be Cuba who has provided medical aid and also provided basic medical and nursing training for Timor Leste people. This means that basic health can be provided at a local level avoiding the necessity for long and expensive travel to the main population centres.
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| Frances and I with the parish priest |
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The church and convent from the School
building (including policeman) |
We visited the Baucau cathedral and spent some time at the market in the old town markets before heading south into the hills to see Venilale.
Venilale's main claim to fame now is its convent - there's also a Portuguese church and government building.
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| Escola Do Reino De Venilale |
The people there were incredibly friendly and we are almost treated as visiting dignitaries - tourists are a rare occurrence this far from Dili. Being Sunday, many people were in town to attend mass and the priest insisted on us posing for photos in front of his church. The police and uniformed officials near the Escola Do Reino De Venilale (School Of The Kingdom Of Venilale) were less accommodating.
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| Japanese tunnels at Berkoli |
We stopped at the Japanese tunnels which were cut into the mountainside at Berkoli during the 2nd World War. These were built by using substantially forced local labour and used both for defense and munitions storage.
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| Alfonso with some local girls at Berkoli |
We found that there is far more animosity here towards Japanese than the Indonesians. In fact after Portuguese, Indonesian is the second foreign language learned and spoken. Some young people we spoke to would rather be learning English which they see as being more international.
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| Restaurante Befica |
Next we headed back to Baucau for lunch. Rather than eat at the Pousada again, Alfonso took us to the Restaurante Benefica - serving Chinese, Indonesian and Portuguese food. Take your pick.
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| Not busy but still takes ages |
Did I mention that sometimes it can take a while for food to arrive in restaurants? We ordered lunch for 3 (Frances, Afonso and me) shortly before some carloads and a busload of UN and NGOs arrive for a buffet. Afonso's food failed to arrive by the time we finished so he cancelled, only to find when we were settling the bill that they wanted payment for his meal. They had decided to package it as a take-away!
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| Staple foods at the market - in pyramids |
We headed through the markets in the New Town (in name only) and stopped to look at the interesting foods and goods on offer, again all stacked in small pyramids.
The afternoon trip back to Dili was straightforward and we arrive tired and looking forward to a nice dinner at Tourismo. Surprisingly we arrived back in lightning speed, at just under 40 minutes because of the lack of traffic at that time. We were amazed.
