In the Mountains of Timor-Leste

The drive to Macu's home village had two phases: first we drove along the coast to Baucau, then we headed inland and up into the mountains. Timor is not well-mapped but you can gain a sense of our location on this Google map. The road up the mountains reminded me a bit of the drive from the Indian border to Kathmandu. The big difference is that in Nepal the roads were reasonably well maintained (ie. they didn't have pot holes a metre deep as in Timor-Leste) and the plunge to certain death was only about 500m straight down, rather than 1500m as in Timor-Leste. This is not a road for the faint-hearted.

In all, it took us about 8 hours to travel from Dili to Osso Huna in the sub-district of Baguia. Macu's village is situated on the slopes of Mt Matebian, which is the second-highest mountain in Timor. During the resistance against Indonesian occupation, this area was a key stronghold of Falentil (the armed wing of Fretilin) as the treacherous terrain made pursuit of the guerrillas difficult. The Timorese government has just completed a road through Osso Huna, which spared us a two-hour walk from Baguia town. Progress is coming to Baguia.

Macu’s family’s house was typical of the village. It had dirt floors, walls of bamboo and a roof made of palm fronds. There was no electricity, running water or mobile phone reception. The photo on the right shows the kitchen - two fires surrounded by stones holding up the pots. The puppies sleep next to the fire most of the time as it can be quite cool in the mountains.

The bathroom (left) consists of three corrugated iron walls (no roof), a curtain for the fourth wall, a slatted bamboo floor and a drum with water coming via gravity directly from a nearby stream. Thirty years ago in Malaysia, my stepmother Crina taught me how to wash in this way without ruining the water for everyone else. A very useful lesson.

Dinner that night was to be a goat which had been purchased especially for the occasion. As the honoured guest I was asked how I wanted it killed. This is not a question I'd thought about much before. I asked what the options were and was told that they could hang it by its neck until it was dead, or cut its throat. I guess that letting it die naturally in its sleep was not a third option. So I chose throat-cutting as I thought that it would be quicker and cleaner. I photographed the whole business from patting the goat to serving it in bowls, but for this blog I will just post the first picture, the goat being patted. After being killed the goat was placed whole on a roaring fire of palm leaves, while the hair was scraped off the skin. When it was smooth, it was butchered in a neat and careful manner. Every part of the goat was consumed although I confess that I turned down the offer of the goat's windpipe, claiming that I was full. As generous hosts, Macu's family were concerned that I had not eaten enough and they cheerfully offered to kill one of the puppies for me to eat later in the evening. I declined the offer, but I guess we know the eventual fate of those little puppies sleeping by the fire. One day they’ll be closer to the fire than they are now.


The people were incredibly friendly and keen to show me their lives. Everywhere I went I was followed by a small crowd of children, who periodically shouted out 'melai' and giggled with delight when I smiled back at them. 'Melai' means 'foreigner', but is a descriptive term rather than an insulting one. Most Timorese refer to each by their relative positions (eg. sister, auntie) rather than use their names, and 'melai' is an extension of that. My 'position' in the village was that of foreigner.
One day Macu and I walked to the next village to visit her grandmother. The photo on the left is part of the crowd of children who followed us the whole way, out of sheer curiosity to see what the funny foreigner would do next. Sometimes I made funny faces, which they thought was hysterical and they shrieked with laughter. They don't get many melais in this part of the mountains and certainly not ones that can make fish faces.

We visited Macu's grandmother and her traditional house is shown at right. I conversed through Macu, since my combination of English and Bahasa Indonesia (the two 'working languages' of Timor-Leste) was useless in an area so remote that no-one even spoke the 'national' language of Tetum, let alone foreign languages. Macu’s grandmother was a gracious old lady who was curious about why a foreigner would bother to come to such a place as her village. It was hard to communicate how delighted I was just to meet them and share their meals. I don't think she was much wiser about my visit when I left. And I think she was downright confused when I showed the local children how to hypnotise a chicken. OK I’ll admit that imparting that particular skill is not high on the priority list of international aid agencies, but surely all knowledge is useful, right?

We visited Macu's aunt, whose house had been destroyed by fire a few weeks earlier. She literally owned nothing but the clothes she stood up in. She was very apologetic that she couldn't offer us anything to drink, but she had no possessions of any kind. I asked Macu if it was appropriate for me to give her aunt some money to help out - since no-one else in the village seemed to have money (it's basically a subsistence economy) and no-one else had 'spare' clothes to give her. Her family were happy to feed her and provide her with shelter, but they were all so poor that they could not help in any material way. Macu said that it was OK to give her money and say that it was 'to buy a sarong'. So I gave her $20, which is about two months income in that area. She protested but Macu told her it was OK to take money from me since I was very rich! So we all finished with our dignity intact.

We also visited the local junior high school (pictured right). The salaries of two of the teachers are paid by the Friends of Baguia, a Melbourne-based community organisation that raises funds for this area. The Timorese government cannot afford to pay all the teachers required. In some villages the teachers have to work for free, while they negotiate with the government. In Baguia they are fortunate in having some outside support.


One day an uncle of Macu’s built a new house. The whole village and several nearby ones were invited to participate. It took perhaps 100 people one whole day to build the new house. One photo shows some of the men stripping the leaves from huge palm fronds to make the roof. Other men had gathered the palm fronds and still others tied the leaves into bundles.
Another photo shows the men putting the roof on the house. The photo (below) shows some of the dozens of women who were constantly cooking and feeding the men. Everyone had a job to do.

On my last night in the village, a huge swarm of fireflies came to the jungle behind the house. It was pitch-black and the thousands of little flashing lights darting about the jungle was an awesome sight. Then a thunderstorm started to form behind us, so the fireflies' dance was punctuated with great flashes of lightning. The whole jungle was illuminated for half a second, all the trees were suddenly visible and the fireflies invisible. Then the darkness came back - the jungle disappeared and the fireflies were there again, flashing and darting about. It was an amazing sight.

Finally, it was time for us to return to Dili, after a fascinating few days in the mountains, experiencing a very different lifestyle to that of Canberra. We are told that within six months, Osso Huna will have electricity, and indeed the power poles have already been put up. I wonder how life will change for Macu’s family when they have access to electricity and possibly television? Whatever happens, it won’t be the same.