Dili’s population to double every 16 years

As mentioned in a previous post, Dili is growing pretty quickly. The Timorese are coming here for many reasons, but above all, jobs. It is arguable that jobs are not being created fast enough in the districts, so more and more people are flocking to town to seek their fortune. And flocking they are: the population was 120,000 in 2000, but it’s 200,000 according to the 2010 census. That’s a growth rate of 4.8% a year, meaning a doubling of the population every 16 years. I recommend reading the summary of the preliminary census results (available from here) - they're pretty interesting.

Given Dili’s relatively small size, you would expect an influx of 80,000 people in a short space of time to create a huge slum, but this doesn’t seem to have happened (a lot of IDPs moved out recently, which complicates the issue). I’ve cycled around pretty much every part of town, and whilst many people are clearly very poor, and much housing hardly deserves to be called such, there’s nothing approaching the crowded living-on-top-of-each-other slum conditions that characterise many developing country cities.

This is mostly because Dili is on a large plain (see google maps link here, and click the “terrain” tab). There was plenty of room to expand outwards into agricultural land so Dili, so far, seems to have absorbed the additional people fairly well. As you can see if you click on the “satellite” tab on google maps, there still is quite a lot more space. Most buildings are bungalows, and are unlikely to acquire second stories for some time.

I’ve cycled around a lot of the periphery and once you get more than 3km from the centre it feels more like an extended village rather than urban or even “peri-urban” as such areas are normally characterised. Slight digression – people argue about where urban starts and rural ends until the cows come home (should you define it by economic structure? land use? population density? etc.). Often it boils down to administrative boundaries, which can have a large bearing on the management of water infrastructure.

So, enjoy Dili’s “rural” outskirts while you can. With the population doubling every 16 years, they may not last that much longer… Of course, all of this urbanisation has scary prospects for water and sanitation infrastructure, which already leaves a lot to be desired (post to follow).

Dili #1 – Introduction to East Timor’s capital town

Dili is the capital town of East Timor. I say town rather than city, because it really is a rather small place. There are only a couple of buildings over 3 stories, and in fact the vast majority of buildings are bungalows. This fact is most striking when you enter the port by boat – the few big churches are the only things which stick out.

Despite Dili’s small town feel, urbanisation is happening extremely rapidly as the economy expands, and the streets are filling with cars and motorbikes. This is perhaps a sign of “development”, or perhaps a sign of ballooning government budgets and therefore lucrative contracts for anyone with the nous to set up a new business. I’m writing a separate post on the rapid urbanisation of Dili, so I’ll say no more on that at the moment. It will suffice to say that the 2010 Census found that c.200,000 people living in urban Dili district. Its population is growing by 4.8% a year – it may not sound like a lot, but that means its population doubles every 16 years (!). For an urban planner, that’s a scary prospect.

So, Dili is the capital, and it has been for since 1769 when the Portuguese moved their centre of government there. Architecturally, they didn’t leave much to speak of. The only striking Portuguese-era building I’ve come across is the Palaçio Governo, with its large open courtyard and monument to Prince Henry the Navigator. A large proportion of buildings were torched during the various bouts of violence, but particularly in 1999 and 2006 (see history post again) and even now many burnt-out shells remain. However, frenetic building work is taking place all over town, and many of the burnt-out shells in good locations have signboards outside saying what is going to be built there eventually.

Despite its capital status and rapid growth, Dili still has a small town feel – people are friendly and it has a very relaxed atmosphere compared to the bustling crowds (and overwhelming smells) of other Asian cities. There’s a long seafront and beach of sorts (sunbathing not recommended) which is somewhat spoiled by the bloody great port right in the middle of town. About 10 mins cycle out of town you come to a lovely beach which gets pretty busy with malae and richer Timorese at the weekends.

You can tell when you’re getting further out of town as the kids start shouting “hello mister” and “malae! malae!” (foreigner! foreigner!). There are so many malae in central Dili that kids that live in town got bored of that years ago. Speaking of foreigners, Dili is absolutely crawling with malae, many doing jobs like myself, i.e. “counterparts” for Timorese NGO staff new to their jobs. There are also hundreds of UN bureaucrats, UN police, and a host of young Australian volunteers. Maybe the UN contingent will scale down a little when the mission ends in 2012 (at least in theory), but the NGOs and donor agencies will be here for some time.

Most spare wall space is scrawled with gang names and other random graffiti (see previous post) which, I suppose, brings down the tone a bit. In the past few weeks I’ve seen increasing amounts of Timor Telecom advertising being painted on previously graffito’d walls. I’m not sure which is worse (a blog post laying into monopolistic Timor Telecom to come another time…) – at least the graffiti is socially interesting, if mostly ugly.

There’s quite a lot of urban agriculture, with various areas even in the government ministry area people are growing  vegetables or kangkung, which is good as it means there’s somewhere for water soak away. All the building work going on is potentially a big problem. As more areas get concreted over, the worse the flooding situation is going to get (see this post).

It seems I’m finding it hard to do justice to Dili in a single blog post, which is only to be expected, so let’s say this is just a brief picture, and a start of a series of posts on Dili…

Dili graffiti – gangs, memorials and Jackie Chan

First blog for over a month as I’ve been away and really busy with work. I have nearly completed a couple of posts on Dili, so in the meantime, here’s a taster of something you’ll immediately notice when you come here: the ubiquity of (mostly bad) graffiti.

I’m a fan of graffiti (or “street art” as the good stuff has been rebranded) when it’s done well and in the right place, especially if it’s provocative, political or just pretty. There’s some really good stuff back home in London. Unfortunately, most stuff in Dili is terrible. For some reason, the jovem (youth) feel like they have to scrawl their neighbourhood gang affiliation over any spare piece of wall. So, you notice pretty quickly when you move from a “Seven 7” area to a “Mambo no 5” area (see photos). I live in the border between “Bambros Vila Verde” and “Malcovi”.

Part of this is due to the martial arts club stuff that was all over the media a few years ago (see here) but now seems to mostly have died down. At its height, the martial arts club were even covered on Ross Kemp’s gangs programme (see here), and Jackie Chan came to Dili to teach the Timorese to use their skills for good! (here and here)

Despite all the crappy gang graffiti, there is some better stuff on offer, such as the peace messages all over the walls of the football stadium, which must have been a commission of some sort (see photos). Hopefully Dili Cidade Da Paz (Dili city of peace) will stay as true as it is now, though there has been some trouble this week with the police evicting 1000 people from Bairo Pite (see here).

Not many of the scrawlings actually say anything in Tetun, though there is some stuff near my office to do with rival boxing clubs, e.g. “King of Boxing beik ohin rahun”, which translates into something like “If you’re not careful King of Boxing will smash your face in”. Nice.

There is also some memorial-related stuff, e.g. the memorial to Kuka (see picture). Kuka was a promising young musician killed at a party by police breaking up a fight which he wasn’t involved in (see here and here). It’s a sad story, and controversial too, as the police reportedly kept the house blockaded for 45 minutes during which time he could have been taken to hospital and saved.

Dili-dwellers, if you're reading, please recommend some of the best (or funniest) stuff and I'll add it.

Udan boot (big rain)

(update: Ed from PDT has posted a good blog here which also touches on this. As the drainage issue is topical, I'll give it a proper treatment in a longer blog post in the future)

Udan boot (lit. big rain) and ahi maté (lit. electricity dead) are two of the best conversation starters here in East Timor. Both are excuses to stop work and chat. They’re also great excuses for a blog post, so here are a few thoughts on the former.

If udan boot happens, the done thing is to stand in your doorway, marvel at the great sheets of rain coming down, and laugh at the foolish people still attempting to get around. With udan boot it’s also obligatory for any boys under the age of 18 to take their shirts off and run around throwing water at each other. I’ll join in one of these days...

Often, the udan is boot enough that the streets flood pretty quickly. The above photo shows my street under water earlier today, and that’s nothing. You can bet that the people in the poorer and lower-lying parts of town are getting their houses flooded with all the crap from the street and drainage channels. That often includes raw sewage, just in case you were wondering.

There is a system of drainage channels in Dili compared to cities. It's not great, but better than what I've seen in other developing countries. Nevertheless, they often fail to handle udan boot properly and arguably need upgrading, which the government looks set to do. However, one might question whether investing millions in drainage for the capital city is pro-poor. After all, poverty in Dili is relatively low compared to rural areas, and a comparably high proportion of people in Dili have access to water and sanitation. Scarce budgets should potentially therefore be allocated to parts of the country where they are most needed.

On the other hand, the capital city is the economic centre. If things slow down or grind to a halt whenever it rains hard (which let’s face it is pretty often), GDP will take a hit and this will affect the whole country negatively. There are also clearly negative effects on people's health (mostly likely the poorest) in Dili from the regular floods - I wouldn't be surprised if a few people had died from water-borne diseases. Furthermore, stories of the city flooded with raw sewage will put tourists off, meaning their vital foreign currency will go elsewhere. Personally I’ll reserve judgement until I fully understand the pros and cons from talking to more people about it.

The frequency of udan boot has been increasing this week, leading me to believe that the monsoon could finally be starting. December is usually the wettest month, with the monsoon gearing up a bit earlier. However, this year things have been very strange, arguably due to the la niña effect. Uncharacteristically, there has been sporadic rain throughout the dry season, which means that the hillsides are still green – normally they would be red and dry by now. We have still enjoyed (suffered?) dry season temperatures however, which means 30-32C every day…