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.

Separation from the UK political discourse

(Unrelated to Timor, but something I’ve been thinking about this week. My main points are that (i) I can personally see why the left is arguing against the cuts and agree, but (ii) I think they are failing to successfully communicate their reasoning beyond the headline of "cuts are bad"; people get this, but aren't aware what the alternatives are. )

Being on the other side of the world and largely deprived of UK media and political conversations with friends over the last 2 months has been a real eye-opener. It made me realise what a muffled message most people in the UK are likely to get on politics, and how important it is to get the message clear and reasoned. Here on the other side of the world, I’m hearing the basic message, but not the reasoning.

At home, I read the Guardian and BBC, topped up with Liberal Conspiracy, Left Foot Forward and Guido, then discuss issues in the pub with friends regularly. Here, I’m reading far more on East Timor and international affairs. Consequently, I’m only receiving about 10% of the UK-oriented information that I usually get.

For example, I could tell you that in recent weeks students have been demonstrating against increases in top-up fees and Labour are organising against most cuts in general. But I couldn’t tell you the nuanced arguments behind why Labour are arguing against most of the cuts, beyond “they’ll hit the poor hardest” which is obvious.

I am instinctively drawn to anti-cuts positions, being an independent man of the left. (I have variously voted Lib Dem and Green but not yet Labour – I was sixteen on 9/11, after which they became authoritarian and war-mongering – that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t vote Labour if Ed Miliband cleans things up). However, without the detail, the likely right-wing counter-argument is harder to refute. For example, Labour’s election campaign also acknowledged the need for cuts, just slower ones on a slightly different ratio. Is it not hypocritical of them to wail at every lost public sector job?

I know that most of Labour’s positions are defensible. I would and could happily defend them myself. My point is that with my media intake being 10% of what it usually is, I couldn’t immediately tell you how they are defending it currently. This is important, because even out here I’m probably still reading 10x more news than the majority of the British public.

It really brings it home how important the headlines are, and how you need to make the message simple yet reasoned. Anyone arguing against cuts needs to be upfront about either (i) what they would cut instead, (ii) which taxes they would raise instead, or (iii) why cuts aren’t needed at all. I want to hear this every time an anti-cuts statement is made.

Whilst it’s fair to say that the Tories are being overly ideological in some respects and going further than is needed, that is a side-issue – everyone campaigned on the fact that some cuts are needed. The default right-wing response is “all these cuts are Gordon Brown’s fault, and you’d be cutting this yourself if you’d won the election”. To the right sort of person, that line of argument becomes more persuasive when Labour aren’t clearly justifying their positions.

Personally I buy the narrative that (i) the financial crisis was mainly due to contagion from the USA, (ii) graphs don’t lie – Britain’s debt wasn’t at historically high levels in 2008, and (iii) Gordon did the right thing in bailing out the banks. But I’m not hearing a more nuanced message from the left than simply “fight the cuts”. Maybe Labour people think if they complain loudly enough about the cuts for the next 5 years, people will blame the whole lot on the Coalition and vote Labour again. I honestly don’t think this will be enough.

Timor celebrates World Toilet Day

A few weeks back it was World Toilet Day (Loron Mundial Sintina). Incidentally, I started work at WaterAid on that day back in 2007, so it also marked 3 years service for me. As you can imagine, WaterAid Timor Leste was pretty busy on the day. Most of the team were in Liquiça district to support a village to declare itself Open Defecation Free (ODF), which is a key element of the CLTS approach I mentioned in this post.

An ODF declaration is an important milestone in a village’s commitment to sanitation. It is a clear public statement, complete with signboard, that “practising open defecation” (apologies for jargon, it basically means crapping in the woods) is no longer acceptable and everyone is now using a toilet, however basic. The problem, of course, is how to get people to progress from the most basic toilet to something more durable. For more info on the event, I suggest you read this article on the WaterAid Australia website by my colleague Jose Seixas.

So, most of the team were down in Liquiça, but Jose, Tofik and myself were in Dili attending the National Toilet Awards. This excellent event was organised by the Ministry of Infrastructure and BESIK (the AusAid-funded programme supporting the water supply and sanitation directorate of the Ministry). They had  mustered NGOs and private sector organisations involved in sanitation marketing from across the whole of Timor. The Vice Minister of Health was in attendance to inspect the various designs, giving some political weight to the proceedings.

Most people had the basic moulded cement pans, though prices ranged from $3-5 due to different business models and material availability. There were also some other innovative designs on show. WaterAid had supported Januario (mentioned in this post) to attend, and he brought along a few examples of a simple latrine made from a PVC pipe, and ended up winning a prize for it, which was great. The picture above shows him with part of his display. PVC is currently quite expensive here as it's imported, but prices for many materials are coming down at the moment.

These awards are great for generating interest around sanitation marketing, rewarding those entrepreneurs with good ideas, encouraging them to stick with the business and innovate more. Hopefully it will become an annual fixture. A video was made, and if it becomes available online, I’ll link to it.

I was particularly taken by the exposition of the soap-making activities supported by the Japanese NGO AFMET, who work out in Lospalos. They are helping communities produce high-quality soap made mostly from local materials like coconut oil. Their soap is also available in shops in Dili, so I’ve been using it myself. Hygiene promotion is the most cost-effective health intervention available, but hand-washing only forms a proper disease transmission barrier when soap is used. I think AFMET’s scheme is great and I’m going to try and do a full blogpost on it another time – you can read about it on the second page of this PDF.

Happy belated World Toilet Day!

The problem and politics of language

East Timor has many languages, both local and externally imposed. As described in my history post, East Timor was colonised by the Portuguese about 500 years ago. Consequently the “official” language (meaning the language of law and educated people) was Portuguese. The Indonesian invasion changed everything – the speaking of Bahasa Indonesia was enforced in schools and official business. Consequently, most people now speak it.

In practice however, the Timorese have always spoken their own languages amongst themselves the whole time, and the lingua franca is arguably Tetun rather than Bahasa. Tetun is essentially a creole of various local languages with many words borrowed from Portuguese. Everyone in Dili speaks Tetun, but the further away you go, the more local languages become the mother tongue. There are in fact more than 30 languages in the various districts (see map above). Less educated people will only be able to speak their local language, and will not even understand much Tetun.

All this makes things extremely complicated, not to mention political. After independence from Indonesia, Portuguese was chosen as the official language, a controversial decision for many. After all, what’s the point in choosing a language which only educated people over 50 can speak? One might note that the political elite at the time was composed of these people. Many exiled independence leaders spent the 80s and 90s overseas in Portugal or Mozambique.

Even the most optimistic lusophile would admit that less than 5% of the population speak Portuguese. To be fair however, what was the alternative? Bahasa is widely spoken, but to choose it would have been politically unpalatable. Some people say “why not English?” but even fewer people speak English than Portuguese.

Why not Tetun, then? Put simply, it does not have enough words. Written Tetun (which has no agreed form, by the way) borrows huge numbers of words from either Portuguese or Bahasa. It would be impossible to draft complicated laws in Tetun. It is also not used anywhere else in the world, so would not be great for business, whereas Portuguese is at least spoken in a large number of countries, including emerging global power Brazil.

So in the end, they chose Portuguese, for better or for worse. This is already bringing serious complications – MPs are legally obliged to speak Portuguese in parliament but most cannot. I personally haven’t heard a single Timorese speaking it. In theory, Portuguese has been the language used in schools since independence, but in practice very few teachers can speak it well. So, lots of kids are learning in bad Portuguese. Their parents can’t speak it, so kids can’t get help with their homework. As the children who started school since 1999 get older, it will become even more complicated. University-level books are mostly in Bahasa, and all the lecturers are used to teaching in Bahasa. The list of problems goes on. It’s an educational nightmare, and it will take a long time to sort it out.

(I’m extremely glad that I did a beginners course in Tetun at the Dili Institute of Technology, which I would thoroughly recommend to anyone coming here, by the way. Tetun is a really interesting language and, thankfully, it’s incredibly simple. I’ll do it proper justice in a full post sometime soon.)

ahi maté (electricity dead)

As mentioned in my previous post, ahi maté is a great excuse to stop work and chat. You might care to complain about the government, the dodgy generators they’ve bought, or anything else that’s bothering you. The acronym of the current coalition government is AMP (Aliança com Maioria Parlamentar), but some wags claim that it really stands for Ahi Maté Permanenté.

This is a little unfair, as most parts of Dili only get ahi mate a couple of hours a day, which by developing country standards is pretty good. There is even a schedule, not that they seem to keep to it. In fact, we’re pretty lucky in Dili. In the foho (lit. hills, but shorthand for poor rural areas) you’d be lucky to get a grid connection at all. Even in other towns there’s usually only power for a few hours in the evening.

Most of East Timor’s electricity comes from huge oil-powered generators. Recently, these seem to have been breaking down more often. It’s also rumoured that there’s more ahi maté towards the end of the year because at that time the money for fuel is running out. The government is investing big-time in old Chinese heavy oil generators, but this is being criticised in some quarters as short-sighted. One of the country’s leading NGOs, La’o Hamutuk, writes persuasively on this issue, see here.

We have a generator in the WaterAid office, which means that it doesn’t all grind to a halt for us. However, the house I’m staying in is not so blessed, so I’m drafting this post by candlelight. It’s actually quite good to live without power for a while. It reminds you that this is the daily reality for the 1.4 billion people who don’t have access to electricity, and indeed for most people here in East Timor. If you’re interested in rural energy, I thoroughly recommend the work Practical Action are doing around the world, see here.

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…