I set out to keep a light-hearted entertaining blog. I see so many little snippets of life that strike me as odd or humorous. However, it has been hard to come up with something light-hearted in the past week, hard to see the humor in the snippets. Civil unrest has returned to Timor.
Earlier this week I saw that someone scratched “Lose Houp” on the dirt covered back window of a parked car.
It is so sad. I am so sad. I’m having a hard time really feeling all this. Just sad. That’s all I can come up with so far.
One of the most important things I carry with me in life is the lesson of hope I’ve learned from the Timorese. Things tomorrow can always change for the better. And when things are really bad – so bad most in the world couldn’t imagine it – hope keeps you going, keeps you fighting a fight worth fighting. In Timor that hope was for freedom. Amongst all the horrible crimes and terror perpetrated upon them by foreigners throughout their past, it seems the Timorese hope for a better future didn’t falter. After fighting and hoping for 24 years, in 1999, the Timorese won independence.
This week, I saw signs of lost hope.
So far, the unrest has been on a small scale but the level of fear is better suited to an all out war. This is what happens in societies where trauma characterizes each person’s past. At the slightest hint of violence, widespread panic sets in.
Briefly, so you all don’t worry – I’m fine. I will be fine. There is no interest among any of the complex political agendas at work here to involve internationals. No one is coming after me and I’ll have a safe place to go should the worst case scenario ensue. The worst case is looking less and less likely anyways.
The short summary is this: after a slow build up on tensions due to political agendas and manipulation of angry, poor, unemployed youth; violence broke out about a week and a half ago. It ended in about 50 houses burned and 5 people dead – officially. It also resulted in the displacement of tens of thousands of residents in the city.
Displacement. What a cold word. It means that scared mothers and fathers, worried for their lives and the lives and futures of their small children packed up what they can and flee. Flee in panic. Flee in fear.
Again.
Flee to places where there is not enough water, to places where you don’t know how you’ll find food. You just figure out it after you get out of harms way. You don’t know how long you’ll be gone. You don’t know what you’ll come back to.
In 1999, widespread violence by organized militias ‘displaced’ just about the entire population of the country. Over a thousand people were killed then, and that was following 24 years of one of the worst occupations in recent world history where 1/3 of the population died.
The fear is palpable. The streets are empty. The official number is 26,000 Internally Displaced People (IDPs). However, far more have left the city. They’ve gone to stay with families in the rural districts.
The markets (the ones that weren’t burnt to the ground) are ghost towns. All that remain are the makeshift stalls fabricated from large sticks, tattered plastic sheeting and bamboo. The bleak empty stalls bake under the sun with no produce, no cigarettes, no cooking oil, no little girl hairbands and clips, cheap plastic jewelry. And no toothless grinning old ladies lazily hawking their avocados and tomatoes. This sight is a far cry from the normally bustling markets where you have to step carefully so as to avoid the mishmash of tarps laid out with the days goods. There are no roosters screeching, no pigs snorting, no old ladies laughing.
It is sad.
I went home at lunch time on the day when people fled. It was almost a week after the violence. After a week of far-fetched and yet believably scary rumors, word that the perpetrators were coming down out of the mountains to attack spread like wildfire. Apparently, one perpetrator called his family in the middle of the night and told them to leave town. By ten am, the streets were filled with every imaginable vehicle filled with people and belongings heading out of town. I casually went home to get a small bag in case I found myself stuck somewhere. I wasn’t getting the bag because I thought the city was going to burn down. I was getting the bag because I thought maybe my staff would be taking refuge at the UN compound and I may need to stay there with them to be sure they were looked after. (I ended up safely going home that night and every night since.)
When I pulled into my driveway, wondering if my neighbors and landlords had fled, I saw most people still quietly at their homes. By the time I was stepping out of my car, I was surrounded by about 30 people…anxiously awaiting word from the malae (foreigner), wondering what I knew, what I’d be doing. They hadn’t yet decided to stay or go but were waiting to know what I was doing.
I’m not sure I was ready for this responsibility.* I was setting out to check on my staff and be sure they and their families felt safe. I say ‘felt’ safe because in fact there was no reputable information whatsoever that there was actually any threat. Just the rumor of it sparks panic.
And panic ensued. People fled. The others stayed in their homes. Society has been tramatized again. The weak economy has been disrupted, for far longer than the displacement and current situation will last.
And when we think of the future, we think of a society that has stepped backwards. No, leaped backwards. Panic is expensive if you are living on $100/month. It costs money to rent a vehicle to get yourself out of town. It means missed work and time away from your inexpensive ways of life. It means buying supplies at higher prices because suddenly goods get scarce. Families will be worse off now. It will take time to get back to even the woeful standard of living that most had before. This one or two weeks of instability may take a year or more of recovery. It will take longer for people to feel safe again. Trauma upon trauma. There has been seven years of peace and I fear the emotionally healing has been turned back too far. I also fear it is different this time. This time it is internal. Before it was always some external enemy. Now the enemy is within. Will this push the psyche too far? Push hope out?
For now, I’m going to hang onto my lesson and I hope, when things quiet down, the hope comes back.
*I calmly explained that I knew of no threat and most decided to stay and ask me to continue updating them – which of course I do.
