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Penang button Letters from a Slaughter Zone

V W Balasingam writes from East Timor


Heat and Light

1st October. ...  this may be the last email for some time as it is getting more difficult to get on line and to connect to server  ... .So don't panic if you don't hear from me. I am doing well and enjoying work and living here very much ...

... you ask about food. It is horrendously expensive. But the Lord is always on my side and I am one of the few with meals provided where I live. My Portugese landlady is a brilliant cook and dinner is much awaited by the six tenants. We are from six countries and from four continents. Each dinner is US$3, the same thing outside would be US$10 at least. Beer is US$3 outside and US$1 at the barracks. But there is the hassle of getting there.  So it is all swings and roundabouts.

Have got used to the heat and the electricity shortage. Since there is no electricity for three hours each night and the timing is predictable we have learnt to work around it and get ready in advance and just light mosquito coils and sit outside and talk.

Shamus Mangan, my supervisor who got me here, met with a terribly accident and I have just come back from the UN military hospital from visiting him. The whole office is down about this as he is a really nice person. He has been very good to me, even lent me a fan for my room rather  than buy one for just the three months.

...  Village life is wonderful and the villagers are very polite and courteous.  Forgot to tell you that when I flew here from Darwin it was in a Hercules  which was like the plane you see in war movies. Just rows of seats with no toilet or stewardess. Quite an experience.

All the taxis are the old  Singapore "Comfort"  taxis without the registration plates as there is no registration system. Rains are due at the end of October and everyone, especially the farmers are waiting for this. I go to a Catholic church, as that is most convenient for me. I go a lot to the UN base where the drinks are cheaper. But as there are no taxis after 9 pm we try to get back early unless one of those in my group has a car. It is actually very safe and all the reports one reads are all exaggerated.

Went to UN clubhouse for the Malaysia Day party. All the big boys were there, Xaxana Gusmao, Sergio De Viella, Bishop Belo and Ramos Horta .Trust the Malaysian liasion office to serve only satay which was inedible and fried meehoon and apple and oranges. Absolute disgrace.

... with the coming rains I am told the mosquitoes increase ten fold and there is a lot of disease and flooding, as there is no drainage. Am eating well to keep the body strong and jogging daily.



Combing and Shaving

4th October. ... I have been here a month. I have survived my first month. And "survive" is the word. Because it is difficult out here. Two things have helped: the Lord Jesus Christ  who gives us strength when we have none of our own to cope ( I can do all things through HIM who gives me strength) and also the resilience of the human body and mind to adjust, cope, understand and to endure. Of course  what happened in the States also helped me to put things quickly into perspective. Compared to what the Americans are going through I'm in comparision having a smooth time out here.

Cut my hair down to 1cm (short of being bald), I did this because of the heat and also because  I'm yet to find a mirror in the village to help comb my hair. Even shaving is done by feel and touch. So it is down to basics. And it is fine by me. We really don't need a lot to live and to be happy.

Everyone here has been affected by the war and I want to quote from a book that is just out: A Dirty Little War by Tony Martinkus (Random House, Australia).

 "A third of the East Timorese population has perished by the early 1990's as a direct result of the Indonesian military's effort to secure the island. These people had died fighting or due to its consequences, many as victims of the famine induced by their forced location away from the interior of the island. Of a population of 750,000 more than 250,000 had died. This was the highest per capita death toll of any conflict in the 20th century"

 Every one has a war story to tell, whether in my office or outside. Last week my landlord went with a group of men to a hill in the forest to bring back the remains of the baby son he had hastily buried there 2 years ago when the war was at its height. I did not ask him how or why the son died. He was 2 years old. But a lot of babies were massacred. He brought the bones back in a box, put it on a table in the hall with flowers and had a mass. That night he gave a dinner and invited us 6 tenants. The next morning they took  the bones for a proper burial. Ibu, my landlady says her heart is now at peace. They also have a physically disabled adult son. There are many tragic stories like this one, but this was nearer the bone being my landlord's own story. All over the village and indeed the whole country there still remain burnt and destroyed houses that have not been rebuilt as the owners have all been killed or have run away. Despite all this the people smile, are joyful and get on with their lives. Email is back in order so please keep them coming....
Pastor from Medan

18th October: ...   Shamus Mangan, my former supervisor is all right and they have flown  him to Darwin for surgery. In Malaysia we talk about how rich a person is. Here the question is how poor a person is. Poor, very poor and very very  poor. Last week I met some one in the last category. I was jogging near the  foothills when I saw a man walking down carrying a book. I knew to be  a bible. Turns out he is a pastor from Medan and he serves here. He invited me to his house. If I tell you he lives in a hut, I am exaggerating. It is in fact a hovel. There were two chairs, both broken, and he gave me the better one to sit on. He and his wife have no income or support and just plant vegetables in their small garden which he then sells to passers by. He also sells salt, sugar, oil, cigarettes etc from his living room to make a living. The most wonderful thing about all this is how happy and contented he is. He kept saying that the Lord has blessed his life greatly. He and his wife just radiate with  joy, happiness and contentment and he says he has everything he needs.

Juvenal Belo, a local Timorese, who sits next to me in the office has been absent,  and today  we hear he has malaria. What I have learnt here is how unimportant the "I" in each of our lives is. None of us here knows what tomorrow will bring, whether it is dengue, malaria, cholera or typhoid. Or an accident can happen or one can get shot or mugged,  just like that. What this has done to me is to deepen and strengthen my relationship with  God; there is no one else to turn to. Here all of us are  without the usual support network of family, friends, colleagues and church. Each of us is very much on our own. Everyone here is for a  short term and almost every week someone is leaving and someone arriving; so deep friendships are difficult to form. One's best friend, companion and confidant is God. In the email that you did not receive I mentioned how I lost my mobile and everyone said I would never get it back. In this land of very little and  without a phone system, the mobile is very precious. Miraculously, the taxi driver in whose taxi I had left it agreed to return it for US$10, which I was very happy to give. Have just paid my landlord US$20 to put in some simple mosquito proofing on my cubicle door and window. That's how expensive things are here.


Beautiful Beaches

28th October: ...  Yes the beaches are beautiful but it's the heat that keeps me away. I can walk/jog 20 minutes to a beautiful beach from where I live, jog the coast line and them walk home .Total time 1 hour 10 minutes. I usually do it at weekends as soon as it gets cool and return before it gets dark. The hills are supposed to be fantastic but I have yet to visit . Went to a highland town to do some work and the view was fantastic. Hopefully on Monday I will work in Gleno in the mountains, but it is a day trip. OnThursday I fly to Suai for the day, also for work.

...  There are no heritage or historical buildings or if there were most have been destroyed. There also do not seem to be a lot of arts and crafts. There are some ornaments made from cow horns and some woven baskets and some cloth which is like the Balinese ikat, and that's it. 

... the Seventh Day Adventist Church have with them  a Korean and Filipino missionary, who have  started a home for street children and orphans from the war and I have  agreed to go with the two of them to do translation when they do the streets and the slum areas as neither speaks Indonesian.

Friday is a public holiday and we are all going bonkers wondering what to do. Then Monday the 12th is also a holiday and I will try to get on the UN plane to Darwin and spend the long weekend there. Problem is everyone will have the same idea and some of us will be bumped off. We are all waiting with bated breath for the rains which are due anytime. Even the foreigners are waiting for this. In the fields, now rock hard,  the farmers are ploughing and getting ready so that the minute the skies open they can start planting. Here they use horses and cows and buffaloes to plough, which explains the horses all over the place and no one riding them. They also eat horse meat the way we eat beef.
Electricity and Mosquitoes

1st November: ... the UN  has repaired the two substations so there is electricity 24 hours again. Has made such a difference to all our lives were all singing "happy days are here again." Also the mosquito proofing of my room has reduced the number by 95% and I just have to spray the room to get rid of the few that remain.
Tomorrow I'm in Maliana for the day which is up in the hills. Then next Friday I've put my name for the UN flight to Darwin as it is a long weekend. I'm also looking into going home via Melbourne, rather than Bali, as I haven't been there before. But all  commercial flights out of Dili are astronomical, as there are so few comming in or going out and Dili has only one travel agency. So I'm shopping around in Darwin if I get there. The other nice thing I've discovered is that there are quite nice restaurants here and I've worked out a system where I arrange for the taxi to come back for me. Two nights ago I went to a farewell party at a Portugese restaurant. I can also walk to a Chinese restaurant on the days my landlady does not cook which is Friday and Saturday.

 The Korean and Filipino missionaries I told you about get free accommodation but a living allowance of US$50. How do they survive in a place like Dili with the kind of prices I've given you in my earlier emails. Tomorrow night is my first night going out with the missionaries to help them to talk with the street children. I've also offered to interpret from this Saturday at the Sabbath school for the Korean interpreter. My first service at the Adventist church last Saturday was one and a half hours adult bible study then a 5 minute break and then service for another one and a half hours. But there is a lot of substance. Yesterday I talked with another farmer. Horses here pull the plough, winnow padi and are also slaughtered like cattle , which is why there are so many around.


The Rains

12th November: ... At last, last night the rains came. A great clatter with great big dollops of rain that went on and on for hours. As mine is a tin roof with no ceiling the noise was terrific and I got up and put on ear plugs. To day is the Santa Cruz massacre anniversary and I have just come from a  mass for 2000 people. Can you imagine serving communion to 2000. Actually it was a lot more than that. After the mass they were walking the 5 km to Santa Cruz district in the heat. I chickened out and took a taxi to the office to send out my email.

The rain has made everything clean and green. Dust that has been sitting on trees and on everything else since July has been washed away and it is like a new clean green city. One of the nice things about ET is that they kept their trees and not chopped it all down like other countries either for timber or for fuel. Yesterday when I was jogging I saw a boy coming back from football. He had one sock and boot on. The other foot was bare. I asked him where the other boot was and he said that he and his friend had bought one pair and each  took one shoe. Such is life in ET. But they are a beautiful, patient, and resilient people from whom we can learn a lot about courtesy, grace and patience. Today's mass was over an hour late .No complaints and no chatting. Our church could learn something from them.

 In the end I did not go anywhere for the weekend as I had to help with a talk in the village for the young men on how to start and run a small business. They give training and capital. And then monitor and supervise. We had 18 people and will see how it goes from there. But they all seem to lack motivation . Even to get them to attend was so difficult. We had it in my landlord's garden and we all sat under the trees.

 For those of you interested in ET, there is a very good website called http://www.easttimor.com   (all lower casing). It also tells you about the massacres and the aid agencies if you want to send money or things.

 18th November:   ...   In one week, what were  sad and tired looking brown hills now look green and fresh. Dili is surrounded by a crescent of hills on one side and the sea on the other. So whichever way you look it is truly beautiful and dare I say the views are panoramic. It's a bit like Ipoh with the hills.

 While the rains are wonderful and life giving and all that, the downside is that the mosquitoes have increased geometrically as opposed to arithmetically. On the plane back from Suai I sat next to a doctor who said that in the rainy season 10% of the population will get malaria or dengue including the foreigners.  The other thing he said, which I found shocking, is that 20% of children do not reach the age of 10. I feel this is a lot but when a doctor tells you this you just accept it. I went to lunch with the new Brazilian missionary . I asked him how he was coping and adjusting and he replied in halting English that this is the most expensive city in the world and more expensive than London with which I fully agreed. He has no idea how he is going to cope when his wife and 2 children come in January, and is planning to write to his mission to tell them he simply cannot manage.

Also on my way home from jogging, dropped to visit the Sumatran pastor I told you'll about in an earlier letter. He was sitting by his house selling things. So I pulled up a chair and sat with him. It was about 6.30 and a lot of customers came by. All they bought were things like 1 egg, 1 packet of instant noddle, a few cigarettes etc. Nobody bought more than 1 of anything.

I flew to Suai on a De Havilland 7 which is a war plane. We had to make 3 stops there and 3 stops on the way back to fetch people stranded because of the rain having cancelled flights for the two days previously. I am in Suai this week for two nights and am hoping for a direct flight. I have less than a month left here, and as always it is only when you have to leave that you enjoy a place and make new friends. The good news from the seminar we organised is that one of the men gave a soap making class yesterday, in which he used only local ingredients.

Orphans

2nd December ...  many of you have been asking about sending money and other things. Money is difficult as it may be misused. I am net working  with an orphanage here and what we plan to do is send educational material from Malaysia, and I will organise this when I get back and those of you who want  to can contribute. I am talking about stationary pens pencils and rubber and exercise books which are very expensive here. Also soap, toothpaste and tooth  brushes needed. My colleagues from the office are going to work out a food  delivery programme on a monthly basis . The problem arises as to what will happen when all of us foreigners leave and who is going to continue. Anyway that's all in the future and its important to get it off the ground now as the   children need to be fed.

On Wednesday two colleagues and I, one of whom is from ET, paid a visit to an orphanage unannounced. 35 children in 2 rooms which had a double bed each and a few camp beds. It is 10-12 children on each bed and  the rest on the floor. They have no food provision except on a daily basis. They have written 26 letters of appeal to relief agencies but none have  responded as previously people have run off with the money. When we arrived it was drizzling and the children were all in the back yard bathing at a well. Most of the children are war orphans or have lost one parent in the  war. When we left at 6 pm there was still no sign of dinner being cooked or prepared. We are going there today with a food parcel.

 Last night I had dinner with a Filipino missionary couple . They have been  helping the  half-paralysed son of my landlord with physiotherapy. He is a  dentist and she is a physiotherapist. They are both in their late twenties and are with the AOG church. To confirm dinner I sent them a text message and  there was no response. Anyway I went to the Indian restaurant where we had  arranged to meet and they were there. The reason they did not respond to my message, they shyly told me, was that they had no more money in their prepaid account. The missionaries I meet here amaze me with their dedication  and love for God's people.

 The UN in preparation for the opening of a mission in Afghanistan have asked  those interested in going there, the minute the war is over, to apply.

... On Tuesday I go to a place called Bacau to work for three days. Supposed to be very beautiful and with nice beaches.

 9th December  This is most probably my last email from East Timor. Next weekend I leave for Melbourne and then, on the 21st,  l'm home. It is really going to be difficult for me to leave this place. For all my earlier complaints I really have had a wonderful time here and have learnt a lot from the people.

They really need help in all areas . For instance there is no dentist in the whole of East Timor. The UN has one but this is only for UN people; the dentist obliged me by allowing me to sneak in one of the missionaries for treatment after 5.30pm. The locals go to guys who just yank out their teeth.

 Yesterday, while jogging, a boy of about eight, selling oranges by the road asked me to buy some. I stopped and told him I had no money as I was out jogging. He looked at me and then chose one mango and said, "For you." This is the sort of thing that endears you to people here. Today I am going back with money to buy from him

 My landlord, Senor Paulino has been admitted to hospital  with malaria and something else. With the rains many more are getting malaria. The English girl next door has also got malaria. .But everyone would rather get malaria than dengue. For me it's Hobson's choice.

 It is raining with a vengeance as though to make up for the five months dry season. The earth soaks it up as though its thirst cannot be quenched. Hopefully one of the last things I do work-wise is to go and see Manuel Carrascalao. He is in his 70's  and is a freedom fighter  who fought the Indonesians for independence. On the 17th of April 1999  he had over a 100 refugees in his large compound who had run to him for protection from the Indonesians. That morning when he went to the airport to fetch his wife from Surabaya, the Indonesians attacked his house and killed 12 men and injured five. Among those killed was his son Manolito. When he heard from the airport about the attack he went straight to the police station to ask the police to help the refugees but the police laughed at him and did nothing, as the police were Indonesian. So he got home to find the carnage and his son dead. Manuel now lives in a container in one of the hotels and that is where I go to read him his statement about the massacre that took place in his house. Those who have met him says he is no more the same and that is notsurprising.
You can read all about the attack in the John Martinkus book, "A Dirty Little War" (Random House  publishers).

Well folks, this is it from the glorious land of East Timor where the hardship, sorrow and suffering of the people have given them an inner beauty and resilience.

   


V W Balasingam is a lawyer in Ipoh and a volunteer church worker. He volunteered to serve for three months as an interpreter for the United Nations in East Timor at the end of 2001. The letters he wrote to his friends while serving in the area are printed here with his permission

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The Penang File Issue 21