The streets of Dili have quietened down, there are still trouble spots but they are mainly in specific areas, not widespread. Outside the Parliament building there are signs thanking the Australians for their intervention but this opinion is mixed. In some areas the gangs are chanting ‘Australians go home’, the Ozzies are disarming people but in some cases this is the only means the Timorese people have of protecting themselves. Wayne came across an Australian woman called Rocky who has run a rehabilitation centre in Dili for years. At the time the Ozzie troops had got all her staff on the floor and were disarming them. Rocky tried to explain to the troops, that her staff were not carrying weapons to loot and fight but to protect themselves and the centre. But the Australian’s job is to disarm and that’s what they did. Wayne met Rocky a couple of days later behind a barricade, when she enquired about her centre Wayne had the unenviable job of explaining that her years of hard work and dedication were burning down as they spoke. The staff could no longer protect the building.
One of the temporary staff in the Esplanada asked Wayne about his house and explained roughly where it was. Wayne checked the area out, now hasn’t got the heart to tell him the whole area is razed to the ground.
There seems to be an East/West divide going on in the city, people cannot return home for fear of being attacked by their neighbours because they were born in the wrong part of the country. We have divers for Saturday but I can’t take any staff out with me because it’s not safe for them. One of the ABC news trucks was attacked with stones on Monday because they stupidly took an East East Timorese interpreter with them to a West East Timorese area.
On the positive side, there was a peaceful march by the rebels yesterday. They delivered a petition to Xanana demanding the resignation of Alkatiri. It went off without incident which is encouraging.
Walking around town you see the refugee camps. These are set up in the squares and churches in the open air housing hundreds of families. What struck me was the use of plastic and nylon, plastic sheeting for sun protection, nylon rope for washing lines, plastic bottles for water, plastic baskets for possessions and plastic bags for food. I saw a young mother washing her baby in a plastic bowl, scooping water over him with a plastic cup. The only organic thing I saw in these camps was the wood on the fire. You see an abundance of plastic all over Asia, whereas china is more acceptable in 1st world countries and plastic scorned upon as the cheap throw away alternative only used for picnics.
It was heart warming to watch the little naked boys playing in the sea again. Of course as soon as they saw I had a camera it was ‘Hello Mister, photo’. That’s the nice thing about digital, as soon as you take the photo you can show it to them, which is responded to with infectious giggling and broad smiles. I once saw a girl in Cambodia taking photos with a Polaroid camera. The best shots she got were the looks on the kid’s faces as their image appeared on the paper by magic.
Aid workers are slowly trickling back into East Timor; many have been here before so we are seeing the return of some die hard divers at our door. We had one guy from the Red Cross enquiring about diving at the weekend that had been a regular customer 4 years before. So the plan is to go diving on Saturday, not sure where yet, that all depends on the situation, but I can’t wait to get working again.
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