Time gentleman please – East Timor 15th February 2008

The state of emergency and subsequent curfew has been extended until the 20th of February. I popped into Fat Boys after work yesterday, the place was packed and everyone was eating. I joked with Fat Boy himself that he was getting the whole nights business in two hours and by 8 o’clock he can sit back and relax. Closer to home at the Dili Club at five to eight, it was like drinking up time in a bar in the UK, except the landlord didn’t need to call time, the government did. The only time I’ve seen a pub clear so quick is when ‘Time’ is called Christmas Day lunchtime. The journey home was eerie, not a car or person on the street.

The curfew is having a bad financial effect for many businesses such as restaurants and nightclubs that only open in the evening. The other business is Tiger Fuels, the country’s only 24 hour garage and convenience store, which is now 14 hours. Much of their business is done at night when people pop in for pizzas and petrol, or emergency supplies such toothpaste, nappies, toilet roll, water or dog food. If you get caught short now, you need to make sure it’s before 8 p.m.

Other businesses however are making a financial killing again. What with the attempted assassinations on Monday, the funeral of Alfredo yesterday and the arrival of the Australian PM Kevin Rudd today, the journalists have flocked back into Dili filling the hotels and renting all the available cars.

Whenever you ask an East Timorese ‘Where are you from?’ the answer is never Dili, this always puzzled me. I had it explained by one taxi driver recently. When the Portuguese came to East Timor, Dili was a small village, the Portuguese developed it into a port and city and the East Timorese came to Dili for work. But generations later, their loyalty is with their village or town that their family came from. For births, deaths and religious ceremonies the Dili residents return to their home towns.

Here when someone dies, their body is laid out in the family home for family and friends to pay their respects and grieve. From friends’ accounts, the women wail in grief and the whole process is very vocal, quite different from the sedate affair we are used to in the UK. Alfredo’s body was laid out in his stepfather’s house just down the road from work. I can’t imaging he would have been a pretty sight given the wounds he received. Hundreds of East Timorese were at the house to pay their respects along with a very visual display of military and police. He was buried in the garden rather than being transported back to his home town of Maubisse breaking with tradition, because it was too much of a risk to move the body with all the road blocks and security.

The city seems relatively calm but wary. The daily rain is putting a dampener on things (excuse the pun!) and the nightly curfew means that any activities on the street are highly visible. Ramos Horta in the mean time is reported to be stable which is a relief.

One thing I did notice this morning is the taxis; gone are the sun strips that cover half the windscreen, gone are the blackened out windows and the taxi drivers are driving around with their windows open. I don’t think this has anything to do with the overcast weather more to do with being visible at road blocks.