Dili Day Trip

Jan. 19, 2007

19a

We left early this morning with Claudia and our driver for a day trip to East Timor's second largest city Baucau. On the way we stopped in just about every village. Metinaro had an interesting market where we bought some strings of goat meat jerky which had been hung up for the flies to walk over. These might have been the cause of Irina's first case of tourist stomach this evening. Or it could have been the dried shredded mangos. We also bought the ingredients for a good betel nut chew: dried betel palm seeds to be wrapped in their leaves with a little quick lime to bring out the alkaloid in the betel nuts. Chewing betel nuts is supposed to stain your teeth red and act as a stimulant. A very traditional thing to do here; so we thought 'well when in Rome'. Our guide promised to show us how to chew this stuff but she never did.

19b

We didn't have much time to look around Baucua, mainly because we wanted to eat lunch at the famed Pousade de Baucau. [GPS 08 27.666S 126 27.023E] We were told that the building behind this place was used by the Indonesians to torture suspected pro independent East Timorese. Getting fed at the Pousade took up most of our time in Baucau. We had to wait 30 minutes before the place was ready for customers. So we went for a short walk. Almost immediately we saw a goat, which had been tied by a length of twine to a post near the top of a ravine, had gotten tangled up, fallen down and was chocking to death by its own weight. At first sight we didn't realize what was happening but when we walked by it again we saw it was in trouble. This is right in the middle of town, but no one seemed to notice. We tried to attract some attention to the problem; maybe someone knew the owner. Finally, Arvid climbed down into the gulch. Then people started to gather. He was able to untangle the cord and free the goat's neck just as its eyes rolled back and it died. A very disturbing pre-lunch affair.

19c

Lunch at the Pousade did not go much better. They had an extensive menu of Portuguese dishes. But they didn't have anything we selected from the menu. Finally the manager suggested their specials for the day: beef in mushroom sauce; and chicken satay with coconut rice. No seafood, even though the place is only a few km from the sea. Five minutes later he returned to tell us there was no coconut for the rice. That's like no corn in Kansas. When we came out of the restaurant an hour later the goat was where we had left it covered with flies and starting to bloat. We were really glad to leave Baucau.

Our drive south to Venilale, the heart of the island, was very scenic, and we could see why the Indonesian military weren't able to clear out the Fretilin although the killed lots of innocent bystanders. Just north of Venilale we saw seven openings to the tunnels the Japanese had forced the locals to dig and then killed the workers so they couldn't reveal their whereabouts. East Timor is not a very lucky place. In Venilale we visited the Catholic boarding schools there. [GPS 08 38.275S 126 22.902E]

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