On a Wing and a Prayer

Suai, East Timor

Being appointed to a project in East Timor in 1996 was perhaps the highlight of my peripatetic life and occasional career. Bhutan aside, in terms of anything I have actually achieved, East Timor was my finest moment. Living in East Timor under Indonesian occupation was difficult and dangerous. I have written several books about East Timor, the best-known being ‘East Timor: Too Little Too Late’.

Not everything about life there was negative. Let me share a few examples. My work often took me from its capital, Dili, to the town of Suai on the south coast. As the crow flies, it is about one hundred kilometers. By road over the mountains through Ainaro, the trip took up to eight hours depending on the roads, the road blocks, the landslides, the floods and so on. If we took the sealed road through West Timor and the mountain town of Atambua it took five to six hours, allowing for a long lunch in relatively relaxed Atambua.  

Merpati, Indonesia’s secondary Government airline, announced that it would start flying from Dili to Suai. I booked two seats on the inaugural flight for my associate, Alexio and me. We checked in. Where were all the other passengers? We were the only two. We boarded. Were we offered champagne? No! But we did get a box of tea, a rice cake and a chili.

The Merpati CASA, which, in common with many Merpati planes was well past its use by date, clattered reluctantly down Dili airport’s bumpy runway and shuddered its way into the air, crossing over the glorious mountains south west of Mount Ramelau.

It flew so low we could make out chickens scratching in the dirt in the hamlets below.

Villagers ran out to look. Obviously the first domestic commercial flight in over twenty years was quite an event. Given East Timor’s troubles under Indonesian occupation, I wondered whether the villagers thought it might be a military helicopter and were checking out any potential danger.

I also wished the plane could climb higher. The mountain peaks looked awfully close and higher than we were, which is fine if you are driving, but in a Merpati plane? Whatever the reason for its limited ability to climb to a safer altitude, we wound through the mountains, not over them, banking left and right like a kite bobbing in the wind. As we passed Bobonaro, the pilot stuck his head round the door and shouted.

‘We have lost radio contact with Suai,’ he grinned.

‘So?’

‘So no problem, we can still find it. We’ll be there in five minutes’.

I was enjoying myself. I began to dream of half hour trips to Suai. The plane made its approach to Suai airport. I had been to Suai several times but I had never seen the airport before. I knew one existed, but I was still surprised. It even had a sealed runway! The plane started its descent. We had almost touched down when the pilot suddenly pulled up and went around.

‘What’s wrong?’ I asked.

‘Buffalo on the strip!’ yelled the pilot.

We circled while the strip was de-buffaloed by cooperative villagers. The plane came in a second time. Again we had almost touched down, when the pilot once more pulled back on the controls and we lumbered back into the sky.

‘What’s wrong this time?’

‘The buffalo have gone, but there are too many people on the runway’.

Hundreds of villagers had come to see the plane and where better to view it than from the runway. We tried a third time. Again the pilots had to abort. More people kept arriving. Hundreds more of them! As we clawed our way back up into the sky to go round again, I noticed army trucks heading out from town. They charged on to the strip and herded the people off to safety, which in Indonesian terms meant that they lined everyone up along the edges of the runway.

On the fourth attempt we touched down and taxied to the terminal through a welcoming swathe of villagers.

The pilot pulled onto the apron but left the engines running. People swarmed around the plane. All I could think of was turning propellers and inquisitive villagers.

The army made some ineffective shooshing noises. The cabin attendant opened the back door and Alexio and I jumped out. The cabin attendant slammed the door shut—there were no return passengers—the pilot gunned the engines, the crowd took a few steps backwards, screamed and laughed and parted like the Red Sea as the plane took off!

When we made it in to the terminal, high fiving and laughing like conquerors arriving to a hero’s welcome, I asked the old codger who I assumed was on duty there why the radio did not work.

‘The battery is flat’.

I was not surprised. It had not been used since 1975! Sadly, the service only lasted four weeks. The plane was sent to service another high demand route—in Kalimantan.

Back in Dili and my son, Robin wanted to take some shots of Dili at night. Dili was under a curfew imposed by the Indonesian army. As a government official I had a relatively free hand to go where I wanted, but I still had to take care. We drove up a rarely used dirt track to a vantage point on a bluff overlooking the town. Robin spent half an hour happily snapping away. Satisfied, we drove back down the hill. As we re-entered the town near Villaverde, I noticed some men gesticulating and shouting.

Robin yelled at me.

‘For chrissake dad, pull over. It’s a military post and they want you to stop’.

I stopped. The soldiers swarmed around the car, guns leveled at our heads.

‘What is the problem?’ I asked, a little apprehensively.

‘What were you doing on the mountain?’ one asked.

‘Taking photos,’ I replied sweetly.

The leader of the pack frowned.

‘Are you sure?’

I pointed to Robin and his cameras.

‘We saw lights flicking on and off and thought you might be signaling someone,’ continued el head honcho.

I nodded. Robin had indeed been blissfully snapping away. Robin’s camera was the culprit.

The soldiers must have assumed we were sending messages by semaphore.

‘Would you like to see some of my photos?’ asked Robin.

The officer in charge nodded. Guns were lowered. They crowded around and oohed and aahed. Seeing that they were satisfied that neither Robin nor I had been up to no good, the leader nodded, but he seemed slightly upset.

As I talked myself out of yet another potentially difficult situation and safely drove off, Robin rounded on me. ‘Why didn’t you stop?’

‘I did not hear them!’

‘Why on earth not? They were shouting! You could have got us killed again, you dickhead’.

‘It must be the earwax. It builds up. I can’t even hear the car engine now’, I admitted.

‘Get to the hospital tomorrow and clean your ears out! I don’t want a dead father and I certainly don’t want to be a dead son!’

Next morning, at Robin’s insistence, I drove to the hospital. A charming Javanese lady doctor looked after me. She called in a local nurse to assist, an East Timorese man wearing thongs, grubby shorts and a Jesus Lizard singlet. She handed the kidney bowl to the nurse.

‘Hold it under his ear while I syringe the wax out’, she instructed.

The doctor placed the syringe filled with water up to my right ear. The nurse held the bowl under my left ear.

I cracked up. So did the doctor. The nurse did not see the funny side. He smashed the bowl on the floor and stormed out. Obviously earwax operations had waned in East Timor!

Robin acted as nurse when the doctor, after she recovered from hysterics, tried again.

‘He obviously knew you better than most’, were his last words before I hit him with the kidney bowl.