Reflections on my nearly finished time in Timor-Leste

In under two weeks I will be flying to Vietnam.  I will have finished my work in Timor-Leste and be doing some travelling before I need to decide what is my next step.  With so little time left, it is not surprising that I’m beginning to reflect on my time in Timor-Leste, whether I should continue doing international development, and how my view has been altered of the world.

Timor-Leste has had its challenges, not the least among them, the seclusion I have felt in my work site.  I work in the department of Oecussi, which is cut off from the rest of Timor-Leste by Indonesia. I have been in one of the more distant reaches of Oecussi, the town of Passabe.  My only relief is when I’m in Oecussi town on the weekends where I have internet at night, though that means that it is very early the previous morning in the US.  Life without daily phone or internet is hard.  I know many of you will laugh about the absurdity of needing to be connected and you wouldn’t be wrong to point out that just 10 years ago, where I’m at, there was no phone and internet at all.  I wouldn’t have been able to have any contact with the outside world, except when I would go into the capital, Dili. 

I both love and hate international work at the same time.  I love being in new places, places that are exotic to my norm of American-ness.  The immense stimulation of daily life in a new place is extremely exhilarating.  The constant riddle of the local culture and daily life leaves my mind a whirring and my senses heightened.  But the sensory highs mean that there are lows, where the longing for the normalcy and comfortableness of home creates a nearly debilitating homesickness.  All in all there is a cycle, where I want the stimulation of being overseas when I’m in the US and I want the comfortableness of home when I’m away. 

Also, the very purpose of international development work as a whole leaves me conflicted.  On the one hand I want to help develop a country like Timor-Leste, but on the other hand I feel like the family supporting the drunk uncle by giving him a place to stay and food to eat.  The support in a way supports the uncle’s drunkenness furthering the very problem that I would like to wean him from.  Sure, you can try to give him help to break his pattern of drunkenness, but in the end it depends on the uncle whether he dries up or not, and not you.  In other words, no matter how much support you give, it is still the uncle that needs to make the effort to come dry, the support you give only facilitates, but doesn’t guarantee the final result.  International development work is similar in that you are trying your best to help the country develop, but no matter the support you give, it is the local culture, and governing bodies that often determine how successful a program is.  Some places, you can give them a few rocks and they will build a bridge, others you will give them abundant rocks to build a hundred bridges and they will just throw them at their neighbours.

In the end, local cultures are difficult to change.  Often the very reasons that keep a country undeveloped are the result of local culture.  This does not mean that the local culture is solely to blame, as it is a response to local conditions, geographic placement, past history, which may have been influenced strongly by outside forces (think colonization), or any assortment of reasons.  What I’m saying is that the culture that develops is not directly the fault of those who are dealing with its consequences in the present.  Would we blame Henry Ford for the unwalkable, car oriented, suburban culture that the automobile affordable for the masses brought upon the United States and its urban form?  Though it is obvious that American society and culture is heavily influenced by widespread access to automobiles today, we wouldn’t go so far as holding Ford solely accountable, as many other factors, like government policy, personal choice, land market rates, and technological innovations also contributed to the car culture we currently have.  All I can wonder is what will be the impetus that pushes Timor-Leste from its stagnation into a virtuous cycle of development and when will it occur.  Will it be the result of a powerful but somewhat benevolent dictator like in Singapore in the 1960s?  Will it be the result of an outside force imposing its will upon the country, like General Perry’s fleet forcing Japan to open its doors in the late 1800s?  Or will it be a combination of subtle factors?  Who knows?

An observation that always surprises me is how similar societies are throughout the world.  I am always surprised by how similar I find people to be throughout the world.  The biggest differences I find seem to fall upon economic and educational lines.  I find that there are great similarities between class tiers in different countries, a greater similarity than among different classes within the same country.  For example, I find the wealthy and educated classes in Timor Leste to be more similar to the wealthy and educated classes of the US than with the poor classes within their own country.  I know, that I just made an enormous generalization, and I’m certain that if you want to look at the details in each individual country you can prove my point wrong in some instances.  What I’m trying to state is that I feel from personal experience that the divisions between class and education levels are greater than the divisions between cultures.

I think that is enough for now.  I’m ruminating as I write, and probably now as I finish my views may have changed on what I said at the beginning.  Your comments and insights are most welcome if you so desire to offer them.