Gordon Peake

Beloved Land is a 250 page depiction of modern Timorese history and politics, focussing on some of the individuals involved in the re-birth of the country. It is a conversational style book so is highly readable. The characters depicted are not the most famous people of Timor but are ones who have played important roles in recent times. Beloved Land is also a withering critique of the failings of the international donor community but is not a proposal about how to do things better.

The cover of Beloved Land is terrible. It looks amateurish and suggests this is a sub-par book. It isn't. This is the story of modern Timor written by a Northern Irish Catholic about the people involved. It is not an assessment of political structures of parties, instead it is reports of a series of conversations and encounters with an eclectic group of Timorese participants and enthusiasts.

Gordon Peake begins with a brief foray into TImorese history. The opening chapter is of Portuguese Timor and the relative neglect Portugal imposed on its fathest flung colony. The failure of the Portuguese to make much nation-building headway is a theme returned to often in the work. The Portuguese administrators had limited understanding of their Timorese charges and this is the same story Peake tells of much more recent international supporters.

Peake tells humourous and interesting stories about the superstitions prevalent amongst the Timorese. These tales are not the most frequently told ones so for a reader with limited knowledge of the country the main fables are not accessed here. Instead it is the supernatural feats ascribed to the Falantil fighters which shape the early narrative. These are incredible people with genuine stories to tell. The blurring of lines between brutal fact and incredible fiction is part of who they are. People like the Lobato family and Taur Matan Ruak have stories ascribed to them but it is also the group of people who played key roles below that level who pop out of the narrative.

The relationship with Indonesia is a relatively small part of the story. The horrors of what happened during the restoration of independence are not catalogued. Peake is not telling the story of that time. His is a much more personal account rather than a description of the savagery perpetrated by the Indonesians. One of the few passages devoted to the violence is about the Truth and Reconciliation Committee (CAVR). Peake visits CAVR and as anyone who has been there can attest, it is an eerily quiet building seemingly without a purpose.

Language is a recurrent theme in the book. Peake lambasts the international community for its failure to learn Tetun. He describes his own ability to pick up some basics in the language and points out the inherent flaws in an international community speaking English to an audience who do not understand it. The question of language is still a troublesome one. The modern pushing of Portuguese by its originators, the Portuguese-dominated EU delegation, and Brazil goes against the tide of history and the practicalities of its use as a medium of instruction. Beloved Land explains some of the background to language and the 20 or so often mutually-unintelligeable languages spoken on the eastern half of the Pulau Timor. Peake's line about most foreigners only knowing 'mana' is laugh out loud funny because it is so true.

Beloved Land also touches on the resource curse. The ridiculously optimistic projections of wealth coming from oil and gas are pointed out by Peake. He does not, however, land any punches on the grossly wasteful infrastructure projects cropping up in a country with an almost unbearable lack of human capacity. Even for a casual reader it would have been useful to have Peake's assessment of how long it will take before the wealth fund runs out. He could have got that answer from La'o Hamutuk on his visit there - one of the few places Peake praises for their quality.

Peake reserves most of his scorn for the donor community. The coffee and complaint culture embedded in a group of people with no real tangible results for all their efforts at capacity building is rightly skewered. Peake is also critical of Australia and its handling of both the original Indonesian occupation and the process of the Greater Sunrise negotiations. However, there are no solutions to be found here, just description of what has not worked which is the easy way out.

As a man of Northern Ireland, Peake offers insight into the unusually large Timorese expat population there. He tells the story of what it is like to live as Timorese in places like Dungannon. The links bewteen Northern Ireland and Timor are remarkable and well worth Peake's analysis.

Perhaps the biggest achievement of Beloved Land is that it offers such an incredibly readable account of the country. It is an incomplete account, largely focussed on anecdote but it is an accessible entry into a small country few know much about.… (mer)