MAJ Syd Dewes is the NZ UN Military Liaison Officer in Timor-Leste. An Army Reserve Officer posted to 3 Auckland North Battalion, he completed 23 years service and is now in his 33rd year service with the Army. MAJ Dewes’ home town is Tikitiki, on the East Coast north of Gisborne.
Major Syd Dewes (in blue cap), in Timor-Leste (WN09-0026-14)
10 June 2009
I had always felt like an odd man out not having completed at least one deployment to this newly formed nation to which ‘hundreds’ of NZ troops have deployed. I harboured for some time this feeling of not having done my share. Now that I am finally here in Timor-Leste I can put a tick in the box, my box of things I had to do on my journey as a serviceman. There are a couple of other missions I’d like to do, but that’s another story best left alone for now.
Winging my way west from a cold and overcast Auckland I spent hours occupied and cocooned in many thoughts of what I had left behind and what it was I was launching into. You know how it is, when you think back on what all that time was occupied with, one is at a loss to recall the specific threads of thought. Perhaps it really does not matter for it is all part of the settling in to the task ahead.
I did welcome the time to just rest and catch my breath as the previous few days had been a hectic schedule of racing about completing tasks from my Must Do List and contending with the emotional stress of leaving home. I would not say ‘Commander Home Command’ was happy when I left, but at least she was a lot more settled.
A night stop in Darwin and having availed myself of the good reception and arrangements provided by our support people, I eventually arrived in Dili. It was early morning and already very warm (no surprises there) and a number of Kiwi faces at the airport were not those of complete strangers - times like this I appreciate belonging to a small Defence Force such as ours. When I was driven away what struck me first and foremost, was the hundreds of young people along the roadsides (they certainly weren’t taking time-out to welcome me), and the number of vehicles – was this rush hour in downtown Dili?
Had I been deployed here previously I would have had a benchmark by which to gauge things, but for now I was taken back by an endless number of lightly clad, particularly young grubby thin bodies that looked like they could demolish a few Big Macs – “gosh, on our back doorstep there are still people as thin as this”. Being whisked along in the comfort of an air-conditioned UN vehicle, on all sides I was surrounded by people either touting mobile phone charge cards, raffia bound mandarin pyramids, or trading cigarettes, cans of drink, biscuits, and water from two wheeled carts. My thoughts were only interrupted by frequent braking as my driver, the officer I was replacing, sought to avoid the many potholes or motorcycle riders who would appear from out of nowhere. I’m sure the glint in my driver’s eye was that of relief, relief I was now in country and he could soon return to the land of the long smooth roads, and Big Macs, with or with out fries.
On day three I decided to take lunch in a roadside restaurant well frequented by UN staff. I took a table, ordered a steak sandwich and whilst waiting took in the sight of people gathered around tables engaged in conversation, laughter, and occupied with the immediate task at hand – eating. It was then I spied a little dust covered face outside the restaurant peering in through a bamboo screen, looking longingly at the people’s food. I studied this scene for some time trying to rationalise what I was witnessing and how this situation could come about. But more puzzling was how can people co-exist like this? “Does one party, them outside, become angry because the others, us inside, have become immune to their situation?” The child’s eyes moved from table to table and I made a silent prayer her gaze would pass over me. It proved to be wishful thinking and when her eyes fell upon mine I felt like a cornered rat …. I could not avoid her. I had already lost my appetite some minutes earlier, but suddenly it was replaced with an ever tightening knot in my tummy. My meal was duly delivered but I just sat there numbed by this little face. What is one to do? I could not handle it any longer – taking a knife I cut the sandwich in two and wrapped each half in the paper napkin, and as I did so I saw other UN staff pause from their meal no doubt wondering what it was that I was doing. I stood up and made my way over to the bamboo screen – “you should have seen the puzzled look on her face” as much as that of my fellow ‘fat folk’. Bent down, and with my best heartbroken smile, I encouraged the little one to take my food parcels - no easy task I might add for I suspect she had not had such a response like this before. After a brief moment and on returning to my table I received a couple of nods of acknowledgement, but from the vast majority in the room I received what I could only interpret to mean something akin to ‘must be a new fella’. Though it saddened me, that moment of tenderness soon filled me with a sense of relief, more than satisfaction – relief in knowing what I had done was the right thing. Times like this I wish I could write music and play the guitar because I would turn these scenes to song.
The contrasts I witnessed in the short time I had been here, have been sobering – those with food, those without; those with money, those who scrounge; those who would benefit from Jenny Craig’s, those who could do with a good East Coast boil-up. With that lunch experience I resolved to keep the memory ‘fresh’ and as a motivator to doing the best I can for the wider group need, and not be paralysed by single and some all too common sights, however much it hurts to see such poverty.
I don’t believe I am alone in having these personal challenges – we all have them, but how one copes, and then makes a difference, however small, is what is important. Thus the motivation for me to record the initial few days experience was more an insurance policy – insurance against becoming impervious to the needs of others, and so I look forward to letting you know how I progress over the next few months.