Obra Oin-oin Kona-ba Timor-Leste

"There are other reasons that encourage the choice of schooling in Indonesia, beyond the financial and linguistic. Indonesian pop culture remains a visible and audible part of Timorese social life." By Angie Bexley The under resourced National University in East Timor Hedda Haugen-Askland Maun Mario’s house in Bemori in Dili is bustling with party preparations. In fact things are bordering on the chaotic. Aunties have arrived from Los Palos and since this morning they have been in the kitchen busily preparing special meat dishes and desserts. Hungry dogs gather at the kitchen door for off-cuts and sporadically burst into fighting. Older cousins are squawking at younger cousins to quit popping balloons and hang them up around the lounge room. The tuak palm wine has begun to mysteriously disappear. The cause for celebration is the return of Maun Mario’s third daughter, Juanita, from Indonesia. In 2004, Juanita left for Indonesia to study forestry, joining the 3500 othe...

"At times, the prevalence of popular Indonesian music and images in East Timor makes it easy to think that you are in Indonesia. Indonesian music blares out of loud-speakers, satellite dishes streaming Indonesian TV are spread across the country, and posters with pictures of Indonesian pop stars line walls and microlet minibuses." Annie Sloman As I walk home from the market one afternoon in the southern Timorese border town of Suai, my ears pick up the sound of the famous dangdut song ‘Pacaran lagi’ (Dating again). A group of Timorese children are putting on an impromptu concert in a tree overhanging an old burnt-out building from Indonesian times. The tree sways dangerously as 20 pairs of hips gyrate, defying gravity. The volume increases as they realise that a foreigner is watching. The children are singing their hearts out, full blast, in Indonesian. This surprises me, given that these children must all be under the age of eight, which means they have b...