Home - but not as they knew it

By Greg Ansley

With our troops

DILI - The corroded barrels of ancient Portuguese canons point out from a city only now beginning to recover from the weeks of terror that surrounded East Timor's vote for independence.

Behind them, along the seafront and close to the heavily guarded Turismo Hotel, refugees have created a vibrant little village of corrugated iron and blue tarpaulins, incongruously dotted with mahogany tables and chairs.

Day by day, more people are moving back through streets lined with shattered and charred buildings, picking over what little has been left by departing Indonesian troops and the militias that appear to have melted into the hills or across the border into West Timor.

Outside the wharf, East Timorese barter with Indonesians for fragments of their former lives. After an orgy of looting, the soldiers are willing to sell back the stolen possessions - at five times their original value.

Not much is left of the large army that Jakarta stationed here, and which joined in the violence. Kompassus special forces in their red berets marched aboard a Hercules transport on Tuesday night, leaving about 1700 others to protect key services.

An Indonesian landing craft is moored at the wharf, ready to take more troops and their booty home.

On the street outside, a block or so from where a Dutch journalist was shot and killed, a spent 5.56mm shell glistens in the sun.

A pile of baseball caps litter the seafront. "No good, no good," a boy calls. "Militia, no good."

Seventeen-year-old Amanda Sores, who has come back from the village her family took refuge in, will not come close to the caps. "I don't like," she says.

Amanda pauses as truck full of Indonesian soldiers rumbles toward the wharves, then grins widely as it is followed by several Australian vehicles.

Gill Da Silva, who also fled to the hills, looks at the devastation around him and says: "They can destroy everything, but we have won - we can rebuild."

There are poignant reminders of the human toll. Discarded in a gutter are scattered diplomas from a Catholic school, the charred remains of a child's book, a family portrait of several smiling generations.

But there is also a powerful resilience.

The first signs of rudimentary commerce are beginning to reappear.

Those parts of the city safe enough to travel into are filled with smiling children who greet Westerners with "Hello mister." On the beach they look out at warships and scramble over the rusted hulls of landing craft left by an earlier war.

Down the road, a former convent has become home to several dozen journalists. There is, miraculously, running water and electricity, and a local family feeds them three fresh meals a day.

At least in Dili there is now enough food, hospitals and security - above the city an RNZAF helicopter circles throughout the afternoon.

At high tide in Dili harbour, fishermen in outriggers glide inshore on the reef that separates them from the suite of naval ships anchored in the bay.

At low tide people walk knee-deep through the shallows, hunting for shellfish and crabs.

For much of the rest of East Timor the situation remains unclear, although destruction is undoubtedly widespread.

Food is being dropped to the displaced, and escorted convoys are beginning to travel outside the capital.

A World Vision worker said that widespread starvation had not appeared, although a simple finger test - skin turning red and rebounding only slowly from pressure - indicated incipient malnutrition was common.

New problems are emerging, however, as people come home to Dili. In the next few weeks up to 70,000 people are expected to return, overloading a city whose remaining essential services are stretched to the limit.

But now, at least, there is a home to come back to.