Hmmmmm, Baucau - East Timor

Here's a few photo's of Baucau in East Timor.

It used to be a nice place, very busy.
It had all the mod cons, including a thriving economy. The current population of the district of Baucau is 104, 571. They even made medicine's here for the colony of East Timor, in the Portugese-era.

The airport outside of town is 4km long, and was built when Baucau was being pushed as 'the' tourist destination to rival anywhere in south east Asia. Now it is unused, except for the odd UN plane or helicopter.

Invasion, occupation and an independance struggle has seen the town turn into a very poor place.

The 1st attached photo is of a Portugese-era built building that was the main marketplace... having been allowed to fall into disrepair during Indonesian rule it is now condemmed.

2nd photo: The new market place is on the footpath.

3rd photo: Downtown, main street.

Beside the school (the last photo) is a natural spring, which used to supply Baucau with water. The pump was destroyed by the militias, replaced, and is now broken again.
Subsequently all the water comes from a muddy sinkhole about 16 km away, through one 4" diameter pipe. There is no pump on the water line, not at the sinkhole or anywhere else.
Water is delivered as a trickle, while the spring in town gushes water out and into a gully to the sea.
I went and had a look at the sinkhole today, dark brown water and filled with resting water buffaloe.

Still a long road to recovery... made harder by a huge percentage of deaths in the independance struggle (200, 000 in 25 years - from a population of just under 1 million) and a destroyed economy.