Quiet Flights over War Zones

When I left for Dili 2 days ago, it was hardly under ideal circumstances.  Just 24 hours before my flight I had completed and submitted my graduate dissertation at my university in London, run a 10-kilometre fun run for charity and spent the early hours of the morning correcting a friend’s paper as he panicked about submitting a day late.  As I boarded the plane, stiff, sore and exhausted, I felt that both my body and brain had turned to mush, and I wondered if I truly was prepared.

 

Brie O’Keefe

 

 

I’m going to East Timor to join my colleague, Jo with a photographer to find and document the stories of the Timorese people 10 years after their vote for independence from Indonesia, and bring those stories back to the UK to share with the public, activists and use them to pressure the UK government.  Upon my departure I was nervous about what we would find, and now, sitting in an airport in Bali, I’m only slightly more reassured.  I worry that we won’t be able to do justice to the trust and confidence that will be bestowed on us by these people sharing their painful experiences, or worse, that we will have little effect in the UK, that the UK government will find it all too easy to ignore Timor and its problems, as they have been doing since 1999.

 

Shortly after take-off, the pilot comes on and outlines our route.  We will take off and turn towards the Netherlands, continuing further southeast over Poland, the Ukraine, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan and India, before crossing the Bay of Bengal and Thailand.  The enormity of the distance I’m travelling hits me for the first time – and as  I wake and sleep throughout the flight, I watch the travel map marking the progress on the screen in front of my seat.  I’ve been extremely lucky to travel often in my life, and this map appears to be tracing routes of my past adventures – the rainy weekend in Krakow spent eating pierogies and large sausage, the camel safari in Bikaner, where we were unable to find a single cup of coffee after 3 days in the city and the trak through the jungle in Thailand, where I swam in a jungle waterfall after climbing a rock wall covered in mud.  I begin to get excited to be on the road again, despite my exhaustion. 

 

We pass over Afghanistan.  Its so silent and dark on the plane, I wonder how we are able to pass so quietly over Kabul, that we are so high we are able to move unseen over modern conflict zones, unheard and unnoticed by the passengers aboard.  Our modern lives are often full of these contradictions – I can watch Indiana Jones 4 while eating a piece of date cake while 35,000 feet below me, Afghani, UK and British forces continue their 7^th year of armed struggle without an end in sight. 

 

But as we land in Bali, 28 hours after I’ve left my home in London I’m greeted by our Country representative Theo, and multiple emails from Jo saying Timor is brilliant. I find new energy to keep travelling.  Theo and I discuss the campaign, what Timor needs, what change we think we can affect in such a short amount of time.  I swim in the pool and look up at the stars – a sight so rare in London, and I feel refreshed.  As the scattered stress of my chaotic life in London slips away, I feel happy that after months of reading, studying and learning all I could about Timor in preparation for this campaign, I’ll finally be there, and experience it firsthand.

 

I’m now sitting in the departure lounge waiting for my flight to Dili, knowing that although the Timorese have struggled to tell their stories for almost 19 years, and that in many ways we may represent another group of foreigners who may just collect their painful memories and disappear, that the only way forward is persistence.  It is imperative that we tell these stories to the world, and cry out for change again, and again, and I can’t wait to arrive to get dug in.

Brie O’Keefe