East Timor: Crafting desks, building a nation

Eduardo Belo Soares showed me a photo of himself surrounded by rebel soldiers, taken on the eve of East Timor's vote for independence 10 years ago. On their faces were expressions of weariness combined with a bit of shock – as if it was just occurring to these fighting men that now the hard work was about to begin: the birth of their new nation was at hand.

Belo Soares was once a rebel too; he worked in the hills with the guerilla forces, running their communications system and acting as informal spokesman of the movement. Now he runs a carpentry shop and a security company in the center of the capital city, Dili. He says his transition from fighter to citizen has not been easy, but that helping to build his new nation is, as he calls it, a moral obligation for him and his fellow Timorese, one he takes very much to heart.

And he is helping to build his country quite literally: his desks fill local schools and offices; his tables and chairs the President's palace; his bookshelves the homes of some of the Timorese who find themselves slightly better off financially in recent years, since the country's oil wealth has started to trickle into the local economy.

Belo Soares is always aware of the price he and his countrymen have paid to get this far; he only needs to look at his daughter Victoria, named after the great victory he helped his country win.

He showed me the wood lathe he bought in 2002, with $500 in seed money provided by the International Office of Migration, a "demobilization grant" for former fighters. Now he has over 600 employees in his carpentry shop and security service, employment that is desperately needed in East Timor, where some estimates say more than 40% percent are out of work and even more live below the poverty level. Idle and poor young people here have a history of turning to violence, and so businesses like Belo Soares' serve double duty: building the economy and minimizing the risk of the country returning to conflict.

As the government continues to grow with the help of its new petroleum fund – some critics say the money is being spent too fast – perhaps more businesses like Belo Soares' will be needed, as schools open, ministries scale up and people rebuild their war-damaged homes. Belo Soares tells me that his customers used to be concerned only with the price of his wares, but now they are starting to look for quality. A sign that life is improving, despite the serious challenges this young nation still faces.