Vanya Tanaja, Dili – Whilst independence from Indonesian rule has been won, some things in East Timor have changed little. After the militia violence of September, many Timorese are worse off than ever and help is a long time coming.
Lisa Dila is a village in Liquica district, two hours' journey west of Dili. The drive from Dili to Liquica is breathtaking, with ocean views most of the way, and we passed a number of gleaming United Nations' and non-government organisations' vehicles on the road.
But the road to Lisa Dila is almost deserted, except for villagers on foot grateful for lifts from the few passing vehicles. The road is dusty and in poor condition, impassable to anyone without a four-wheel drive. On either side grow corn and eucalypt trees.
One hundred families live in and farm the country around Lisa Dila and the neighbouring village, Kissue. Conditions are rudimentary. The villagers enjoyed electricity for three years, until the Besi Merah Putih militia cut the cable last September.
The pipes from a government clean water project have broken down and no bureaucrat has bothered to get them fixed, so water must be carried from a river some distance away.
There are lots of non-government health care organisations in Dili, but none have been seen here. Illness is rife, diarrhoea and malaria the most common ailments.
We came to the village to pay our respects to the family of someone who had died from malaria only the week before. The village nurse told me that while he could offer medical advice, there was no medicine to be had.
Some 60 families here, members of the Socialist Party of Timor (PST), are trying to farm their land communally and to share the products of their cultivation. They rely heavily on the one tractor, salvaged from the September violence when a villager hid it in the mountains.
Now the tractor is the focus of a custody battle, a skirmish in a much larger political dispute.
UN civilian police called into the village on March 2 in response to accusations that PST members were stoning houses and stopping villagers from attending school and going to the market to sell their produce. UN representatives held a meeting with PST members, including general secretary Avelino da Silva, in the party's rudimentary office.
Da Silva rejected the claims that PST members were involved in terrorising villagers. He pointed out that the party was involved in setting up the school that it was now accused of preventing students from attending. The school is the first initiative to restart children's education in the area. Da Silva blamed rivalry between political groups for the dispute, an outcome of which may yet be the seizure of the tractor. Representatives of East Timor's main political group, the National Council of Timorese Resistance (CNRT), had argued that the tractor was a "state resource", although they never made it clear who the tractor would be allocated to.
The anger of the village's PST members was evident. They believe the issue is being used to prevent the locals from organising collectively and the party from operating freely.
One thing is certain. Whilst the aid agencies are busy conducting "assessment missions", villages like Lisa Dila are being forgotten and the villagers' initiatives to improve their lives are being thwarted.
A struggle is brewing for the hearts and minds of the East Timorese people.