Welcome to the documentary and one from RTG in Ireland until the 17th new episode of our 2020 season, Sarah MacDonald became godmother to a little boy during the violent conflict in East Timor in 1999. In September of 2019, she goes in search of the godson she last met 20 years ago in Timor Leste coming of age. But that's it today. I'm Sarah MacDonald, Deucalion. In September last year, I went on a journey of remembrance. It was 20 years since I first traveled as a journalist to Timor Leste.

In the past, you might have heard of called East Timor back in 1999 during a very violent time of conflict here. A wonderful thing happened to me.

I became a godmother to a little Timorese boy, say, that's me meeting some Timorese children who are too young to remember the struggle their parents and grandparents had trying to win independence from Indonesia.

That's why I came here in 1999 to document firsthand a country coming to the end of a brutal 24 year occupation.

I was coming to East Timor as a journalist undercover to see what the situation was. There was likely to be a vote coming up, a referendum on independence. I came here to get a sense of whether people would have a free vote or whether there was going to be a large scale intimidation.

That was the last time I travelled here. I couldn't say I was a journalist. The media were forbidden. Six journalists have been killed by Indonesian forces in East Timor as they reported on what turned out to be one of the worst genocides of the 20th century.

My arrival in Timor Leste in 2019 was so different to the experience I had when I came here 20 years ago. It is a gentlemen welcome to believe that they would have a position.

I don't suppose we've arrived at the airport in Dili. We're on Timorese soil, for me, was quite emotional to see the Timorese flag. I'm returning for the first time since those eventful days to seek out my now 20 year old godson Natalicio and find out how he's getting on.

It's terrific to be here in independent Timor Leste.

Traveling with me is documentary and one producer, Tim Desmond.

East Timor was a Portuguese colony, roughly one half of Timor island lying off the north coast of Australia. It's mountainous, hot and dry for half the year, but it's surrounded by seas full of oil and gas.

When the Portuguese left in 1975, Indonesia invaded, took control and a 24 year fight for independence began.

We're now just pulling up beside the Santa Cruz cemetery. For years, this conflict was ignored by the rest of the world.

East Timor was very far away and the Indonesians banned all media access.

It's now the late afternoon, just heading off for half past six and the sun is setting.

It looks beautiful with the coconut palms in the background surrounding the whole graveyard.

And the graves themselves are Tanach. You can see flowers.

Eight years before I came here, there was a tragic turning point in this struggle.

In November 1991, a memorial service was held for Sebastian Gomez.

Gomez was a member of the Timorese resistance who had been dragged from the nearby Mortell church and shot dead by the Indonesian army a few weeks earlier.

The people processed through Dili up to this graveyard here, but the Indonesian military saw it as a gathering of the resistance. So they turned up, too. And that's when all hell broke loose, maxed out.

A British journalist filming undercover videotaped the brutality of what was happening here.

Inside the cemetery, a girl with a loudspeaker called people to pray over the grave of the young man had been murdered.

And it was at that time when I was inside the cemetery that I heard outside this barrage of fire. It was like a completely uninterrupted fusillade and they must have emptied the their rifles. This is the chapel in Maxwells footage that you see some of the young people hiding inside trying to get away from the shooting, a number of them inside. But of course, it probably just made them easier to target by being in here all together.

Everybody was running. People were falling. Those some were falling as they were wounded. Some are falling because they were clambering over the wounded, trying to escape.

It's a simple, whitewashed building with a window that contains a large black cross and the prayer high and also pray for us.

They killed over 200 young people. It was horrendous.

The footage that Max Stahl recorded on that occasion shows brutal gunshot wounds, the dying and the wounded lying amongst the graves.

Max Stahl's documentary footage was broadcast on ITV and was seen back in Ireland by a bus driver, a man named Tom Holland in 1991 was the turning point.

They managed to get the video film of that massacre out that led to many, many groups being set up around the world, one which was the East Timor Ireland solidarity campaign. Most of us had never heard of Timor before, including myself. I had to look it up to see where it was, Sebastian Gomez, I've just asked this man, would he show us the grave of Sebastian Gomez? So we're just making our way between the graves. There's no pads were just tiny little areas between one grave and the next.

By the end of the Indonesian occupation in 1999, Sebastian Gomez would be one of more than 200000 dead out of a population of just 600000.

So this is is obrigado, obrigado.

The CIA called it one of the worst genocides of the 20th century, so it's different to the other graves because here you actually have, in addition to the grave itself, on top of a circular plinth, on top of which is a box of the young Sabbar sarcomas.

All I can make out is something about independence.

After the massacre here, the world woke up to East Timor.

Countries like Ireland began to help. But it will be eight more years before the people here who get to vote for independence. And I would pay my first visit.

It appears to be a very well visited grave, not only because there are plenty of flowers at the base, but people obviously touch when they approach it because the name of Sebastian Gomez is almost worn out.

We're here outside the motel church, which is on the waterfront in Dili on my return journey.

I really wanted to come to motile church. Like Ireland, Timor Leste is predominantly Roman Catholic. It was at this church that I became a godmother in 1999. It was a very moving moment for me, not only because I was becoming a godmother, but because I knew the resonance of the motile church.

With the Santa Cruz massacre standing here in 1999, holding Natalicio as an infant was a beautiful experience in a frightening and dangerous situation. I felt honored. I became his godmother after meeting Natalicio cousin, a trainee priest at a mass celebrated by East Timor spiritual leader Bishop Carlos Belo. The family asked me because I think they wanted a godmother who was living outside East Timor in case things got really bad after the referendum vote here on a Sunday morning.

And one thing that I noticed hasn't changed from 20 years ago is the number of people I passed. The place is absolutely packed to overflowing.

An old friend, Dino Gandara, who I met when he was living in Ireland in the 1990s, is going to help me find my godson, Natalie, too.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I came to see you. I mean, you have seemed like you have changed a lot now.

Initially, I did stay in touch after returning home. But when Tilly was razed to the ground in autumn 1999, all communication was cut off and I couldn't contact his family. But the real reason I lost contact is a personal one. East Timor in 1999 was a malarial blackspot. And so I a medical advice, dosed myself with the antimalarial drug mefloquine more commonly known as Lariam. By the time I returned home, my own world was falling apart because of the horrendous side effects of Lariam.

It took me years to get my life and health back on track. Now, 20 years on, I finally felt ready to return to Timor Leste and seek out Natalie to always be here when you were here. Right.

OK, and the way more cars on the road as well as I drive around the capital, Dili, with Daniel Gandara, I begin to spot some things I remembered from the last time I was here, the black and white and the paintings, the road paintings.

But the difference is that the taxis now are yellow. Whereas when I came last time, they were blue. Yes. You know, the cars weren't in very good condition. Yes, yeah. Yeah. What is this area of Teleco? This Komoro and very well. So it themselves is just around 400 meter time today. Yeah, yeah.

Not long after I was here in 1999, Tom Harley made his home in Dili. Tom Holland was part of a global campaign to help East Timor achieve independence. And in 1999, the Indonesians agreed to a referendum. But when Tom arrived here in September, he found a city that had been burned to the ground by pro Indonesian militias and most of the population had fled in search of safety.

There was a few people in the city. Food was very scarce. 80 percent to 90 percent of buildings, public and private, were destroyed right across the territory. And the place is basically flattened in an act of an act of horrible vengeance that will forever shame the Indonesian military. I remember seeing some people coming back and and it was wonderful to see them. And they knew that everything had to be built up again. But I came back and they rebuilt and they took control of their own destiny.

Tom Holland was central to my decision to visit East Timor in March of 1999, the U.S. Solidarity Campaign, they wanted as many journalists to go into the country undercover to see what the situation was. There were concerns that people would be intimidated into voting to remain with Indonesia on the streets. The military weren't in tanks. They were intimidating. But, you know, because I was a foreigner, I don't think they really hassled me. However, the militias were a different kettle of fish.

The militias were groups of Timorese who were organized, funded and supported by the Indonesian military. And they were formed to intimidate these Timorese ahead of the referendum vote on independence. What I detected was a sense from the people that no matter what the intimidation, they were determined to vote, to be free of Indonesian control. One of the things I felt about dealing in the first few days is the sense of fear in the place. I remember afterwards asking myself, was it just that I was very scared or very paranoid?

Because we've been told there are spies everywhere. Everybody's spying on somebody else. Don't give anything away, don't compromise people. The consequences for them are horrendous.

Looking out at the beautiful ocean from a seafront hotel beside the town of LA. It's hard to imagine this tranquil oasis had known brutality and a terrible loss of life 20 years ago.

I come here today because one of the things that I remember most about my time in 1999, principally because it shocked me so much, was the massacre in the church in the kissa.

I wasn't actually in the case of when it happened, there was no media there in Indonesia afterwards. I had only five people died, but actually up to 200 people died. I'm one of the journalists who traveled in the immediate aftermath. Was Jonathan, head of the BBC.

Within minutes of arriving in the little coastal town of La Kisa, it became obvious that something terrible had happened there. This weeping woman was the first person I met that people were shot in the church, in the priest's house.

She said they were just shooting anyone.

They came across after documenting what was going on. Luisa. Jonathan had returned to the tourism hotel in the Timorese capital where I was staying with all the other journalists.

I found the people of La Kisa living as refugees in their own town. Hundreds had sought shelter in the district chief's house. Among them were men, women and children bearing horrific wounds. Most were too stunned to speak. The house was awash with blood. Blood was also spattered all over the front of the church.

By all accounts, this was a deliberate massacre by the Indonesian army and its Timorese militias in a town known for its sympathies with the pro independence movement, with gunshots ringing out around Dili's suburbs.

Jonathan had told us what he had seen by returning to LA Kaisa.

I'm hoping to lay some ghosts to rest.

I'd like to go to Mass this afternoon in the church in La Keyzer as a kind of an act of honoring those who died 20 years ago by the government.

So we're within the compound of the church in Laksa and there are some kids playing outside.

So it sounds very cheerful and it's obviously a changed place to the needs of the church sacristan in Licky said. Mariano de Silva tells me that he didn't witness the massacre in April 1999 because he had fled to the nearby forests. But members of his family told him how those who died had been killed outside the church by the militias and behind the priest's house. I would like to go in and light a candle for in memory of those who lost their lives here so brutally.

Although the Timorese have paid a huge price for the freedom, they remain loyal to the faith because the church was the only institution to speak up for them during the dark days of the Indonesian occupation. Just a few months after Sarah returned to Ireland, this happened. Polling stations have closed in East Timor in a referendum that could lead to the territory's independence from Indonesia after 24 years of occupation, of violence, of humiliation, of the exclusion of discrimination, of rape.

And finally, the people of East Timor go to the ballot to vote their conscience.

The 30th of August, 1999, the people of East Timor overwhelmingly voted for independence. Indonesia had to give up control of the territory, but as they left, they destroyed everything they could. The country was a smouldering shell by the time an international force for East Timor was deployed by the United Nations to bring the violence to an end in September 1999. By then, another 4500 Timorese were dead and over half the country's population, about 300000 people, were displaced.

Following a UNadministered transition period that included members of the Irish Army Ranger wing, this tiny nation became the first new sovereign state of the 21st century, the Republic of Timor-Leste.

In May 2002, East Timor has officially come into existence as the world's newest nation at a ceremony in the capital, Dili.

After all political independence, our supreme objective will be the comprehensive development of all aspects of the life of our people. This will be our new philosophy as citizens, our new culture as a country and our policy as East Timorese. We've been immortalised in. By this time, my godson, Natalicio, was just three and a half years old and I had lost complete touch with him. Lariam had left me grappling with physical and mental health issues and trying to keep my own life on track.

Travelling around in 2019, it's easy to see the differences were 20 years ago. Everyone appears to have mobile phones, young students are attending schools which have sprung up all over the country and why public transport is lacking. There are more cars and mopeds on the roads. Progress, however, faltering, has been made, according to Tom Holland, one of the great leap forward since the country is completely electrified.

There are new roads, but because it's such a mountainous territory that has its own problems in building the roads. But they have made great strides. So there's a lot going into infrastructure and they are masters of their own destiny now.

Timor Leste has been independent now for almost two decades. In the early years, it received a lot of overseas aid, including from Ireland. But the country has a lot of oil and gas offshore and the government has begun spending the oil money coming in now developing more oil and gas projects for the future. But that leaves very little money for everything else, like health, education and social services, some young Timorese like Berta Antonietta feel there is too much focus on pouring money into petroleum infrastructure.

The danger is we put all the eggs in one basket. I would say the perfect scenario for Timorese living this time.

We already have a safe state that's already accomplished next to daddy's clean drinking water, free health care that is not only free, but high quality. People be able to have nutritious food, the knowledge to eat nutritious food. That means they need to have good education. So proper investment on education, not in terms of money, but on teachers training. So education, health, clean water, sanitation, that will fix many things. Now we have 30 percent of young people age 17 below like Ireland.

In the past, tens of thousands of Timorese have gone abroad to find work and support their families back home. Remittances money sent home makes the second largest contribution to Timor Leste, its economy after oil.

And much of it comes from the UK, including the meat processing plants of Dungannon in Northern Ireland, where Timorese community has settled Bertoua. Antonietta feels it's not a long term solution.

It is very difficult for Timorese young people to find a job here. I would not I would not judge people individually if they would like to leave the country to find a job. However, we are a country of 100 million population. We all move to to find places to work in somewhere else. Who's going to build this country?

I've returned to Timor Leste with some photos are taken in 1999. One of the photos shows my godson Natalicio at just three months old. That is how I last remember him. Another photo I took during those days of strife was of children at an orphanage run by the nuns.

We've come from the capital, Dili, to this village of only a couple of hundred kilometres up into the mountains and really poor roads. I was here 20 years ago. I stayed here for about three days here.

The children of the Timorese resistance who had been orphaned or whose parents were on the run, who looked after their no children around theirs.

It's a very large complex, is a church in the background school rooms.

And over behind me is where the orphanage is just looking into the orphanage and where the children sleep.

It hasn't changed too much. It's still the bunks. You know, people might expect something more elaborate, but I guess if money is short, you provide the basics.

I'm hoping to find someone who might remember the children in my photos.

So just these children here, some of them were orphans, the children of the Resistance in 1999. Do you know what has happened to any of them?

Oh, yeah. Nurses in clinic in Vinland. These nice Mary. This is no longer an island.

Hey, what's his name? Matteo's. Matteo's. It's good to know that many of the children of the resistance movement have grown up safely and made their way in the world. But the need for the orphanage remains.

Who are the children that come to stay in the orphanage today? I mean, in the past, there were the children of the fighters independence fighters.

Now, especially for those orphans and separated families, divorce like that, abandoned and very poor.

And do you get any support from the Timor-Leste government?

Traveling back from Venezuela to Dili, it seemed to me that some of the natural beauty of the landscape had been eroded. There was less forest than I remembered. Chinese companies were busy overseeing road building and this was covering everything in a heavy coat of dust, as well as using the oil money the government has borrowed from the Chinese to develop infrastructure. But a condition of the loans is that the work is done by Chinese companies for one, Australian academic environmental degradation was the most obvious change she noticed when she returned to Timor Leste.

My name's Helen Hill from Melbourne, Australia. I first came to Portuguese Timor in 1975 to collect some data for my master's thesis. The big thing that that shocked me as I flew into Timor in 2000, not having been there since 1975, was to see all the afforestation that had taken place, because when I was here in 1975, the whole country was practically covered with rainforest straight after independence.

I did actually bring in some laws are supposedly preventing further deforestation. But the reality is that the majority of people are still cooking over open fires and deforestation still continues with problems as basic as this.

I wondered about the future for my godson, NATALICIO. Thanks to Dino's contacts, we've tracked down a telephone number for him. Oh, hello, Buendia, I'm not sure how the whole Senora Sara Atlanta, I think I'm very happy that I'm finally going to be able to meet Natalicio again after 20 years.

He's living in Delhi and I've made arrangements to meet him at his family home.

In the meantime, I have some more questions for my friend Dino.

Dino Gandara was involved in the underground Timorese resistance as a student, but when it became too unsafe for him, he sought sanctuary in Portugal and then came to Ireland in the 1990s to help Tom Hyland with the East Timor Solidarity Campaign.

Dina's family paid a very high price for their involvement in the resistance.

My father killed in 1981, seventh of September 1981, with a lot of time with them and with his two brothers and one cosiness. Father was a member of the resistance. Yes. And what were you doing?

I was about five. I was one and half years when Indonesia invaded. And then we went to the jungle and then we surrendered to Indonesia in 1977, 78. But because my my father was one of the leaders and leader as well. So he kept in the jungle until he killed in 1981. One of the photos I have with me from my time in East Timor 20 years ago shows five members of the Timorese resistance whom I met at a secret safehouse.

I'm hoping Tino can shed some light on who they are.

His brother is this one, and this one is known as is now Coronel. He's currently the colonial now. So he's taking care of the biggest battalion now in Timor.

One, two, three, four men, one woman. And she was a resistance fighter. Yes, she was. She looks very vulnerable.

But at the end of the meeting, she actually gave me had a very small bracelet and she gave it to me. I still have in my house. I thought, I will tell you this. It's my sister. That's your sister. Yeah. I didn't realize I'm standing beside her. And I guess she could have done anything to probably kill killed.

Do you know, suggested that we meet one of the former resistance fighters who is now Colonel Armando Newnes, and chat to him about that secret meeting at the safehouse in 1999.

Armed with the photograph, we traveled to the Army barracks, Ainaro, home of Timor-Leste, his first battalion.

Oh, yeah. So these are the photos. Oh, hello. Thank you. Yeah.

Oh, will you ask him, does he by any chance remember that meeting in 1999?

I'm not what he said at the your. Why were they in your house and not in the mountains.

They were doing a very different living. I am by and inevitably I mean, they were there for me.

For me it was like forever. And that's why. For the security. Oh yeah. So they were meeting about the referendum on the 30th of August. Yeah. Does he look back and feel very proud of his past? It's a reality. It's life.

And it's like I said, soldier, you know, you have to face anything and do Colonel Looney's did he lose any family members? Yes. It's maybe better not to ask. Yeah, OK. But yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. They lost almost everyone said like for example, like Emilia, she lost the whole family only herself. That was wonderful. Thank you.

That was an incredible experience to see somebody who is so elevated within the army here in a new country and for him to make time for us.

One thing that Dana referred to, I wanted to ask him, had he lost any family members? But you suggested that it wasn't a good thing to ask him because he'd lost so many family members, you know, around 12 or 14 of them. He lost his parents and brothers and sisters, all his family. I think he was about 10 or 11 years old when they went to the jungle meeting.

Colonel Looney's had answered all the questions I had about what had happened to the five resistance fighters I'd met in 1999. I had another day to wait before meeting my godson, Natalicio, so I went to visit a doctor I hadn't seen in 20 years.

We're here at the Barrow PTA Clinic in Dili and we're about to meet Dr Dan Murphy, who I met in 1999.

This 55 bed facility provides free health care to the Timorese, treating tuberculosis, HIV, yellow fever and many of the diseases it also delivers to 150 babies a month.

I'm looking forward to meeting Dr. Jan because he was one of the people I met in 1999 and he was seen as very much a figure who was on the side of the Timorese. So I hope he remembers me. I'm just noticing here a sign outside the parapet clinic. It says, Irish Aid Supports by repeated clinic May 2008. So Irish aid obviously gave support to Dr Dan.

Dr. Damiano, how are you? I'm not your enemy, but you haven't changed at all. I don't know if I kind of do, but a lot of people come through. Yes, of course.

I have been here since 1998 in East Timor. This clinic has been open since 1999. One point two million patients seen one by one. Fifty inpatient beds, 20000 admissions, 10000 deliveries, this clinic sees more tuberculosis than any clinic I know of on Earth for sure. In Asia, in Southeast Asia and in Asia, we've now grown to the point where we're so big we employ 100 people. Our budget is 50000 a month.

This clinic has now diagnosed 4000 cases of TB during this time. That's a huge number of TB cases.

Dr. Diane, explain some of the problems with health care in Timor Leste. Despite being free of Indonesia for 20 years, we still haven't totally developed health care and certain crucial things are still not available. For instance, pathology. There is no pathology. That means you don't really know what's wrong with someone. You have to just use a clinical impression because laboratory cannot take like a biopsy and fix it and look at it and see what exactly is this. It's not a high level of medical care.

This is the maternity volunteer nurse Marion Brand is showing us around.

You were saying that there might be up to 10 women a week visit giving birth in.

I know at one time that was taken in one day.

Yeah, 10 or maybe 20 some time we put two baby in one bed.

Despite the clinic's record and Timor-Leste is oil money. Government cutbacks meant that during our visit to the clinic there were no patients, usually the places bouncing.

Usually Dan's doing the ward rounds and going round with the doctors and the nurses and seeing the patients checking on their care and their charts.

But we're trying to pay the going rate for wages for nurses and, you know, so people can have a little self-respect, a little dignity, and we can't keep up. So we are in a financial crisis and we're at the point now where we don't know almost from day to day what we're going to be able to do because we don't have the money to pay anyone.

After months working without wages, the staff has stayed away and the clinic was shot by staff have been working for, what is it, five months with no time? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And a few months ago, we had a similar crisis. Whether I was shutting it down and sending patients home, we had patients refusing to go home.

Last week. The staff decided they weren't going to volunteer anymore.

It's not like there's no money. They've got these oil funds. And but a lot of it goes into huge megaprojects where you're putting hoping that they're going to get oil refineries into the southern part of the island.

And it just points out once more, health care is a privilege for those with resources.

It is not a fundamental right for anyone, which it should be. Sadly, Dr. Jóhann passed away in April of this year, the Beirut clinic will find it even harder to keep going without his leadership and his dedication to delivering health to the people of Timor Leste, particularly if the state continues to focus so much on oil and gas.

Timor Leste is today a country of peace, but with huge socio economic problems.

But my reason for coming here was to reunite with my godson and his family.

He is living in Dili and I've made arrangements to meet at his family home.

I can't quite believe this is going to happen. I'm finally going to meet Natalicio again. After 20 years. We're traveling through downtown Dili. A little bit nervous about the meeting. He's a young man. He has all his hopes and ambitions ahead of him. I was his godmother. I haven't seen him. I feel a certain sense of guilt around that. One of the things I'm hoping to see is if Natalie chose actual baptismal certificate has survived and if it has, does it make any reference to me as his godmother?

OK, so we're just going up behind the bishop's palace in Dili and there's a whole housing area. The road isn't very good quality. As we approach the house, Sara suddenly recognises her face from 20 years ago. That's Natalicio his father.

Yeah, Martineau's. Yeah, well, that's him. He hasn't really changed that much. He's got older.

He won't be able to look like. So good to see you. You look the same way. I have photos of serros talking to Natalicio.

His father, his mother Julia comes over alive and said to me, why not? And then Natalicio appears at the top.

Oh well he's a tall, strong young man with jet black hair and warm brown eyes. Oh, what a lovely, lovely young man. I'm so proud I came here. That's absolutely.

Thank you. In typical Timorese fashion, he shows deference to his elders.

Not only do you speak a little bit of English, he's shy. No, we can't believe that.

The last time I saw you were like a little baby.

So sometime, you know, we're sipping lemonade on the veranda of the modest family home surrounded by pink walls and part of flowers.

Are you studying or working now? Let's go to the Malaysians here. Next year we will continue to study. Goodness, yeah. OK, let me let me just get some of these photos of a little photo of me as we sit chatting.

I took out the photographs from twenty years ago.

Sajad Uni, I want you for your dad there. Are you, Natalie? You look at you, gorgeous little baby.

Do you think that Alito's parents, Martino and Julia, tell me about the destruction of Dili in 1999 by the militias?

Martino also reveals that after the baptism, he was asked a lot of questions about why a foreigner had been chosen to be the godmother and why they had invited me into their home. So this is the actual baptism and the.

Yeah. Natalicio Emmanuel DeJesus, Suarez sing.

Oh, here we are. So The Godfather was Paolo de Castro, Fraziers and the Madrina. The godmother was me, Sarah MacDonald.

That's wonderful.

They took a big risk by being so hospitable and kind to me.

I could have brought them trouble from the Indonesians and I was called. Mother and her Timorese godson have finally reconnected 20 years after their first meeting.

OK, thank you. Talk to you soon, OK? Thank God we've made the contact now, and if Natalee comes to Ireland, I'll be looking after him. I'll take up my responsibility as a godmother. Hopefully we can continue to share something into the future.

I'm heading out to the airport now and my time in Timor Leste is over.

Thinking back over my stay, I had a sense that the future of this young country is bright but fragile. It's poignant for me because I would like to spend more time here to discover more about this society. So many things are the same as they were 1999. So many things have changed. So many new challenges have developed unbalance for myself. I feel very hopeful for Timor Leste, but I don't think it's going to be plain sailing for them. I think it's going to be one step forward, two steps back.

I still find this shocking to see some of the circumstances in which people are living. But because of what happened in 1999, the world now knows about Timor Leste. And it's an example to everybody else of how a country with very little can actually make a future for itself.

You've been listening to Timor Leste coming of age from the documentary on one narrated and produced by Sarah MacDonald and Tim Desmond. Until next time, thanks for listening.