ICFJ staffer Paulo Amaral and TOT Basilio “JoJo” da Costa traveled to Atauro Island in May to train high school students how to create wall newspapers. Ferry service is temporarily suspended, so Paulo and JoJo had to find another way to get there. The ferry ride normally takes about two hours, their trip in a small motorized fishing boat took about three hours. The boat is about three meters long and one meter wide.
Amazingly, neither of them got seasick, but both were extremely pleased when the boat docked at Atauro.
Below is Paulo’s account of their adventure.
On May, 23rd, 2009, at 07:30am we went to the seaport to try to find a boat that would take us from Dili to Atauro.
Not long after that, exactly at 08:00am, a boat owner came to us and asked us with a soft voice: “Do you want to go to Atauro?”
We said “yes, we want to go to Atauro,” then the owner said “alright, you can go there in my boat.”
“Alright, it’s ok since your boat is here,” we said.
“My boat named ‘Immanuel’ departs at 10:00am, but if I can have your contact number so we can contact each other later,” said the boat owner.
I then took the contact number of the boat owner while waiting for other passengers and finally we departed at 10:00am from Dili to Atauro. We were happy at the beginning as it was only small waves sprinkling us with water. However, the happiness would only last a short time because slowly and slowly we were getting far away from the seashore of Dili and we were moving toward the middle of the sea.
Not long after that, a big wave, bigger than the boat came toward us and made us all wet. We started to keep silent and there was no more joy but there was fear and silence in our heart.
What appeared in Jojo’s mind was that he would have cancelled the trip if he knew before that the trip would be this bad. Jojo’s wanted to steer the boat back to Dili but it was impossible. There was nothing to be done at the time except to look toward Atauro Island and count the time and just hope to get there safely.
The hope began to increase as the boat came closer to the dock in Atauro and it was 1:00pm when we got there. We were all wet, too.
We were not able to take photos during the trip because all our stuff was wrapped up in black plastic to keep things dry when the big waves would hit the boat.
Above is Paulo on the left and Jojo on the far right. They sailed on a motorized fishing boat like this one.