Soon afterward, my uncle’s wife fell ill and my uncle became severely depressed. Fortunately, one of my uncles took me to live with his family.Īt age 12, I finally started school. One day, when I was too sick to work, she beat me and left me to die. She was a widow, who was embittered with life and viewed me as a burden. When I was ten, my cousin fell sick and died, so my parents sent me to live with my grandmother. Many of our neighbors disappeared or were killed, and I feared I might be next. When we finally returned to our village, I lived in constant dread. I have horrible memories of the terror, death, and destruction that followed. The soldiers, however, discovered our hideout, and soon enemy bombs rained down on us. My cousin and I trekked to a lonely mountainside where thousands of Timorese had sought refuge. I vividly remember soldiers attacking our village and forcing all to flee for their lives. Thus, my earliest memories are of violence and suffering. In December 1975, just before I was born, Indonesia invaded East Timor, and that triggered a guerrilla war that lasted over two decades.
Because my parents could not feed us all, they kept my identical twin brother and asked my cousin to raise me. I was the eighth of ten children born to poverty-stricken parents. I ENTERED the world in 1976 in a dirt-floor hut in the mountains of East Timor, then a part of Indonesia.
How did this transformation take place? Let me explain. Yet, now I feel loved and have genuine inner peace.
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