Kiak Mesak's Story

From East Timor: The poor still live in the struggle

For the 17 years he lived in the mountains, Jose Soares was known as “Kiak Mesak”, meaning “only the poor” in Tetun.

During Timor’s 24 years of occupation by the Indonesian armed forces, scores of Timorese fled to the mountains for protection, and to engage in guerrilla warfare against the invaders.

Kiak Mesak was a member of FALINTIL, the East Timorese guerrilla forces fighting for independence.


He speaks to me in Portuguese, now one of Timor’s official languages. It was banned by the Indonesians and embraced by FALINTIL, as it was the only language the Indonesians could not crack.

Describing his time in the mountains, Kiak Mesak says they were constantly moving as to not be discovered by the enemy.

For food, they would grow mostly tubers along the river’s edge but the Indonesians would destroy their crops, leaving them with little recourse and very hungry.

During those hungry days he would dream about coming down to an independent nation, free to cultivate his land.

His wife died while he was in the mountains. Many years afterwards he heard from neighbours that she had died of hunger.

They said the Indonesians had isolated her, made her life miserable, cutting her off from the rest of the community and shunning her because of her husband’s role in the guerrillas.

Now a 60-year-old widow, Kiak Mesak is receiving support to work his land from Caritas Baucau, one of CAFOD’s Timorese partners.

The project aims to support small farmers towards a sustainable livelihood by providing services and technical support to improve production.

Eking out an existence from agriculture is indeed challenging for many Timorese farmers. In a country where 80% of the population is engaged in agriculture - and one-third rely on subsistence production exclusively to meet their household food needs - the importance of such a project cannot be overstated.

Kiak Mesak grows mostly corn and rice and, what he does not consume, he sells. But the roads are bad and post-harvest management need to be improved.

“Every year I lose almost one-third of my harvest, because I can’t sell it.” he says. Looking at the bright orange cobs drying in the hot sun I wonder how many of these will end up in the rat’s belly.

I ask him if all those years in the mountains were worth the life he has now, to which he responds “the body can give up but not the heart”.

He had no choice but to fight for Timor. Now, only the poor still live in the struggle.