On one street corner, an elderly entrepreneur sells powdered milk and candles from a wooden shack. On another, workers tap nails into wooden beams or dab new concrete onto the walls of buildings that a few days before looked a total loss. The fresh white paint and unbroken windows of its porticoed flanks are alone enough to make the building stand out. But its true significance is signaled by the rack of functioning satellite dishes on its roof, the braids of orderly telephone and power cables that wrap its sides and the loud talk of people on mobile phones in the parking lot. Inside this Iberian architectural treasure, the United Nations has taken on the role of interim government while the fledgling nation prepares to elect its own government next year.
Operatives buzz back and forth, setting tariffs, planning roads and budgeting aid programs.
Away from the administrative fray, though, toward the back of the complex, is where East Timor's future is really being laid out. Behind tinted windows that eclipse the midday sun, Pedro Braga sits at a corner desk in a tightly packed office. The head of the U.N. interim government's IT telecommunications division, Braga's job is to bring East Timor into the digital age. Half Portuguese and half Chinese, Braga was born 66 years ago on Macao - an island that, like East Timor, was once a colony of Portugal. Right now, he's talking on one of the few functioning desk phones in the country.