Natarbora, where the climate is cool, the air sharp and pure, and the views breathtaking, is seemingly a world away from the ubiquitous heat, dust and taxis of Dili. An isolated region where everyone lives on or by the land, in a peasant society neither entirely feudal nor patriarchal, but tinged with both, and touched by urbanism only through the narrow dark ribbon of asphalt
road that winds through the omnipresent mountains. Beyond the reach of the winding road, rough grass tracks on sheer
mountain ridges are the only thoroughfare between villages located on, or very near, dizzying mountain summits. The imposing beauty and splendour of the physical landscape fails to distract from the
poverty that dominates the small-scale scenes. Here the poverty is pervasive and is much more pronounced than the poverty in Dili, where the influx of internationals and commerce tends to act as a sort of buffer or reprieve, albeit momentarily and superficially, from the rude reality of poverty.
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