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Felix Nesi : Orang orang Oetimu (People from Oetimu)

The island of Timor has had a chequered history. It was occupied by the Portuguese and then the Dutch. According to this book the Dutch were far worse. the Dutch simply determined that the people on the island were primitive and set up a new governing system that resembled the one they had in Europe. After burning mountain towns to rubble, they forced everyone to live in the flatlands for ease of access and established an economy built on forced labour. The Dutch occupied West Timor and the Portuguese East Timor. Then, during the war, the Japanese came and they were even worse. After the war the Dutch eventually left and, in 1949, West Timor became part of Indonesia while East Timor gained its independence in 1975 but not without a bloody war with Indonesia.

Felix Nesi is from West Timor where much of this book is set. He recounts a series of linked stories which are both excellent stories but which also illustrate the troubled history of the island.

We start in 1998 in the eponymous small town of Oetimu. The male villagers are clearly looking forward to the World Cup Final between France and Brazil. Their hero is Ronaldo, the star Brazilian footballer whom they expect will dominate the French. What they do not know (and is not mentioned in the book) is that he had a convulsive fit a few hours before the game. He elected to play but was clearly below par.

Sergeant Ipi, the local police officer, has one of the three televisions in town and invites many of the local men to watch the game. Prior to the game he picks up Martin Kabiti from his house on his motorbike. Martin is a revered former soldier. However we know though Martin and Ipi do not that Martin’s enemies plan to attack his house in his absence. We are not going to find out what happens till virtually the end of the book as we now jump back, though not before that Sergeant Ipi has just got engaged to Silvy, a young woman coveted by virtually every man in town. It will not be their last disappointment of the day.

We jump back to changes in Portugal in 1974 which see Julio Craveiro dos Santos out of favour with the new regime. To escape any repercussions, he manages to get a posting in East Timor and takes his wife and daughter, Laura. He inadvertently gets caught up in the Timorese independence movement and things go from bad to worse, particularly for his daughter who is imprisoned and raped. She finally manages to get free, in an advanced state of of pregnancy. The other villagers think she is an evil spirit. and,after a long journey, she ends up in Oetimu where she is looked after by Am Siki. We get his story as well – how he outsmarts the Dutch and Japanese. Am Siki is the kind of character you hear about all the time in folktales: the strong, brave, hard-working orphan.

Laura gives birth to a boy who will play a key role in our story. We now get to know the people of the town, their background, their quirks and what the town has to offer. We learn about Silvy and her background and what happens when she meets Sergeant Ipi. We learn a bit the school for the poor which is taken over by a priest and which changes its nature quite dramatically.
We now follow a complex and interrelated series of stories about various people connected to Oetimu. Silvy has a colourful background. She is not only more intelligent than her fellow students, she seems to be more intelligent than most of the teachers and soon abandons the formal curriculum to follow her own path.

Many of these stories have the messy political situation as their background. The Dutch occupied much of Indonesia, including West Timor, while the Portuguese occupied East Timor. East Timor had a long and bloody battle with Indonesia. By the time this novel starts it has more or less been settled but more or less means that there are still bitter memories and recriminations and these occur during the book. Indeed it is still unwise to criticise the government, President Suharto and the Indonesian army. Though not mentioned in the novel, current president Prabowo Subianto was a general in the region at that time and was accused of committing atrocities.

Sex is also key. There seems to be an inordinate amount of both pre-and extramarital sex, masturbation and general sexual misbehaviour. Foreplay does not seem to be key to Timorese sexual relations, Associated with that circumcision also plays a key role.

We have several main stories including Father Yosef who takes over the rundown school and gentrifies it, who is in love with a married woman, together with her sad tale, Sergeant Ipi’s back story, Silvy’s back story and her father Yunus and Am Siki.

We also have several lesser but no less interesting stories such as the teacher who has sex with many women but cannot get a single one pregnant and, incidentally, is very stupid,the army officer whose job is to apologise to people whose relatives have been run over by military vehicles and who has never killed anything larger than cockroach and he even regrets that and more.

Publishing history

The football match does not go well for our people. Several blame the United States. which seems to be their bête noire though one man with a cooler head than most explained that America couldn’t possibly be the cause of all chaos in the world. The United States is a small country run by a bunch of idiots convinced they have
superpowers.

Nesi tells a series of highly colourful stories which make for a very enjoyable read if you do not mind a fair amount of random sex and random violence.

First published in 2019 by Marjin Kiri
First English publication in 2025 by Archipelago Books
Translated by Lara Norgaard