Handmade and far from home

I loved visiting my friend’s house – which is light, clean and spacious. Things I now associate with wealth. But there was one part that made me feel uncomfortable. There is a wooden southern African sculpture with loads of rusted nails in it. Like all over its body. It watches over a dining table that seems to get used for jigsaw puzzles. What is this doing here I ask myself repeatedly. How did it get here? I mean I know her partner bought it. But how did it get to somebody selling it for loads of cash? I have no reason to believe that the sculpture was ill-gotten. I couldn't help but think of my friend Pedro Lebre, who lived just outside of Dili running a small guesthouse. He’s been helping malais visit East Timor since the Portuguese times, when they used to fly in from Australia to Baucau, with its massive airfield. He was a collector of Timorese sculpture during the Indonesian occupation. By the late 90s, he had accumulated quite a collection of tall, totemic sculpture pieces,…