Domingas Tabatan lives with her two youngest children in the village of Cabana, Suni-Ufe Foholeten, Nitibe subdistrict. This is not a coastal roadside village. Although in the first year of Indonesian occupation (1976) the villagers of Cabana were relocated to the coast, where each family was granted a block of land, they were permitted to return to their ancestral lands in 1989, where they have been living ever since. The village consists of a cluster of some 15 grass huts which protrude from the treetops on the hillside like Chinese hats. A fence, built from a combination of living shrubs and dead branches, encircles the village. Small terraced vegetable gardens lie within the enclosure, between the huts, while the main fields are up to five kilometres from the village in any given direction.
Domingas’ husband died at home two years ago from an infection in the leg—there was no transport to bring him to hospital from what is one of the more remote parts of Oecusse, accessible only by four-wheel drive and even then only in the dry season.
Domingas grows food for the family—maize, pigeon pea, cassava, sweet potato and peanut—but has too few animals—one pig and one chicken—to sell. At 50 years of age, she is still too young to receive a government pension (which would quadruple her income). Her annual income of less than $100 (all currency references are in US dollars) is derived from two sources: she performs basic agricultural labour (particularly weeding) for some of her neighbours for $2 a day; and she receives a little additional support in cash and kind (eg clothing) from her two eldest children who now work in Pante Macassar, the main town in Oecusse. With that little income she buys supplies such as cooking oil, salt, betel nut, and corn and vegetables if they are not in season. She also buys two 25-kilo bags of rice a year, for a total of $40 (including additional transport costs). Domingas and her children are able to eat rice about three times a week—about 300 grams goes into one meal, shared among three. There is no ‘kios’ or shop in the area, so the purchase of these commodities involves a long walk to Tono market, which takes one day. There is no money to buy other ‘luxuries’. Theirs is a bare existence indeed.
Around the time her husband passed away, Domingas bought one d.light S10 solar light for $10. Groups of four or five d.lights recharge under the sun. In the early morning, the village people always place their d.lights together to recharge, believing that the lights ‘keep each other company’ and that they ‘absorb more sun’ when placed in a row. Like her neighbours, Domingas no longer needs to spend $1 per week for the fuel that used to fill her single kerosene lamp. Domingas echoes the general sentiment of those around her, most of whom also have one d.light, when she reports, "I like the solar lamp because we just buy it once and then there are no more costs, we don't have to buy kerosene, and we have light until morning. We don't sit in the dark anymore."
When Domingas mentions ‘the dark’, she is referring to the relative darkness that the dim kerosene lamp did little to improve. In terms of light quality, Domingas rates the d.light as ‘very effective’. Yet her primary interest lies with the economic savings provided by the d.light, which are in the order of $50 a year; these savings more than cover the cost of rice, which continues to be a major part of her family’s sustenance. Rice, not kerosese, is now her single largest expense. For someone whose net income has been, since her husband died, only twice that figure, it is understandable that the d.light is one of her most cherished items.
