Party Like 1999?

In hindsight, one might call it millenarianism, or even the millenium bug...but whatever it was, something was definitely in the air in 1999. War would break out that year in East Timor, Kosovo and between the Horn of Africa neighbours Ethiopia and Eritrea...while in the mainstream world, we were trying to "Party Like 1999".

I was 28 at the time, and personally, 1999 felt every minute like the end of the world. Let me just say that it was, for me, a sad and dark time. So when, in 2000, from out of the blue, I got an offer to go work in East Timor, I went. Little did I know that I was to embark on an odyssey of sorts that would take me to these out of the way places.

And life would never be the same afterwards; as a malae in East Timor, or as a ferenji in Eritrea and Ethiopia...Since the turn of the millenium, I've been A Stranger in a Strangeland. The Outsider. De Afuera.

I believe I have got a few stories to tell from the Outside, my friend...