My original idea for this chapter, a case study exploring how Oecussi's pre-state political system both enables and complicates the authority of its present-day government, occurred to me during a long dry-season walk from Kutete to the coastal road. The enclave's large forests are nearly gone now, felled for fuel, or to make way for swidden gardens, but in the latter half of 2014, walking through a remnant stand of trees, I was excited to spot one of Oecussi's few surviving marsupials quickly vanishing up a hau kiu (tamarind tree).

Whereas I saw a possum, and thought of the threatened eco-system of dry-land forests in the Lesser Sunda Islands, the result of having grown up in a place where ‘the environment’ was something to be studied, preserved, and maybe visited on school holidays, my friend was understandably more interested in it as a potential source of protein. On the road at the bottom of the hill, the local environmental office had placed a billboard announcing we were in a wildlife preserve, and asking people to protect wild animals for the generations for come (T: protega ita nia animal fuik ba gerasaun ikus mai), but we were coming down from a village where the ‘foi nsae (youngsters, literally those just come up) were stunted from a lack of healthy food in general and protein in particular, and it was clear to see why the message hadn't caught on.