Can you find it on a map?

Timor-Leste is one of the newest countries in the world, having only achieved nationhood in 2002. I recently had the opportunity to go there on a last minute trip for work. Because our embassy there does very limited consular work, they asked someone from Jakarta to speak at a townhall they were having for Americans and I got the nod.

Dili was like no foreign capital I'd ever been to. It felt like I was in a movie set in sub-Saharan Africa. Because Timor-Leste doesn't have the infrastructure to police the country, the United Nations is there. As a result, there are UN vehicles everywhere you turn. The country's infrastructure is non-existent in so many areas. It's a beautiful country with great natural resources, but they're still struggling to get on their feet.

I was shocked to see a refugee camp immediately outside the entrance to the tiny airport. They call these camps "Internally Displaced Persons" camps because they are filled with people who had to leave their homes outside Dili due to recent violence in their areas. These camps are all over the city and at one point a few months ago the population of Dili doubled when the number of people living in the camps reached 100,000. It definitely makes you think about how badly some people in the world need our help.