COVER N. 251 - EAST TIMOR  

Postmark: Correios Dili Timor Leste 14.04.2023

Posted on the 14h April; Received on the 11th May 2023
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Wow! East Timor... The moment I saw where the stamp on the letter came from, I felt someone had avenged the young kid I once was who would never complete a collection of trading cards because some of them were so rare that unless you were really lucky, the investment needed in order to enter the realm of positive probability was way beyond your pocket money capabilities.

Again I have to thank Eric for such an incredible addition to my collection. Thank you so much, ou, melhor ainda, Muito Obrigado, Eric. Fiquei sem palavras....

East Timor, an example that conflict leads nowhere...the path to independence was hard and bloody... the will of a people was trampled on by a cruel and sanguinary invasion... what for?  Perhaps the finest hour of UN's current Secretary General António Guterres... the last breath of the Portuguese empire and the first new sovereign state of the 21st century...

East Timor thrives today on the earnings it gets from oil and gas, but it had to start from zero, its territory having been neglected  first by us, the Portuguese, then fallen prey to the scorched earth policy of the occupant Indonesia... not an easy task lies ahead, the more so since many of the wounds of the recent past must be far from healed, so deep were the cuts...

The United Nations General Assembly declared 2010 as the International Year of Biodiversity with the aim of raising awareness at worldwide level to the need to conserve and promote biodiversity.

Drawing attention to this need Timor-Leste, East Timor,  issued a six stamp set on 28NOV2010 (2x 50 cents/centavos; 2 x 75 cents/centavos;  2x 1Dollar - the official currency of East Timor being the US Dollar, there are coins denominated in centavos, each centavo equalling one American cent) each of them featuring  a reptile or an amphibian of its fauna.

The 75 centavos stamp on my cover is illustrated with the image of a Varanus timorensis - Timor Monitor , a large monitor lizard that I would think is endemic to Timor, although, and strangely enough I could not find any information about the species on the internet.

The postmark indicates that the letter was mailed from the country's capital, Dili.