The Foreign Service Journal, December 2012

102 DECEMBER 2012 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL LOCAL LENS BY MEREDITH HIEMSTRA n THIS UNEDITED PHOTO WAS TAKEN WITH A CANON POWERSHOT SD780 IS, A SIMPLE POCKET CAMERA. Enter your photography to be featured in Local Lens! Images must be high resolution (at least 11 MB). Please submit a short description of the scene/event, as well as your name and the type of camera used to locallens@afsa.org. C emetery Beach, in Timor-Leste’s capital city, Dili, is where expat families often gather for evening picnics to enjoy the shallow, calm, clean and temperate waters. On this day in May 2012, I had taken a morning hike with a French friend in the Bebonuk neighborhood. The colorful, carved canoes with bamboo outriggers are used by local fisherman who cast their nets in the Banda Sea. The beach’s namesake is an adjacent village cemetery. Behind my camera, our kids were wading in a natural pool, after we ensured no crocodiles were lurking in the vicinity. n Meredith Hiemstra joined the Foreign Service in 2003. She served as the information management officer in Timor-Leste from 2009 to 2012, and is now working remotely for the Information Resources Management Bureau while accompanying her FS husband, Diplomatic Security officer Jan Hiemstra, who is on assignment to the Navy War College in Newport, R.I..