The Wawata Topu
Photographed and written during my tenure as Oceanographic Magazine’s Storyteller in Residence (2024-2025)
As morning breaks on Atauro Island, the village is lit in a soft glow. From somewhere between the calls of the rooster and the rumble of boat engines a woman emerges and steps, barefoot, onto the tide-worn reef flat. She is the first to arrive at the waters’ edge - a lipa knotted at her waist, its floral patterns tumbling down toward her calves. At first glance, the woman could be mistaken for being on her way to church, if it wasn’t for the speargun in her hand and the pair of hand-carved wooden goggles, fixed atop her head with a piece of frayed fishing line. She looks out to the water, her eyes scanning the ocean’s surface with the kind of assurance earned from 53 years of diving with the dawn. Her name is Agustina Quteres and she is one of the mermaids of Timor Leste.
