One camera, 15 minutes, 74 photos later

Some people find public speaking intimidating. Or jumping out of planes. I’m not sure where being stared at by 30 Timorese kids fits on the scale, but when you try to break the ice with some awkward Tetun (the local language), which doesn’t get a response apart from a cascade of giggles, you start to feel pretty intimidated.

I was in a village perched on the side of a hill for some community consultations – basically five days of talking to children and their parents in an effort to discover what problems and issues they are facing (just quietly, someone needs to speak to the local teacher about hitting the kids on the head). To get to the village, we had to drive about an hour from the nearest town, then descend down a deep escarpment into a dry river bed (maybe a kilometre wide and half as deep), then up again on the other side, until we finally crested the hill and saw the village soccer field – with goals made out of branches and a bevy of goats keeping the grass down. It wasn’t long till I found myself sitting in front of the community feeling pretty, well, visible.

The soccer field

The riverbed (being traversed by Timor's Cadel Evans)

Maybe this is what Barack Obama or Princess Mary feel like when they’re on an official gadabout – there’s nothing you can do that won’t be seen. There’s no subtle wedgie picking when you’re being watched by the entire community. There’s no subtle choking on the incredibly spicy sauce they serve with the cassava. So when I noticed my pants (found secondhand in the Dili markets) had a hole in the crotch, I started to feel pretty exposed.

While I’m not the biggest fan of technology, when I remembered I had my camera in my bag I couldn’t get it out fast enough – don’t look at the white person, kids, look at the shiny camera! I think it should be a truth universally acknowledged that any child shall be endlessly amused by looking at their likeness produced, again and again, by a digital camera.

The results of my social experiment are below – some were taken by me, some by the kids. And if anyone did notice the hole in my pants, they were much too polite to say.

Home Sweet Home

Finally, I’ve escaped the clutches of Timorese hotels and have found myself a home!

It comes complete with:

Genuine moat entrance (even more moat-like after the afternoon rains)

Pig family

Chicken family

 

Dogs who will be my friends (but don’t know it yet)

Thorny pot plants for extra security

 

Midget kitchen bench

 

Thought-provoking graffiti

Jesus/Mary shrine (complete with candles and bottled water)

 

English football-themed bed

 

Various pets – including but not limited to hermit crabs, ants and geckos

In short, I have everything I need in a home. We also have lots of nice families nearby who normally refrain from laughing if we fall in the moat, and feel quite comfortable coming inside to rearrange our cupboards after we return from the supermarket (apparently there is a wrong spot to put your pasta).

If you’re not convinced this is prime real estate, we live about 150m from the best dumplings in Dili. Which if you know me, means that everything is just fine.

Things I could write a play about (but won’t) #1

An inconsequential hotel nestled away on a quiet street, between a handicrafts market and a sewerage plant. The short space between the hotel’s front gates and its foyer door measures about six metres. This distance is almost impossible to traverse without either seeing or being accosted by a Cuban doctor – usually sans T-shirt – who wants to say ‘bondia bonita’ and tell you he’s worried about your pale skin.

The first act of the play is set in the foyer of the hotel – a poky room decorated with fake flowers and a tin box with ‘condoms’ printed on the front, presided over by a TV tuned into a poker championship. The foyer is invariably in use by one of the hotel inhabitants, as a kind of public sitting room/meeting room/bar. It’s compulsory when sitting in the foyer to be:  

  a) smoking a cigarette

        b) smoking a cigar or pipe

        c) drinking beer, or

        d) all of the above (it is possible).

The protagonist is the hotel manager – his distinctive hairdo is one part Bob Marley and two parts Dolly Parton. He divides his time between talking to the guests, playing PlayStation and interrogating matters of deep philosophical importance. He presides over the chaos wrought by Cuban doctors, UN police from China and Malaysia, a money-hungry Australian working for an oil company and his Timorese staff (who know how to fix air conditioners with plastic bottles).

The second act is set in the hotel’s communal kitchen – which is completely derelict but features a full range of patterned plastic plates. The characters eat outside, debating UN politics and the merits of sitcoms, while serenaded by the constant drone of the generator and the gentle clicking of geckos.

I was thinking a Tartuffian concoction with all the slapstick exits and entrances you would expect, along with some cross-cultural, politically incorrect jokes. Of course, any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental (and has nothing to do with the fact I have been living at this hotel and it is all undeniably real).

Pedal to the Metal

I’m riding a bike in East Timor!

I’m riding a bike in East Timor and I haven’t hit any pigs, goats or dogs yet!

I’m riding a bike –

This was approximately the moment when my pedal flew off.

We were riding back from Areia Branca, a popular beach just east of Dili which probably doesn’t have any crocodiles. We’d spent the afternoon chatting on the Beach, laughing at the Portuguese guy who does his yoga exercises at the water’s edge, and lolling about in the bath-temperature water.

It was time for the bicycle ride back to Dili. As a non-bike rider, I was elated to have made it down to Areia Branca in one piece. At my cautious pace, it’s about a half hour trip, mostly winding along beautiful coastline. You share the road with some taxis, motorbikes and 4WDs (the UN ones hurtling towards you are the scariest), as well as families of goats and pigs, and the odd dog.

My ridiculously cheap ‘mountain’ bike (I say mountain in inverted commas as I’m not sure my bike would actually be very keen on mountains) was going pretty well, until the pedal flew off. After I retrieved said pedal from the middle of the road, decided to ignore my bleeding ankle, and established we couldn’t get the pedal back on – I was feeling pretty fed up. Then one of the locals asked us what was going on and before long we had a little crew of helpers (we were fruitlessly searching for a tiny black piece of plastic that had flown off my bike in another direction). A bag of spanners materialised and a local woman screwed the pedal back on.

Thanks to the handy locals, we were soon on our way again and eventually made it back fairly uneventfully (the road was practically closed with people filing into the local cemetery to pay their respects on All Souls’ Day).

My bike is now in bike purgatory downstairs, locked up and hopefully considering how it can be more bike-like and reliable in the future. 

Yes, life in Dili is tough - Areia Branca

Let me introduce you

Let me introduce you to Dili.

The best time to meet Dili is in the early morning, when the city is still bathed in shade. At 6am, the sun waits behind the baked hills surrounding the town. People are sweeping the streets, walking to work, loading trucks. The fruit and vegetable market, which stretches along the foreshore, has already been set up - probably hours before. Spherical watermelons lie beside perfect piles of papayas, pineapples and green mangos. Bananas are short and straight, and sold in huge bunches. If you pay $2.50 for a bunch, that’s too much.

You might also see some fishermen returning to shore with the day’s catch – fish almost as long as my arm are hung in the cool shade of trees. As the locals go about their morning routines, expats whiz by on expensive mountain bikes or run past in colour-coordinated sports gear. A group of Australian army personnel straggle past, on the tail end of some hellish morning exercise routine.

Before long, the sun surfaces over the hills. Dili in the day is hot, bright and punctuated by the sounds of cars and motorbikes backfiring. In the morning, for a little while at least, it’s a good time to say hello.

This blog was brought to you by the Dili Beach Hotel, pictured in all its glory above.