The Bubble

To be an expat in Timor is to live in a bubble. I don’t care how many tais you buy, how much Tetun you can speak, how much dog meat you dutifully eat at community gatherings – there’s no escaping the bubble that is your inherent malae-ness.

Malae (foreigner) bubbles can be measured by one simple proxy: PPP (pig poo proximity). The greater the time you spend in proximity to pig poo, the more fragile your bubble becomes. The only thing that can offset PPP are dinners at Discovery, Dili’s haunt du jour for malaes in search of luxury meals. For example, on Sunday night I waded calf-deep through a mixture of rainwater and pig poo to get from my house to the street after a huge downpour. However, I was on my way to have dinner and drink red wine at Discovery, meaning that overall I had a neutral PPP for the day. Malae bubble = intact.

Of course there are other factors that can affect your malae bubble. For example, if you live in Palm Springs (a compound in Dili where the rent per square metre rivals Woolloomooloo) you are actually not in a bubble at all. You are in an air-conditioned dreamland which happens to share the same geographic coordinates as Timor. Other bubble-mitigating factors include use of hand sanitiser and hours spent at Beachside Café.

For better or worse, the size and strength of my malae bubble was upped this week with the long-awaited purchase of a car. Previously I got around Dili by walking (running the gauntlet of ‘honey honey’ all the way home) or catching taxis (where I developed a habit of counting air fresheners – record so far is 17 in one taxi). To understand the rare occurrence of malaes on footpaths in Dili, you merely have to count the startled faces of fellow malaes gaping at your presence on the street from their air-conditioned 4WD comfort.

Yet as of this week, I have officially crossed over to the dark side. I confess, I have been driving around Dili with my air-con on listening to Florence + the Machine. My PPP, previously at consistently high levels, has been negligible. The pigs in my neighbourhood have been looking at me wistfully as I come and go, as if to say ‘where are your hellos and goodbyes? Where is your high-pitched cooing at our cuteness?’ It’s true, I have been too busy trying not to run over the 15+ pint-sized piglets to greet them properly.

I’m not sure whether I will ever regain my previous levels of PPP. I’m not even sure that I want to. Maybe tomorrow I’ll put on my blue birthday shoes and fly some kites made out of plastic bags with my neighbours, just to even things out.

The bubble