The day my bubble burst

When I signed up to work in Timor-Leste and all the talk was ‘capacity building’ this and ‘sustainable development’ that, I really had no idea what I was getting myself in for. Training sessions have been outnumbered by the many occasions where I’ve doled out relationship advice and lectured my colleagues about gay rights.

This morning I stretched my capacity building abilities a little further afield with a visit to the police station. Instead of going to file a complaint about an incident on the weekend (more on that later), the purpose of the visit was framed in terms of ‘the police need to practice taking statements from bewildered malae, you are now the guinea pig’. So in we trooped to the police station, an uninspiring building with collapsing ceilings and plants growing through the roof, to make a statement. First we dealt with a university student (still not sure why he was there), before being passed on to the UNPOL then back to the local police.

Finally we got around to the real business of making a statement about violent crime. And in Timor, it boils down to two vital pieces of information – are you married? If not, where are your parents? It went something like this:

Police officer:   Are you single?
Me:                   Yes.
Police officer:   Can you write down your parents’ names?
Me writing.
Police officer:   What village do they live in?
Me:                  They’re in Australia.
Police officer:   What village do they live in?
Me writing the name of the suburb.
Police officer:   What sub-district do they live in?
Pause.
Me:                  Sydney?

After about 3 hours we made it out into the sunshine again, clutching a photocopy of our statement and a case number written on a scrap of paper.

To get you up to speed, I recently became the smitten co-owner of a bubble. Although one of the dirtiest cars in Dili, our bubble has been showered with affection – displayed through frequent use, a snug courtyard home and messages written in its dirty windows such as ‘I love Joey’ and ‘pocong’ (Bahasa for ghost – I can only presume the writer was referring to my white pallor)

On the weekend, the bubble burst – quite literally in fact, with a rock the size of a fist. The rock was the last in a series of escalating incidents – groping, touching, shoving, a knife – which happened outside a bar near Dili which will henceforth be referred to as The Dodgiest Place You Should Never Go To Again.

The shattered bubble

Everyone was thankfully okay. So after a pretty turbulent week let’s reflect on my achievements – window fixed, complaint filed, sanity pretty much intact. Success iha. 

As promised, a photo of Billy the goat, the newest addition to our neighbourhood.
Although I sense his death is nigh, he still bestows a wise glance and a benevolent bleat on passersby.

How to succeed in Dili without really trying

Getting around Dili is not about knowing street names or even taxi drivers (FYI, Eduardo’s the best). To succeed in Dili you have to surrender yourself to navigating much more difficult terrain. You not only have to know the difference between Comoro and Colmera; Beach Road and Banana Road; Jesuit and Carmelite priests. You also have to have a philosophical stance on Australian-Portuguese relations. You have to choose between being vegetarian and flexitarian. You have to select your preferred method of catharsis: swearing at bad drivers or Timor Telecom (there are many, many opportunities to do both).

Since arriving in Dili, I’ve learned a lot. I know that digging up and resurfacing Beach Road is a Herculean task that apparently needs to be done once a fortnight from now until the end of time. I know that finding a bar with good music and fast service is akin to the Holy Grail. I know that visitors to our house who ask ‘are you planning on staying here for the whole year?’ are used to neighbourhoods with more malaes and less livestock (I’d like to take this opportunity to welcome our newest arrival, Billy the goat - photo on the way).

With each month spent in Dili, you lose roughly 5% of your English language skills, which means that conversations between tired friends is a bit like a beginners ESL class – ‘I go to beach’, ‘My book… where?’ Some people surrender and start speaking Tetunglish instead – some of my favourites being ‘I am totally diak liu than that’, ‘Hau happy loos’ and ‘Tiredness iha’ (Anna and Tim, you inspire me).

Whether it’s the humidity, corrosive insect repellent or long-life milk, Dili does send malae a little loopy. Dress-up parties, something of a social niche in Sydney for fashion students and 21-year-olds, become an outlet for creative expression, market shopping prowess and commitment to wearing synthetic fabrics despite all reasons to the contrary. Crazes come and go like we’re primary school kids with limited pocket money and attention spans. Watching Game of Thrones and playing 500 are pursued with serious devotion. Hobbies take on new significance as you find you can suddenly afford to commit a whole lot more time to writing haikus or making up puns.

There is plenty of conversation to be had, although the high-rotation topics are not family, friends and current affairs but the current state of supermarket yoghurt stocks, where to buy cheap Magnums and which blonde was last seen in Ramos-Hortas’ Mini Moke. Time is not measured by days and months, but Bintang beers and GNR rotations.

While fostering enthusiasm for dairy products and making a fool of yourself, Dili also brings out the paranoid gossip mongerer. In the fishbowl that is malae social life, I have been told so many times lately ‘you can’t tell anyone this’ that I’m losing track of who said what and what was no-go and why the who said the what was no-go. It’s exhausting. Which is why it’s good that the ratio of malae to massage places in this town is roughly 3:1.

101 ways with cassava

I had visions of one of those aesthetically pleasing cooking blogs, complete with plentiful adjectives and softly lit photos of fresh produce. Yet somehow between the papaya leaf/2 minute noodle snack and the 4 tupperwares of cassava this afternoon, I lost my enthusiasm.

Yes, I’m back in Maliana, which is beginning to feel like a second home away from Dili. Sadly, this time I’m not staying at the hotel with the giant pink teddybear that doubles as a family mascot.  

Ted chilling on the couch

I like to call this one 'Ted and Bob'

But nevertheless I continue to become disturbingly familiar with Maliana’s quirks. Like what time the electricity comes on then goes off again, versus what time it really comes on. Which toilets have toilet paper (I’ve only discovered one so far). If you want something other than a bread roll for breakfast, it’s BYO egg. I now know that it’s better to bathe with the bucket of cold water at night rather than in the morning because it drops a couple of degrees overnight. And not to put too fine a point on it, but my muscles are getting better at the squat.

I’m always glad to get out of Dili and its relentless heat, dust and people yelling at you. Maliana also has heat, dust and people yelling at you but at least in this case, it’s a chorus of kindergarten children chiming softly ‘malae malae malae’ a la the seagulls in Finding Nemo.

It’s a relief to slow down and do things like watch the news on TV. And I mean really slow down. The half-hour nightly news starts ten minutes late and finishes only after the daily campaign activities of each and every political party (there are 26) have been covered. While this isn’t my usual idea of fun, it did give me a chance to admire my colleague’s impersonation of Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao and appreciate the finer distinctions of politicians’ headwear (FYI: red beret = communist, leather cap = socialist).

When work means dangling your feet in a stream of fresh mountain water and singing Indonesian pop songs with 8-year-old girls, I guess there’s not much to complain about. If there’s one KPI I’m definitely hitting in Timor, it’s halimar. Halimar means play, but it seems like you can attach it to almost any other word and imbue it with halimar’s laissez-faire, cest-la-vie, life’s-a-breeze attitude. 

I'm pretty sure halimar is exactly what Ted and Bob are doing in the photo. And if it's good enough for a giant pink teddybear and a suave military man, it's good enough for me.