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.