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.