Rainbow paddlepops and pink lemonade

It’s been a long time since I could really honestly identify myself as one of those people who get carsick. I did give it a good crack for a few years though – the words ‘rainbow paddlepop’ and ‘pink lemonade’ have a special meaning for my sister, who unfortunately for her, was sitting next to me on virtually all of my childhood chuck-ups.

So given my history, when I started to feel sick last Thursday morning on the way to Viqueque, I was also having some pretty graphic flashbacks from my days as a hopelessly nauseous child. To put my primal fear into context, we had just started out on a 9 hour round trip from Dili to Viqueque and back (see crazy map below) a trip that was to be completed in 1 impossible, deep vein thrombosis-inducing day. We were five in the 4WD – me, the driver, the CEO and two of the Education Department guys. The thought of vomiting my way to Viqueque (the joys of alliteration aside) was not particularly appealing.

The X marks the spot en route to Viqueque where I started feeling sick

After suffering in silence for a while, a foggy spectre of a thought occurred to me – I am not a morning person! Because if there’s one thing I know as fundamentally as I know I used to be a chronic car vomiter, it’s that I am not a morning person. Even in Sydney, I tended to avoid sustained conversations at work before 10am. And here I was, trapped in a car on winding road, teetering on the edge of a cliff, at 5:15am! (I also think that the elevator music being played by the driver - instrumental Love Is In The Air, etc. in electro beats - ad nauseum was actually making me feel, well, ad nauseous).

I would like to think it was the power of positive thought that got me through the day without being sick, but I think it was the fact I ended up sleeping a lot, and when I wasn’t doing that, willing my ipod batteries to last all the way back to Dili so I wouldn’t be driven insane by the elevator music (the Indonesian Christmas carols we got into on the way back were only marginally better).

The purpose of the trip itself – an inauguration ceremony for a new school building – was just the mix of heartwarming and downright bizarre that I’m becoming accustomed to in East Timor. In this case, they had made a cake in the shape of the new classroom (they had got the pastel green of the paint spot on) and there I was wearing a tais (traditional cloth) around my neck, clinking glasses of Cinzano with about 15 old men – is there a better way to celebrate a new classroom?!