Ordinaire a la Timor

This week has been a pretty ordinary week in Timor. No dead rats or landslides to date – not even a political rally to break up my routine.



Ordinaire at home

Ordinary yes, but of course this is Ordinaire a la Timor:

Coming home on Wednesday night, I was met by 400 people kneeling on my street, praying. There were at least three statues of Mary, a superfluity of nuns on loudspeakers and many little candles clutched in children’s hands. I felt quite conspicuous in my walking shoes, sans candle, and of course there was no way they could know just by looking at me that my confirmation name is Mary Magdalene (come to think of it, that may not have impressed them very much). After sitting on the street for a while, the procession eventually moved on and I walked, as reverently as possible, home.

 

Earlier in the week I did a training session for about 40 staff from the districts. It was going well for about, oooh 2 minutes, until a guy in the front row decided this was a perfect opportunity to get an up-close photo of a malae (foreigner). Which then gave another guy the same idea. Today I’m actually doing photography training, so I can’t wait to see what happens then.

The most heart warming development of this week is that I found some dogs who actually like people! This is a huge breakthrough, because whenever I attempt to get close enough to a dog for a surreptitious pat, they tend to bolt in the other direction. I think when they look at a person, what they’re really seeing is a foot coming in their direction, so I can’t really blame them. But these were puppies who are too young to be scared of people yet, so I spent the better part of yesterday afternoon at work patting them, talking to them and scooping water out of a little pond for them. Capacity schmacity building. Everyone knows what I'm really here for is to pass on Western notions of pet care.

Hanging with the security guard, Cafe (brown puppy), Boy (black puppy) and as-yet-unnamed-puppy