I haven’t gotten any thinner over the years but thankfully I have gotten better at taking photos. If I keep working on photography and brush up more on my Photoshop skills, I should by skinny with no wrinkles (…on the internet) by the time I’m 40.
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(Sorry, camera phone pic only)
Last night, I watched President and Nobel Prize Laureate Jose Ramos-Horta thank the UN for their service in Timor-Leste at a big party he threw at Obrigado Barracks (best peacekeeping mission pun ever — in Tetum, ‘obrigado barak’ means ‘thank you very much’… but why did they pick the masculine form?? Gender equality!). It was his penultimate day as president — tonight TMR will be officially inaugurated and Timor-Leste will also celebrate a decade of independence and internationally recognised nationhood. So it is a big weekend in Dili.
I was literally three metres away from the stage at the event last night. It is amazing how accessible the big wigs are here in Dili… presidents (present, former and soon to be former…I see Alkatiri out for dinner all the time), ministers, ambassadors… for such an allegedly troublesome (if you read the news wires) post-conflict nation, people sure are pretty relaxed about day-to-day personal security. Which is cool. Ramos-Horta drives around town in an open side Mini Moke car (I’ve spotted it three or so times on the beach road now). Considering someone shot him in 2008, that’s a pretty big gesture of confidence in ongoing peace in the country.
It is very exciting to be in Timor the year that it celebrates 10 years of independence. Sure, there’s still a lot of problems and challenges going forward, but you’ve really got to take a look and see how far it has come. In 1999, practically everything in the country was destroyed. When you talk to Timorese and hear how their families were torn apart, how they hid, were refugees, were in Tent Cities on the outskirts of Darwin, were scared, lost loved ones, were tortured… the significance of anniversaries such as this one only become clearer.
Parabens Timor-Leste. I wish only for peace and prosperity for everyone in the country in the years ahead.
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The tiny kitten squirmed on the road, immobilised from the waist up but its back legs flailing from pain. I didn’t know paralysis could work that way. Its eye protruded from its socket like a pimple waiting to be popped. The kitten was clearly the victim of a car or motorcycle tyre, but unfortunately for it, it was still alive and still in Timor-Leste, where even humans are lucky to get rudimentary medical treatment.
I was driving to work on the other side of the road. I wanted to stop, but a policeman was waving traffic around the roadworks and I’ve seen them throw punches at people who don’t obey their vague hand gestures. Even though my work was only about 50 metres away, I had to take a detour through the Comoro Markets, all the way back to busy Comoro Road, then all the way back around again.
I kept thinking about the kitten, about how the humane thing would probably be to go back and run over it until it died, or to ask the police officer to shoot it if he had a gun. Given my language skills, that would be a pretty risky request to make.
It took me 30 extra minutes to finally get back around to the office. I parked and then was absorbed in all manner of menial tasks that should have been done weeks ago and the kitten slipped from my mind.
When I was driving home from work I noticed it was gone. I hoped it didn’t have to wait too long for someone to help it, but it was probably more likely that it got picked up by one of the stray dogs.
People here are always distracted by bigger problems.
But I still felt guilty.
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The 10th anniversary of Timor-Leste’s independence is coming up this May 20. There are lots of rumours swirling around Dili about which VIPs and foreign dignitries will be attending. It’s an exciting time. People are hanging up flags and decorating their homes and businesses with bright bunting in red, yellow and black.
A marching band has been practicing around my neighbourhood for the anniversary and for the Dili Marathon (which is on this coming weekend). It’s a bunch of enthusiastic young people and practice is paying off… they are definitely sounding better each day. But it is quite loud, especially when they go right by my house… The kids in the neighbourhood love to watch though.
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1. I went to Maubara on May Day and the fort cafe didn’t have banana smoothies or any food really except instant noodles. The road was much worse than I remember, so I was 4WD-ing my Hyundai Matrix. It was a nice day though, great weather. A truck almost killed us though once, but other than that, a nice bumpy drive.
2. On my birthday, my lovely housemate put a lovely beaded necklace in my cereal box as a gift. I am so foggy brained in the mornings that I looked at it (it was a similar colour to the cereal) and though that there were worms in my cereal and almost freaked out before I saw the bow around it and did the mental math.
3. We went to one of the nicest restaurants in Dili and had a lovely meal, but I accidentally ordered the palate cleanser for dessert instead of an actual dessert.
4. I saw a crane fall over and knock over power lines and the footpath because it was too small to lift a large concrete pillar, and the pillar had been fastened in the wrong place, creating a weight imbalance when it was lifted off the ground. This literally happened about five metres from the car, since there aren’t barriers put up for dangerous situations such as this in Timor.
5. A truck cut a corner in Dili and forced me to drive the Hyundai into a gutter to not get hit… I only just managed to rev the little car out of the gutter, almost had to get towed.
6. I’ve had an on-again off-again stomach bug and illness that I’m a bit concerned could be something parasitic like giardia, so I haven’t been feeling great.
7. I witnessed the PNTL (Timorese police) punch three people on motorcycles in the back with a fair amount of force at an intersection for violating non-existant/never followed/not understood traffic laws on my way to work on my birthday.
8. I was so frustrated by some things at work I cried in the car on the way to get miso soup for birthday lunch (all I could stomach because of my dodgy belly). Later that day I got a cake at work that was pink with flowers on and everyone sang the birthday song.
9. I went to a seafood restaurant that only had fish and none of the other seafood on the menu. The sambal was great, but one of my friend’s meals never arrived, even after asking for it twice. A feral cat jumped on the table and stole some of our food.
10. A friend and I went to use the internet and have some lunch. We went to one place, ordered food and the wrong salads came out. One of the salads had tomatoes that had gone bad in it so the whole thing was inedible. Then the restaurant tried to charge use for food we didn’t even get, with one of the waitresses chasing us out onto the street accusing us of not paying in full. We couldn’t use the internet because it was $10 for access anyway. We went to another bar with the internet, but their internet was broken… we tried to order a cocktail, but all the cocktails were ‘finished’. Then I ordered an ice coffee. It came out lukewarm with strawberry icecream in because the vanilla was ‘finished’. It tasted terrible.
11. After months of problems, including parts of the ceiling falling down and the place getting flooded yet us still having no water coming out of the tap, our landlord finally fixed our water system properly and it seems to be working pretty well now.
12. Right now I’m at a cafe that has a big banner up about having WiFi, but their WiFi apparently hasn’t been working for months. They are softening the blow by playing weird acoustic covers of Lady Gaga.
So it was a very ‘Timor’ birthday week… mixing the good, great, hysterically ridiculous, bad and ugly all up together.
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Travelling to the districts is a big part of life and work in Timor Leste.
But the good news is that you can recreate the rush of emotions a trip to the districts brings from your very own home, anywhere in the world.
You need:
- A crazy broken washing machine from the 1950s that violently lurches around your laundry and shakes when it is on.
- A laptop computer with internet connection
- A fish grilled on a stick with some rice that has been sitting in the sun for many days
- A broken plastic stool partially melted by the sun
Step one
Sit on the crazy broken washing machine and turn it on
Step two
Play this song on loop on your laptop computer (you can also mix up different versions of this song, like the techno version, or the version that is allegedly in English)
Step three
Continue for three hours.
Step four
Turn off washing machine, sit on broken plastic stool trying to hold up your own body weight and eat fish on stick and questionable rice.
Step five
Return to washing machine and Ai Se Eu Te Pego shuffle playlist for another three hours.
Step six
Get off washing machine, look at the pictures on my blog.
Step seven
Repeat in opposite direction
PS. There will be nowhere for you to go to the loo for the entire trip. You may want to try going on the street outside your house. If a crowd forms, then that’s a genuine experience. If you are arrested, sorry, that’s not quite authentic.
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I'm Ashlee, an Australian obsessed with travel, food and photography. After spending nearly two years working in Indonesia and six months in Washington DC, as well as a stint back home in Australia, I'm currently living in Dili, Timor Leste — one of the world's newest countries.
Sometimes I do serious work, but not usually on this blog.
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