Ola everyone!
I half finished this post last week and
then just didn’t get a chance to post it. So I’m finishing it today (Monday 17th
March) as it would have been written last week.
Wednesday 12th March.
I’m into my second week in Timor-Leste and
it’s been a really busy but also pretty awesome weekend for me.
On Saturday I managed to get some
transportation in the form of my already beloved scooter (I’ve always thought
about getting a scooter or motorbike and they’re so damn fun!) AND I moved into
a really nice place that’s not far from the office and my main places of work.
First a bit about the scooter.
East Timor is not a big place, as I’m sure
you’ve figured out already. There are about a million people in the entire
country, so Dili is pretty small as capital cities go. In fact, I don’t think it’s
even technically a city. It’s got about 200,000 people in about 20 square
miles.
It’s small but the day time is HOT, too hot
to walk half an hour to get to where you want to go. I struggled the 5 minutes
to work in my first week and I’d be drenched in sweat, chugging cool water and
standing under the air con when I got in.
There are not many roads, as Dili isn’t
very big, so if everyone got a car, they’d fill up tight pretty quick, and many
of the side roads, where the houses are, are so thin that in many places only
one car can go down them at a time. You meet another car and one of you is
backing up for a while! And be careful about that big ass ditch running down
the side of the road because if you go down that I don’t think you’re coming
out again in a hurry (Seriously, there are cars that have just been left in the
ditches; they’re burnt out shells now. Probably from a few years back when
there was a lot of trouble in Timor-Leste but they do serve as a good warning
to be careful of other vehicles.)
[The other day it rained hard and I saw a
couple of guys sitting out the rain in this cars husk just down the road from
where I am now.]
Solution: everyone rides a Scooter.
If
you’re cool and have a bit more cash you can buy a motorbike but unless you’re
really off-roading, a scooter will do (just look out for the pot holes, they
can be a bitch).
[This picture's nothing compared to the shopping centre close by]
The roads are pretty safe; since it’s a
small place most people stick to around 40-50km an hour but only on the really
straight bits on the well kept main roads. On most of the roads you want to go
around 20-30 or often slower to avoid pot-holes, other bikes popping out from
hidden entrances, or the many dogs that just wander around in the road and give
very few shits about the approaching lump of metal.
True the taxi drivers are mostly nutters. I
heard that many just don’t bother to get a driving licence, and even if you do,
you don’t actually have to take a test; you just pay for a licence, you get a
licence, get in your yellow car and pick up a fare. Job done.
You want to make sure people in cars know
that you’re there so it’s good form to beep your horn when you overtake
someone. And if you come up to a corner you can’t quite see around. And at dogs
in the road. And people...
Shit, just beep your horn if you see something
move or you think something might move, there’s a lot of horn beeping in Dili!
But even with all the horn beeping I’ve
seen many a taxi with worryingly head shaped cracks in the windscreens (no,
people don’t bother getting little things like seriously cracked windshields
replaced and they don’t get stopped by the police for something like that
either).
I’m not doing a very good job of reassuring
my mum that I’ll be safe on the road, am I?
Seriously though, the distances are short,
the speeds are pretty slow and people are used to looking out for bikes. Don’t
worry mum, I’ll be fine. :p
The house:
The house is really nice. It’s in an area
called Fatu Hada, which seems really chilled but APPARENTLY sometimes can have a bit of
trouble. (I put apparently in uppercase because, as a friend told me, Dili is the city of 'apparently'. Most stories start with this word and it's usually been passed around and elaborated so much that you have to take everything with a pinch of salt).
My place is in a family compound with a
massive metal gate for security. The family who own the place live in a house
on one side of a shared courtyard/parking space and the malai rental house is
on the other.
[A Fatu Hada main street]
It’s really nice. Tiled floor, good
kitchen, very clean and cheap. I’ve moved in with two Australian girls who have
been here for a while working on education and anti corruption and the like.
The family across the yard are also great. Quite
a big family of about 7 kids (plus one cousin who I’m not sure if he actually
lives here or just comes round a lot) 4 are going to school (but due to a
shortage of teachers here it’s only for half the day) and then three who are
too young to attend yet.
They’re all keen to learn English so we
played some games like Simon says (changed to teacher says. I didn’t want to
confuse them too much :p), heads, shoulders knees and toes and stuff like that.
They’re really cute, Adiga and Ati (not
sure if I’m spelling that right) about 8 and 7 are a typical boys, like playing
with a hacky sack thing I got and kicking around a football. The rest like to
repeat what I’ve said and run around laughing. When you come in you get a
chorus of “good evening!”
[This is out the back of my house. I'm told that bingo is very popular in Timor-Leste. Behind the boy on the left is a small shop window where the shop keeper is playing as well. The girl on the right is calling the numbers]
Anyway. That’s me up to Wednesday 12th.
I’ll post another couple bits soon.
Much love. x
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