Wayne and Ann went on holiday last Monday leaving me to run things here. Only hours after they had left there was a stone throwing incident outside the dive centre so I called the Joint Task Force. Within 10 minutes I had a bus load of GNR and 2 APV’s rumbling outside my gates. I was impressed, I made that happen! Of course the stone throwers had already long gone..
Before Ann and Wayne left I got Nelson to write down the staff schedule so I knew who was coming in when, and explained that I needed their help to make sure we had cover at all times. The next day the morning staff was late and the afternoon staff didn’t turn up! Apparently he got confused about the schedule, which I could understand if it was new but it turned out it was the same schedule as they have been using for the last 2 years! I think it was a case of ‘The Boss is away so what can I get away with?’ I soon put a stop to that.
I had dinner with Robbie last week, he’s off to Thailand for a month so Miss Millie (his goat) is also going on holiday to Baucau (an Eastern District of East Timor). Millie is going to be transported by car, her first road trip. We had visions of Miss Millie sitting in the front of a Pink Cadillac, donned in sunglasses and neckscarf like Penelope Pitstop. I have very bizarre conversations with Robbie!
The UN have upped the security level again due to the increase of incidents around town, so no UN staff are allowed outside of Dili unless they get prior clearance. What with that and the wind we have been having this week, it’s not great for the dive business. Jurgen text me yesterday with a security update ‘Rioting between 100 people on Hera Road, Becora. Spears in use’ to which I replied ‘ So what, I have 3 dogs, a chicken on the roof and a chick that’s fled into the house, I’ve a bigger riot going on here’. Doris is an absolute monster when it comes to chickens. Why on earth do the stupid animals come into the garden when they can see the dogs?
I’ve become the mummy instructor around here. My PADI Bubblemaker’s are increasing, now it’s the talk of the school. I had one little girl aged 8 called Georgina, who was adorable. Just before we went in the water she said to me ‘I’m soooooo excited!’ Then when we finished swimming through hoops, playing with the underwater torpedo and doing handstands in the pool, she said ‘Thank you very much, that was so much fun’. But the best bit was when I went to sign her diving logbook, complete with fishy stickers of course! She had written ‘This is the best day of my life’, my heart completely melted.
Monday, September 18, 2006
Wednesday, September 06, 2006
Concert for Peace - East Timor 6th September 2006
We went to a great concert sponsored by Arte Morris in Dili this week; it was a real Wembley Stadium affair. The stage was the presidential palace which is a wide, two storey building and has a load of arches which were lit up as the sun set on the beach opposite. It had a fantastic atmosphere, drinking Tiger beer while sitting on the harbour wall, listening to Timorese sing for peace and unity while the sun turns a glorious red as it drops below the horizon. As soon as the sun dropped though, the audience disappeared back to their homes, to scared to be out at night. I dropped a student back to her hotel last night because taxis don’t run at night anymore, I counted 5 cars and absolutely no people on the streets, it was like a ghost town, mind you it was Tuesday, and Dili never really roars with life at night anyway.
Part of the reason for the empty streets, are the incidents of violence and burning that have recently reared their head again, mainly stone throwing and arson, but there was one report of shooting in the city centre. Many associate this new outbreak with Major Alfredo Reinado escaping from jail. Major Alfredo, who is labelled in the press as the ‘former rebel leader’, was arrested the day after the arms amnesty expired because he didn’t hand his weapons in. He was put in prison under Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police guard and on the 30th of August along with 56 other prisoners, escaped. Rumours make it sound like he simply walked out right under the AFP’s noses. Either way the Ozzies have a lot of explaining to do, rather embarrassing!
We have had ‘The Mercy’ hospital ship in the harbour over the last week, apparently it visits East Timor every eight months or so. The view from the dive centre was this huge white ship with red crosses emblazoned on the side, next to which was an Australian battleship, its amazing how you think nothing of this sort of sight in East Timor, you just get used to it.
While it was here, they set up an emergency dental surgery at Dr Dan’s clinic. Ann went along with her tooth problem and joined 30 or so East Timorese waiting for treatment, but unfortunately that day they were only doing extractions. The one thing we could change though when The Mercy was here was our dive briefings. ‘The nearest decompression chamber is situated on that bloody great big boat in the harbour’, rather than Darwin or Bali. It’s left now to go back to Ache, Indonesia.
Occasionally you get moments where you think ‘Only in East Timor!’ We had one the other day whilst sitting outside the dive centre on the terrace, the sun on our backs, drinking coffee and listening to the water lapping on the beach opposite. Our moment was broken by loud speaker driven western music, not something you hear every day. An army truck with speakers on top pulled up outside the dive centre and with music blaring started handing out leaflets to Timorese. It was a surreal moment; it reminded us of Apocalypse Now. To make it even more surreal Ann encountered the same truck canvassing outside Dr Dan’s later in the week, but this time it was playing ‘Brown Sugar’ by the Rolling Stones, very appropriate.
Begging is becoming more and more of a problem around town. I stopped for lunch at the Terrace café and was immediately pounced on by an enterprising young boy who offered me security for my car. This did make me laugh as we always leave the dive truck open because everything that is not nailed down has already been pinched. The last time we locked one side door, they would-be thieves broke the little side window, even though the drivers side door was open and the other little side window was already missing. We now have through car ventilation! This is my life after the company BMW! Needless to say, I declined his offer and told him to go back to school.
On a personal front, good news, I’ve got a new 32 page passport. Or should I say a 25 page passport after you take out all the pages they have used for language translations etc. What a swizz, £100 for 25 pages, its hardly going to last me 10 years, the last one only lasted 3 years before it was full. When I asked about 48 page passport I was told they were not available until next year because of the new biometric system they have just introduced, great!
Other good news is the restaurant next door is now Thai, and very good. It was a Philippine restaurant before and very variable, you would order something one day and really enjoy it, then 2 days later you would order it again and it would be completely different. Phillipeno’s eat some strange parts of animals as well, so the Thai menu is much more appealing. I think any westerner would chance Prawn Phad Thai from a menu rather than Crispy Chicken Skin and Ass.
Business wise, I’ve just had my busiest two weeks since I’ve been here. A mixture of guided dives, Open Water students, EFR classes and Bubblemakers. Jurgen returned to East Timor with full dive kit for his two young daughters who are keen to do what Mummy and Daddy do. We had a fantastic time in the pool with an underwater torpedo, plastic rings, a hula hoop and a rubber snake! (Nandini’s – aged 8). Ann has made some fantastic certificates for the kids where we scan in a photograph of them in the water with scuba gear on; it’s the talk of the school. I’ve taught 10 year olds Open Water before but they have always had English as their first language, so teaching an Austrian/German and a Norwegian is a new challenge to me, even though their English is excellent. But the big reward is the smiles, especially when I hand them their own log book and they can choose their own fish sticker to put in it. The best £1.99 I ever spent in Hounslow High Street.
With the influx of aid we have some new NGO’s here. (Non Government Organisations). Obviously these Organisations are from all parts of the world, so sometimes their acronyms don’t translate so well into English. Here are just a few classics for your amusement:-
FOKUPERS- Komite de Unidade National Timorense, FAT – Don’t know what that stands for, and the best one, KUNT – also don’t know the translation.
Imagine a meeting with those 3 together!
Part of the reason for the empty streets, are the incidents of violence and burning that have recently reared their head again, mainly stone throwing and arson, but there was one report of shooting in the city centre. Many associate this new outbreak with Major Alfredo Reinado escaping from jail. Major Alfredo, who is labelled in the press as the ‘former rebel leader’, was arrested the day after the arms amnesty expired because he didn’t hand his weapons in. He was put in prison under Australian Defence Force and Australian Federal Police guard and on the 30th of August along with 56 other prisoners, escaped. Rumours make it sound like he simply walked out right under the AFP’s noses. Either way the Ozzies have a lot of explaining to do, rather embarrassing!
We have had ‘The Mercy’ hospital ship in the harbour over the last week, apparently it visits East Timor every eight months or so. The view from the dive centre was this huge white ship with red crosses emblazoned on the side, next to which was an Australian battleship, its amazing how you think nothing of this sort of sight in East Timor, you just get used to it.
While it was here, they set up an emergency dental surgery at Dr Dan’s clinic. Ann went along with her tooth problem and joined 30 or so East Timorese waiting for treatment, but unfortunately that day they were only doing extractions. The one thing we could change though when The Mercy was here was our dive briefings. ‘The nearest decompression chamber is situated on that bloody great big boat in the harbour’, rather than Darwin or Bali. It’s left now to go back to Ache, Indonesia.
Occasionally you get moments where you think ‘Only in East Timor!’ We had one the other day whilst sitting outside the dive centre on the terrace, the sun on our backs, drinking coffee and listening to the water lapping on the beach opposite. Our moment was broken by loud speaker driven western music, not something you hear every day. An army truck with speakers on top pulled up outside the dive centre and with music blaring started handing out leaflets to Timorese. It was a surreal moment; it reminded us of Apocalypse Now. To make it even more surreal Ann encountered the same truck canvassing outside Dr Dan’s later in the week, but this time it was playing ‘Brown Sugar’ by the Rolling Stones, very appropriate.
Begging is becoming more and more of a problem around town. I stopped for lunch at the Terrace café and was immediately pounced on by an enterprising young boy who offered me security for my car. This did make me laugh as we always leave the dive truck open because everything that is not nailed down has already been pinched. The last time we locked one side door, they would-be thieves broke the little side window, even though the drivers side door was open and the other little side window was already missing. We now have through car ventilation! This is my life after the company BMW! Needless to say, I declined his offer and told him to go back to school.
On a personal front, good news, I’ve got a new 32 page passport. Or should I say a 25 page passport after you take out all the pages they have used for language translations etc. What a swizz, £100 for 25 pages, its hardly going to last me 10 years, the last one only lasted 3 years before it was full. When I asked about 48 page passport I was told they were not available until next year because of the new biometric system they have just introduced, great!
Other good news is the restaurant next door is now Thai, and very good. It was a Philippine restaurant before and very variable, you would order something one day and really enjoy it, then 2 days later you would order it again and it would be completely different. Phillipeno’s eat some strange parts of animals as well, so the Thai menu is much more appealing. I think any westerner would chance Prawn Phad Thai from a menu rather than Crispy Chicken Skin and Ass.
Business wise, I’ve just had my busiest two weeks since I’ve been here. A mixture of guided dives, Open Water students, EFR classes and Bubblemakers. Jurgen returned to East Timor with full dive kit for his two young daughters who are keen to do what Mummy and Daddy do. We had a fantastic time in the pool with an underwater torpedo, plastic rings, a hula hoop and a rubber snake! (Nandini’s – aged 8). Ann has made some fantastic certificates for the kids where we scan in a photograph of them in the water with scuba gear on; it’s the talk of the school. I’ve taught 10 year olds Open Water before but they have always had English as their first language, so teaching an Austrian/German and a Norwegian is a new challenge to me, even though their English is excellent. But the big reward is the smiles, especially when I hand them their own log book and they can choose their own fish sticker to put in it. The best £1.99 I ever spent in Hounslow High Street.
With the influx of aid we have some new NGO’s here. (Non Government Organisations). Obviously these Organisations are from all parts of the world, so sometimes their acronyms don’t translate so well into English. Here are just a few classics for your amusement:-
FOKUPERS- Komite de Unidade National Timorense, FAT – Don’t know what that stands for, and the best one, KUNT – also don’t know the translation.
Imagine a meeting with those 3 together!
Wot No Electricity! - East Timor 25th August 2006
Its been a while, but take that as good news as things are calming down :-)
All was quiet in East Timor for a few weeks and then just before I went to Bali the stone throwing started again. We were at Dili Rock just kitting up for a dive when an Aussie policeman stopped for a chinwag and recounted a story from the previous evening:-
He received a call from the IDP camp near the airport reporting some trouble, so when they arrived a male Timorese IDP was complaining that they were not safe because they had no security. The first policeman then asked him where his security was, the man replied ‘I don’t know’, to which the second policeman replied ‘You do know, you stabbed him yesterday!’ If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny.
There are certain things you get used to here that would be totally unacceptable in a western world, like electricity cuts. In East Timor, electricity is incredibly expensive, as are most things. To purchase electricity in Dili you need to prepay at an office in central Dili where they issue with a computer generated code to punch into your meter. The problem is when you try to pay for electricity when the whole of Dili is having a power cut, their computers don’t work, because there is no electricity! Only in East Timor do you shrug your shoulders at this and say ‘Welcome to Timor’.
When you arrive in East Timor with a fresh pair of eyes, you notice things that are different, and then you get used to the place. One newcomer pointed out today that there is not one traffic light in the whole of East Timor, 6 months I’ve been driving around and never noticed that.
Any newcomers to Dili now, unfortunately won’t get a great first impression of the country. After getting off the plane in the grounds of the airport, you pass Aussie army tents on which some bored soldier has put up an Australian flag and cardboard signs saying ‘Casa De Mutley’, ‘Diligaf’ and ‘Sydney → A Bloody long way!’ After going through baggage reclaim your first sight will be an Australian APV, behind which is a huge IDP camp, ‘Welcome to East Timor’. In truth though in the past few weeks the IDP camps are getting smaller as people are returning home and there are no longer any road blocks.
There are however, still outbreaks of stone throwing and arson in the city, which appear to be organised, all going off at the same time. We were having a BBQ the other night when Major Wayne and Major Sergeant (Yes, he really is called that!) suddenly got a call and had to go. A good excuse for leaving a party. I arrived back from diving last week to find 12 police cars outside the dive centre. Some local lads were throwing stones so the ‘Joint Task Force’ was called. (No, they don’t deliver Whacky Backy!). Talk about rapid reaction force, although 12 combined Malaysian, Australian and Portuguese police vehicles seems a little excessive.
Ann is teaching the local kids on the veggie stall opposite some words in English, they now can count out your change in English and say thank you. Unfortunately they can also say ‘One Dollar’ and have started to beg from the Malai, a habit we are trying to discourage, but its getting more widespread as more troops and UN are pouring in and don’t know any better. You can’t blame the kids if they can make a quick buck.
I had to go to Bali recently to get a new passport because after 3 years mine was full. I had a choice of going to the honorary consulate in Bali or the British Embassy in Jakarta, a tough choice that one! Bali is wonderful, a beautiful scenic island which is magical and musical, such a refreshing change from East Timor which can be tough going at times. Of course I dived; you can’t go to Bali without doing The Liberty wreck at Tulamben which was fabulous for really unusual critters such as pigme seahorses, nudibranch, and harlequin ghost pipefish, as well as big fish such as Napoleon Wrasse. The unusual thing about Tulamben is the local women of the village carry the gear and the tanks, up to three at a time, one on each shoulder and one on their head. Their posture puts Miss Jean Brodie to shame. For this they get 40 cents per tank from the dive centres which the village has used to create a cultural centre in the village. But it extends further than the women because the men police the reef to ensure that any fishing is done on the outer reefs which are not accessible to divers, so the inner reefs are not damaged by fishing equipment and the fish are not scared off. It’s a great scheme.
I also dived with H and Camilla who own Global Aquatic. I had to write a thank you email to them both, Camilla for the diving and H for the hangovers, they are both really good fun. Camilla took me to Manta Ray cove where surprise, surprise, I saw my first Manta Rays, two of them playing above us, awesome. I told Camilla she was now my best friend forever!
I had a brilliant time in Bali with good company, good diving and good food. It was hard getting back on the plane to East Timor, just like the normal feeling when you go on holiday and then have to go back to work. However, things are starting to get busy, new faces coming through the door and some old ones returning. It’s amazing how a break can recharge your batteries and get you enthusiastic again.
All was quiet in East Timor for a few weeks and then just before I went to Bali the stone throwing started again. We were at Dili Rock just kitting up for a dive when an Aussie policeman stopped for a chinwag and recounted a story from the previous evening:-
He received a call from the IDP camp near the airport reporting some trouble, so when they arrived a male Timorese IDP was complaining that they were not safe because they had no security. The first policeman then asked him where his security was, the man replied ‘I don’t know’, to which the second policeman replied ‘You do know, you stabbed him yesterday!’ If it wasn’t so tragic, it would be funny.
There are certain things you get used to here that would be totally unacceptable in a western world, like electricity cuts. In East Timor, electricity is incredibly expensive, as are most things. To purchase electricity in Dili you need to prepay at an office in central Dili where they issue with a computer generated code to punch into your meter. The problem is when you try to pay for electricity when the whole of Dili is having a power cut, their computers don’t work, because there is no electricity! Only in East Timor do you shrug your shoulders at this and say ‘Welcome to Timor’.
When you arrive in East Timor with a fresh pair of eyes, you notice things that are different, and then you get used to the place. One newcomer pointed out today that there is not one traffic light in the whole of East Timor, 6 months I’ve been driving around and never noticed that.
Any newcomers to Dili now, unfortunately won’t get a great first impression of the country. After getting off the plane in the grounds of the airport, you pass Aussie army tents on which some bored soldier has put up an Australian flag and cardboard signs saying ‘Casa De Mutley’, ‘Diligaf’ and ‘Sydney → A Bloody long way!’ After going through baggage reclaim your first sight will be an Australian APV, behind which is a huge IDP camp, ‘Welcome to East Timor’. In truth though in the past few weeks the IDP camps are getting smaller as people are returning home and there are no longer any road blocks.
There are however, still outbreaks of stone throwing and arson in the city, which appear to be organised, all going off at the same time. We were having a BBQ the other night when Major Wayne and Major Sergeant (Yes, he really is called that!) suddenly got a call and had to go. A good excuse for leaving a party. I arrived back from diving last week to find 12 police cars outside the dive centre. Some local lads were throwing stones so the ‘Joint Task Force’ was called. (No, they don’t deliver Whacky Backy!). Talk about rapid reaction force, although 12 combined Malaysian, Australian and Portuguese police vehicles seems a little excessive.
Ann is teaching the local kids on the veggie stall opposite some words in English, they now can count out your change in English and say thank you. Unfortunately they can also say ‘One Dollar’ and have started to beg from the Malai, a habit we are trying to discourage, but its getting more widespread as more troops and UN are pouring in and don’t know any better. You can’t blame the kids if they can make a quick buck.
I had to go to Bali recently to get a new passport because after 3 years mine was full. I had a choice of going to the honorary consulate in Bali or the British Embassy in Jakarta, a tough choice that one! Bali is wonderful, a beautiful scenic island which is magical and musical, such a refreshing change from East Timor which can be tough going at times. Of course I dived; you can’t go to Bali without doing The Liberty wreck at Tulamben which was fabulous for really unusual critters such as pigme seahorses, nudibranch, and harlequin ghost pipefish, as well as big fish such as Napoleon Wrasse. The unusual thing about Tulamben is the local women of the village carry the gear and the tanks, up to three at a time, one on each shoulder and one on their head. Their posture puts Miss Jean Brodie to shame. For this they get 40 cents per tank from the dive centres which the village has used to create a cultural centre in the village. But it extends further than the women because the men police the reef to ensure that any fishing is done on the outer reefs which are not accessible to divers, so the inner reefs are not damaged by fishing equipment and the fish are not scared off. It’s a great scheme.
I also dived with H and Camilla who own Global Aquatic. I had to write a thank you email to them both, Camilla for the diving and H for the hangovers, they are both really good fun. Camilla took me to Manta Ray cove where surprise, surprise, I saw my first Manta Rays, two of them playing above us, awesome. I told Camilla she was now my best friend forever!
I had a brilliant time in Bali with good company, good diving and good food. It was hard getting back on the plane to East Timor, just like the normal feeling when you go on holiday and then have to go back to work. However, things are starting to get busy, new faces coming through the door and some old ones returning. It’s amazing how a break can recharge your batteries and get you enthusiastic again.
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