Hiawatha in Timor – East Timor 14th October 2006

There is a great loss in Timor, The British Embassy is finally closing, which is really sad as they were fantastic during the middle of the troubles here. We were cordially invited to two parties at the British Embassy this week, the Brits closure party and the general closure party, both were nice events.

I’m trying to teach the British Ambassadors husband to dive at the moment, his name is Jamon and he’s Thai and to say he is eccentric is probably an understatement. We told him that drinking alcohol was not allowed before a dive, so day one he came round with two bottles of wine to drink after the dive! At the first British Embassy 'do' we walked into the residence and were greeted by Jamon in full native American Indian dress, complete with headdress, chest jewellery and feather earrings. But with Jamon, you don’t think anything of it apart from it was a bit bizarre in the British Embassy

When I took Jamon for his first dive I went to Dili Rock and left Nelson in charge of the truck. When I came out of the water there were two Timorese guys standing by the truck staring stony faced at me. Nelson explained that they were from the West (Nelson is from the East) and they had the truck key and wanted money. I immediately picked up my mobile and threatened them with the police. They gave the key back to Nelson whilst screaming at him in Tetum, and eventually retreated to the other side of the road. As we were packing up the gear and I noticed that Nelson had got out the spanner and screwdriver from the spares kit, apparently one of the guys was carrying a knife! Nelson asked me to take the other route out of the dive site and picked up a large stone before he got in the car. Luckily the incident came to nothing, but quite shocking later when I realised I’d been involved in an attempted armed robbery!

The stoning incidents are getting worse here in Dili. A friend had a stone lobbed through his car window as he was driving over the Komoro bridge. Luckily our Drive truck is so old and tatty that it no way looks like an official vehicle, well that’s what we are hoping anyway. In a land with no insurance, all damage has to be paid for out of your own pocket

On the diving front we have good news, there was only one commercial fishing company operating off of the coast of Com. It was a Thai fishing company that was rumoured to be over fishing their quota by miles, anyway they got caught shark fin fishing a few months after their contract started. Their boat has been impounded and hopefully the government will think twice before letting another commercial fishing company fish in Timorese waters.

Wayne and Ann have started a new club called the Local Characters Club. They felt left out because they didn’t have a pass around their neck which all the UN and NGO’s do. So Ann has made official neck passes with photos and the number of years of service. To qualify for this club you must be a resident of Timor for five years or more off of your own dollar (investing in the country}. Once you have this pass, Local characters are entitled to:-

1 Park where they like
2 Enter any building (as they probably built it)
3 Drive whilst over-refreshed
4 Express controversial views or spit the dummy in public any time they like
5 Undertake to look after any other Local Character (Regardless of previous blues)

The last rule is because half the time the Local Characters are not speaking to half of the other Local Characters. All Local Character passes expire in May 2007, the date of the next Timorese election