The taxis here in Dili usually sport a windscreen banner such as ‘Tomboy’, ‘Remember’ and ‘White Zombie’, to name but a few. The banners obscure all but a strip of windscreen which they peer out of and dangly things such as religious ornaments and cuddly toys usually adorn their mirrors. There doesn’t seem to be any regulations concerning taxi roadworthiness, they all travel at 25km per hour and as long as their horn works any fare is fair game. Taxi fares before the crisis were $1 but went up to $2 around town. However, Joey got in a cab that broke down 3 times on the way to his destination and to his horror he realised the taxi driver didn’t have any brakes. This fact he gathered when he saw the driver (rapidly approaching parked traffic) desperately pumping the brakes, then yanking the handbrake and as a last ditch attempt, sticking his foot out of the drivers side door and dragging his flip-flop along the ground. After an hour of gritted teeth on this precarious journey, the cab driver had the audacity to try and charge him $3! Unfortunately this one wasn’t sporting a banner, so we would know which one to avoid.
We have had a series of unofficial roadblocks around town outside the nativity scenes. The locals put rocks in the road to slow down the traffic, effectively making some two way roads single lane. I don’t blame them as there has been so much rain recently, you don’t want the UN haring through puddles and soaking baby Jesus or in the case of the one outside the Australian Embassy, the kangaroo. I thought Mary and Joseph had a cow, a lamb and 3 wise men in the stable, I can’t recall a kangaroo!
Honestly though, you have to be extra careful driving at the moment, because of all the puddles you are likely to get a motorbike or cyclist pulling straight out in front of you (mirrors don’t exist on two wheel modes of transport). I’ve watched some UN vehicles treating the puddles like a game, screaming down the road seeing how many Timorese they can soak en-route. I nearly got pushed off of the road today by a UN cop, registration number UN 0116, trying to overtake me on a bend then finding himself face to face with a nativity road block, so rather than pull back he cut me up pushed me off of the road. If I had been in the truck I may have stood my ground but I’m driving my friends car while he is on holiday, so I had to content myself with a lot of swearing, horn blowing and rude hand signals.
Christmas Eve we got burgled by some local scroates who saw the Christmas booze being loaded into the house, then the boys leaving to collect some food. They jumped over the back wall and slit open the mosquito net on my window with a knife. They raided my room and took $450, 2 credit cards and all my swimming costumes (strange huh!), then went through the house nicking a pair of binoculars, two cases of tiger and a bottle of gin, before escaping through the back door and back over the wall with my pushbike, amazingly. Now you would think the dogs would have created alarming which Ann would have heard because frighteningly she was in the house at the time, but she didn’t hear a thing. So we suspect that the scroates threw some food over which was drugged as the dogs were off of their dinner that night, and if you have ever met Doris, you know that that is a rare occasion. So that took the stuffing out of Christmas for me having to rustle up phone cards to ring the UK and cancel credit cards, then dealing with the police. I know this kind of thing happens the world over on Christmas Eve, at least I wasn’t a little kid that got all her presents stolen.
Talking of presents, there are some really tacky Chinese lighters being sold around town. I was standing outside Leader supermarket when one of the phone card vendors said ‘Hello Missus’ and showed me his lighter with disco lights, I told him my lighter had disco lights. ‘Hello Missus’ again and showed me the built in torch, so I got my lighter out and showed him my built in torch. ‘Hello Missus’ again and he pressed down the lighter to show me the flame, so I did the same but my lighter started playing Happy Birthday at the same time! Wayne had found the musical lighters in the Dili club and was so amused by them that he bought the whole stock and preceded to annoy everyone with renditions of ‘Oh my Darling Clementine’, ‘London Bridge is falling down’ and ‘Happy Birthday’ on a loop for the next week. Not to be outdone by my musical lighter, the phone card vendor tried a final ‘Hello Missus’ and showed me a lighter with a torch that displayed a provocatively clad woman illuminated in its beam. I don’t think he quite expected the peals of laughter from me as I groped for a $1 bill, what a great tacky Christmas present.
Wednesday, December 26, 2007
Friday, December 14, 2007
3 T-Shirts in one day – East Timor 14th December 2007
Since my last update I had a glorious 10 day holiday in Bali. My friend John came over from the UK and he had never been to Asia before, which makes you look at a place with a fresh pair of eyes. We certainly did Bali, after a couple of nights in Sanur with some crazy hard drinking New Zealanders for company; we hired a car and toured the island, after the compulsory shopping trip to Marks and Spencer’s of course! First stop was Lovina to go dolphin watching at dawn, then onto hot springs and massage. Next stop Lake Batur visiting some temples en-route and sometimes almost having to physically fight your way back to the car; it’s hard to close the car door when there is an arm stuck in it wielding a fistful of postcards! God some of those souvenir ladies can be very insistent.
After watching the sunrise over the lake from the hotel, we moved on to Ubud, which bears no resemblance to the Ubud I visited 20 years ago. It’s charming, and the hotel we found was also charming with carved 4 poster beds, lush greenery around the swimming pool which backed on to bright green rice fields. Incredible at only $30 per night. In Ubud we went to see traditional Balinese dancing which was more like an opera, followed by fire dancing. The next night we watched live jazz at the Jazz cafe. Then on to Amed for the amazing rice terraces and a night in Candidasa. Templed out and weary we returned to Sanur to have our spirits a little dampened by the unscrupulous money changers. If you see a really good rate, beware; always make sure that you are last person to count the money as the good ones count the money again and suddenly you walk away 200,000rp short (about $22). If you insist on counting it again they suddenly come up with a story about commission and a lower rate as they know they are not going to get away with the fast hand trick. Another thing you have to watch is mixing up the 5,000 note with the 50,000; John bought some tobacco for 55,000 which the guy behind the counter was happily counting. Luckily I noticed that John had in fact given him 550,000, if I hadn’t spotted it, that transaction would have cost him $60.
I know cheating and corruption goes on all around the world, but in Indonesia it seems rife. When the police pull you over, even if you have done nothing wrong, you know it’s going to cost you 50,000 and you get the money ready, the sooner you pay them, the sooner you can be on your way. East Timor is not perfect either; at the border you should pay $30 for a 30 day visa, but many tourists are told that they can only have a 15 day visa. Correct me if I’m wrong but if a 30 day visa is $30, shouldn’t a 15 day visa be $15, but they are still charged $30 for it. So what happens to the extra $15?
Talking of visas, whenever I get my passport photos taken in the Fuji shop, they always come out washed out and over exposed. I worked out that this is done on purpose as the Timorese consider light skin beautiful, so the cameraman makes his clients paler and attractive. Unfortunately, he doesn’t change the settings so all the Malai come out looking like ghosts.
Having visitors from Europe means you can request the odd items you can’t get in East Timor. Between John and Kasia (a recent visitor from Poland), I received shampoo and a DVD, other people received Cheesy Wotsits , Slivovitz, beef suet, guitar strings and flea collars (the collars were not a personal present, obviously!). I sometimes get puzzled responses when I reply to the question, ‘Is there anything you want me to bring?’
Nearly every day since I returned from Bali we have had one or more electricity cuts per day and the place is so hot! It seems much hotter than last year, but it’s just the humidity is greater. Stand outside for a couple of minutes and you have sweat trickling down you, not pleasant. Days are judged by the number of T-shirts you wear and just recently they have all been 3 t-shirt days. It’s not good when you find your own smell offensive. On the plus side though, on one dive the water temperature registered 30 degrees.
The electricity cuts are so frequent that none of the traffic lights are working as it would be too tedious to try and reset them every time the power goes off. Guess what? There is no major chaos, the traffic is still moving just like it did before the traffic lights were installed six months ago. The taxis and horrendous one-way system around Dili ensure that nothing moves too fast, allowing traffic to merge when it needs to. That was the only good thing that happened at the beginning of the crisis, the one-way system was scrapped, only to be reinstated by the Ozzy troops when they arrived.
One bargain I have found to help in the dark is a Timor Leste lighter at 50 cents. It has 3 light sources; the flame itself, a set of disco lights which are set off as soon as you click the lighter (much to my amusement), and a small built in torch with a great beam that you can use to light your way to the generator.
On November the 12th it was Remembrance Day for the Santa Cruz massacre. Candles were lit and lined the street and beach, our local village made a bonfire on the beach, played guitars and set off fireworks, except some of the fireworks were actually flares. The poor dogs were petrified. The trial of the guys that shot the policemen last May was held last week, sentences ranged from 10 to 12 years with 7 acquittals. 12 years doesn’t seem a long sentence for murder.
We are seeing more and more turtle shells for sale. Usually out in the sticks at the side of the road. Turtles, coral and some shells are protected species in East Timor, carry a $50,000 fine or up to 5 years in jail for anyone caught buying or selling them. Not that would make any difference to the Timorese because they couldn’t imagine $50,000 in their wildest dreams. They just know that the Malai will pay $20-$30 per turtle shell and they and their family can eat well. The stupid thing is that both flights out of East Timor go to countries where these products are illegal also, so whoever is buying them stands a great chance of getting them confiscated anyway.
After watching the sunrise over the lake from the hotel, we moved on to Ubud, which bears no resemblance to the Ubud I visited 20 years ago. It’s charming, and the hotel we found was also charming with carved 4 poster beds, lush greenery around the swimming pool which backed on to bright green rice fields. Incredible at only $30 per night. In Ubud we went to see traditional Balinese dancing which was more like an opera, followed by fire dancing. The next night we watched live jazz at the Jazz cafe. Then on to Amed for the amazing rice terraces and a night in Candidasa. Templed out and weary we returned to Sanur to have our spirits a little dampened by the unscrupulous money changers. If you see a really good rate, beware; always make sure that you are last person to count the money as the good ones count the money again and suddenly you walk away 200,000rp short (about $22). If you insist on counting it again they suddenly come up with a story about commission and a lower rate as they know they are not going to get away with the fast hand trick. Another thing you have to watch is mixing up the 5,000 note with the 50,000; John bought some tobacco for 55,000 which the guy behind the counter was happily counting. Luckily I noticed that John had in fact given him 550,000, if I hadn’t spotted it, that transaction would have cost him $60.
I know cheating and corruption goes on all around the world, but in Indonesia it seems rife. When the police pull you over, even if you have done nothing wrong, you know it’s going to cost you 50,000 and you get the money ready, the sooner you pay them, the sooner you can be on your way. East Timor is not perfect either; at the border you should pay $30 for a 30 day visa, but many tourists are told that they can only have a 15 day visa. Correct me if I’m wrong but if a 30 day visa is $30, shouldn’t a 15 day visa be $15, but they are still charged $30 for it. So what happens to the extra $15?
Talking of visas, whenever I get my passport photos taken in the Fuji shop, they always come out washed out and over exposed. I worked out that this is done on purpose as the Timorese consider light skin beautiful, so the cameraman makes his clients paler and attractive. Unfortunately, he doesn’t change the settings so all the Malai come out looking like ghosts.
Having visitors from Europe means you can request the odd items you can’t get in East Timor. Between John and Kasia (a recent visitor from Poland), I received shampoo and a DVD, other people received Cheesy Wotsits , Slivovitz, beef suet, guitar strings and flea collars (the collars were not a personal present, obviously!). I sometimes get puzzled responses when I reply to the question, ‘Is there anything you want me to bring?’
Nearly every day since I returned from Bali we have had one or more electricity cuts per day and the place is so hot! It seems much hotter than last year, but it’s just the humidity is greater. Stand outside for a couple of minutes and you have sweat trickling down you, not pleasant. Days are judged by the number of T-shirts you wear and just recently they have all been 3 t-shirt days. It’s not good when you find your own smell offensive. On the plus side though, on one dive the water temperature registered 30 degrees.
The electricity cuts are so frequent that none of the traffic lights are working as it would be too tedious to try and reset them every time the power goes off. Guess what? There is no major chaos, the traffic is still moving just like it did before the traffic lights were installed six months ago. The taxis and horrendous one-way system around Dili ensure that nothing moves too fast, allowing traffic to merge when it needs to. That was the only good thing that happened at the beginning of the crisis, the one-way system was scrapped, only to be reinstated by the Ozzy troops when they arrived.
One bargain I have found to help in the dark is a Timor Leste lighter at 50 cents. It has 3 light sources; the flame itself, a set of disco lights which are set off as soon as you click the lighter (much to my amusement), and a small built in torch with a great beam that you can use to light your way to the generator.
On November the 12th it was Remembrance Day for the Santa Cruz massacre. Candles were lit and lined the street and beach, our local village made a bonfire on the beach, played guitars and set off fireworks, except some of the fireworks were actually flares. The poor dogs were petrified. The trial of the guys that shot the policemen last May was held last week, sentences ranged from 10 to 12 years with 7 acquittals. 12 years doesn’t seem a long sentence for murder.
We are seeing more and more turtle shells for sale. Usually out in the sticks at the side of the road. Turtles, coral and some shells are protected species in East Timor, carry a $50,000 fine or up to 5 years in jail for anyone caught buying or selling them. Not that would make any difference to the Timorese because they couldn’t imagine $50,000 in their wildest dreams. They just know that the Malai will pay $20-$30 per turtle shell and they and their family can eat well. The stupid thing is that both flights out of East Timor go to countries where these products are illegal also, so whoever is buying them stands a great chance of getting them confiscated anyway.
Saturday, October 20, 2007
The Youngest East Timorese Diver – East Timor 20th October 2007
Nugie has had a great week; she has been a bridesmaid, she had a birthday party and she became the youngest East Timorese diver ever.
Nugie, Jose, Marianne and Jurgen, Dili Rock, 18th October 2007
On the 22nd of Au
gust 2007, Nugie (Gracilda Amaral Soares) became the youngest ever East Timorese to breathe on scuba in the Hotel Esplanada pool. At that stage she was nine years old and did a PADI Bubblemaker. This entails throwing around an underwater torpedo, swimming through hoops, doing handstands and basically having fun. The 17th of October was her 10th birthday and after sitting through a PADI DVD, with help from one of our wonderful diving staff on the hard translation bits, she completed her first confined water session with me. Today, the day after her 10th birthday, she became the youngest ever Timorese to breathe on scuba in the Open Water, she is also the youngest in East Timor to complete the PADI Discover Scuba Diving Course. What a birthday present!
Anjleen Hannak of course is still the youngest PADI Open Water Diver in East Timor, qualifying at the age of 10; she is now 11 and a veteran diver with 26 open water dives. But who knows how long she will hold this title.
Living in East Timor, it’s hard to keep in touch with people; I guess that’s why I started this blog. Whilst the media were sensationalising events here, I wanted to reassure loved ones that I wasn’t living in the dangerous minefield of violence that some TV networks made it out to be. Email etc. may seem a little impersonal at times but other communication methods can be challenging; my UK SIM card does not work in East Timor and my East Timor SIM card allows me to text Indonesia, randomly Australia but not the UK! There is one place at Tiger Fuels that has 24hour broadband with Skype facilities, but the time difference with the UK is another challenge as East Timor is 9hrs ahead.
The phone company here is called Timor Telecom and they have the monopoly on the telecommunications network. You can get a land line, but telephone lines get stolen for the copper, so like a friend of mine, you can find yourself without a land line for over six months. Most people use mobile phones to communicate which you recharge using scratch cards bought from small boys at the side of the road. Call costs are horrendous, so most of us use text. Personally, I have never been a fan of text as they seem impersonal and can be misinterpreted, but the cost of voice calls makes them necessary.
However, the Philippinos love to text and seem to have their own text language. The first text I ever received started with ‘Gd am’. It took me about 10 minutes to realise that ‘Gd am’ was ‘Good Morning!’
Back to Timor Telecom; they made themselves extremely unpopular last year at the beginning of the crisis when telephone network crashed making telecommunication total impossible. Trying to raise their image they introduced voice mail a couple of months ago, this was a fiasco because your phone automatically diverted into voice mail but you couldn’t retrieve them. In the first week we got 44 voice mail messages that we couldn’t listen to. Now we have managed to shut the service off.
On the 17th, it was Timor Telecoms 5th anniversary, so at 7am everyone in the country received a text message to recharge their phone before midnight and receive double the credit value. This threw the whole country’s telephone network into chaos again. No-one could make calls, send texts or recharge their phone, the network was always busy, it just couldn’t cope. I started to recharge my phone at 6.30 pm and still hadn’t succeeded at 7am the next morning. Bruce was smug though as he had been to the Timor Telecom office and paid $50 over the counter. They automatically credited him $100 using their computer. ‘That was a good idea’ Ann exclaimed, ‘why didn’t you ring us and tell us?’ Bruce’s reply, ‘Because the phones were down!’
New restaurants, bars and massage parlours are still springing up around town. There’s even the odd tattoo parlour; however, the one on the Comoro road advertising ‘Tatto’ doesn’t inspire much confidence.
By the way, for anyone reading this in the UK; the programme featuring Ross Kemp in East Timor is being shown on Monday the 22nd. I think it is channel 4, but I’m not sure.
On the 22nd of Au
gust 2007, Nugie (Gracilda Amaral Soares) became the youngest ever East Timorese to breathe on scuba in the Hotel Esplanada pool. At that stage she was nine years old and did a PADI Bubblemaker. This entails throwing around an underwater torpedo, swimming through hoops, doing handstands and basically having fun. The 17th of October was her 10th birthday and after sitting through a PADI DVD, with help from one of our wonderful diving staff on the hard translation bits, she completed her first confined water session with me. Today, the day after her 10th birthday, she became the youngest ever Timorese to breathe on scuba in the Open Water, she is also the youngest in East Timor to complete the PADI Discover Scuba Diving Course. What a birthday present!Anjleen Hannak of course is still the youngest PADI Open Water Diver in East Timor, qualifying at the age of 10; she is now 11 and a veteran diver with 26 open water dives. But who knows how long she will hold this title.
Living in East Timor, it’s hard to keep in touch with people; I guess that’s why I started this blog. Whilst the media were sensationalising events here, I wanted to reassure loved ones that I wasn’t living in the dangerous minefield of violence that some TV networks made it out to be. Email etc. may seem a little impersonal at times but other communication methods can be challenging; my UK SIM card does not work in East Timor and my East Timor SIM card allows me to text Indonesia, randomly Australia but not the UK! There is one place at Tiger Fuels that has 24hour broadband with Skype facilities, but the time difference with the UK is another challenge as East Timor is 9hrs ahead.
The phone company here is called Timor Telecom and they have the monopoly on the telecommunications network. You can get a land line, but telephone lines get stolen for the copper, so like a friend of mine, you can find yourself without a land line for over six months. Most people use mobile phones to communicate which you recharge using scratch cards bought from small boys at the side of the road. Call costs are horrendous, so most of us use text. Personally, I have never been a fan of text as they seem impersonal and can be misinterpreted, but the cost of voice calls makes them necessary.
However, the Philippinos love to text and seem to have their own text language. The first text I ever received started with ‘Gd am’. It took me about 10 minutes to realise that ‘Gd am’ was ‘Good Morning!’
Back to Timor Telecom; they made themselves extremely unpopular last year at the beginning of the crisis when telephone network crashed making telecommunication total impossible. Trying to raise their image they introduced voice mail a couple of months ago, this was a fiasco because your phone automatically diverted into voice mail but you couldn’t retrieve them. In the first week we got 44 voice mail messages that we couldn’t listen to. Now we have managed to shut the service off.
On the 17th, it was Timor Telecoms 5th anniversary, so at 7am everyone in the country received a text message to recharge their phone before midnight and receive double the credit value. This threw the whole country’s telephone network into chaos again. No-one could make calls, send texts or recharge their phone, the network was always busy, it just couldn’t cope. I started to recharge my phone at 6.30 pm and still hadn’t succeeded at 7am the next morning. Bruce was smug though as he had been to the Timor Telecom office and paid $50 over the counter. They automatically credited him $100 using their computer. ‘That was a good idea’ Ann exclaimed, ‘why didn’t you ring us and tell us?’ Bruce’s reply, ‘Because the phones were down!’
New restaurants, bars and massage parlours are still springing up around town. There’s even the odd tattoo parlour; however, the one on the Comoro road advertising ‘Tatto’ doesn’t inspire much confidence.
By the way, for anyone reading this in the UK; the programme featuring Ross Kemp in East Timor is being shown on Monday the 22nd. I think it is channel 4, but I’m not sure.
Monday, October 15, 2007
Dugongs, Whales and Rays – East Timor 13th October 2007
We have had an influx of visa runner backpackers recently, word must have got out it’s safe to come to East Timor again. If you want to get another visa for Indonesia, you must leave the country and East Timor is one of the cheapest options as it doesn’t mean paying for an international flight if you come over the border at Kupang. So many Backpackers come here and wait a week (5 working days) for their new 2 month Indonesian visa. Meanwhile they enjoy the delights of East Timor which at the moment is a superb time to visit, the water is fantastic, some of the best diving of the year as its whale season, the city is calm and becoming vibrant again, and there is the occasional low flying Blackhawk to add to the quirkiness of the place. Backpackers love it, they go out to the districts and get greeted by smiling faces, fantastic scenery and hundreds of kids shouting ‘Malai, Malai’ as they pass, coupled with 41 different nationalities of UN Police with guns patrolling the roads.
But why is it that all the backpackers look like Jesus? Wispy goatee beards, long hair, and clothes that they look like they have slept in for a week. The Timorese can’t understand how these Malai can afford to come here on an aeroplane yet cannot afford clothes! There are other cultural issues where I wish some of these ‘travellers’ would do their homework, for example bikinis are a no-no here, to a Timorese you are running around in your underwear! And public affection is also a no-no, snogging in the street is equivalent to full on sex, it’s just not done. Still, they are bringing fresh dollars into the local economy, especially the little Timorese restaurants and fruit and vegetable stalls because these guys eat cheap. I don’t suppose I was any different when I was backpacking (no goatee beard though!)
We all have been doing so much diving recently and it’s been superb. At K41, we have had a dugong for over a week and I’ve dived with it twice. One day, on the surface we had dugong, humpback whales and dolphins, the day before Wayne had seen orcas in the bay. I took a couple of Spanish tourist there who only had one day to dive. The first dive we had a huge Maori Wrasse swim right in front of us, then the second dive we had barracuda, banded pipefish, loads of unusual nudibranch, an anglerfish and then the dugong came into play twice! They were very happy divers.
K57 is also superb at the moment; this dive site can only be dived in the dry season as the Manatutu River is nearby. It’s a long way and very hot, but well worth the effort as it is a stunning wall dive. One day we saw a humpback come up three times in the bay and today, apart from nudibranch sex everywhere, we had a mobular ray, which looks like a small manta ray. I keep mentioning nudibranch, for the uninitiated these are very colourful sea slugs which divers, especially marine biologists go crazy for. At the moment this reefs are teeming with them, we are seeing unusual types and many of them are having sex. Pornography under water!
At Bob’s Rock I saw a nice big reef shark, some new nudibranch that I haven’t seen before, two leaf scorpion fish of different colours posing on a barrel sponge and a ribbon eel. Photographer’s paradise! Yesterday at this same site, in addition to the leaf scorpion fish, there was a barracuda and large black anglerfish. Then on the way home on the boat we were surrounded by a pod of dolphins that played at the bow of the boat, then started a jumping display. This delighted our clients, all of which had never seen dolphins up close in their natural habitat before.
Work is keeping me so busy that I haven’t really had time to muse over life in Dili, everything seems to be calm, the streets are busy and apart from a temporary milk and cement shortage, life is pretty normal. The only unusual thing was watching the Kiwi cops practicing the Hakka. The Kiwi contingent of the UN Police are on rotation. After six months, the old ones leave and a new batch come in, so in keeping with tradition they perform the Haka to each other on the tarmac of the airport, we watched the practice run at the Hotel Esplanada which was very entertaining.
But why is it that all the backpackers look like Jesus? Wispy goatee beards, long hair, and clothes that they look like they have slept in for a week. The Timorese can’t understand how these Malai can afford to come here on an aeroplane yet cannot afford clothes! There are other cultural issues where I wish some of these ‘travellers’ would do their homework, for example bikinis are a no-no here, to a Timorese you are running around in your underwear! And public affection is also a no-no, snogging in the street is equivalent to full on sex, it’s just not done. Still, they are bringing fresh dollars into the local economy, especially the little Timorese restaurants and fruit and vegetable stalls because these guys eat cheap. I don’t suppose I was any different when I was backpacking (no goatee beard though!)
We all have been doing so much diving recently and it’s been superb. At K41, we have had a dugong for over a week and I’ve dived with it twice. One day, on the surface we had dugong, humpback whales and dolphins, the day before Wayne had seen orcas in the bay. I took a couple of Spanish tourist there who only had one day to dive. The first dive we had a huge Maori Wrasse swim right in front of us, then the second dive we had barracuda, banded pipefish, loads of unusual nudibranch, an anglerfish and then the dugong came into play twice! They were very happy divers.
K57 is also superb at the moment; this dive site can only be dived in the dry season as the Manatutu River is nearby. It’s a long way and very hot, but well worth the effort as it is a stunning wall dive. One day we saw a humpback come up three times in the bay and today, apart from nudibranch sex everywhere, we had a mobular ray, which looks like a small manta ray. I keep mentioning nudibranch, for the uninitiated these are very colourful sea slugs which divers, especially marine biologists go crazy for. At the moment this reefs are teeming with them, we are seeing unusual types and many of them are having sex. Pornography under water!
At Bob’s Rock I saw a nice big reef shark, some new nudibranch that I haven’t seen before, two leaf scorpion fish of different colours posing on a barrel sponge and a ribbon eel. Photographer’s paradise! Yesterday at this same site, in addition to the leaf scorpion fish, there was a barracuda and large black anglerfish. Then on the way home on the boat we were surrounded by a pod of dolphins that played at the bow of the boat, then started a jumping display. This delighted our clients, all of which had never seen dolphins up close in their natural habitat before.
Work is keeping me so busy that I haven’t really had time to muse over life in Dili, everything seems to be calm, the streets are busy and apart from a temporary milk and cement shortage, life is pretty normal. The only unusual thing was watching the Kiwi cops practicing the Hakka. The Kiwi contingent of the UN Police are on rotation. After six months, the old ones leave and a new batch come in, so in keeping with tradition they perform the Haka to each other on the tarmac of the airport, we watched the practice run at the Hotel Esplanada which was very entertaining.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
Me and my Shadow – East Timor 22nd September 2007
I’ve just had the most delightful bunch of Phillipeno cops to teach this week. Five of them wanted to do the Open Water course ‘together’. They are like that, they like doing things in groups and taking copious amounts of photographs while doing it. The banter between them was hilarious, they would tease each other endlessly about being late, getting something wrong or forgetting something. I only impose beer fines for tanks standing up and left alone and wearing the mask on top of your head when you are in the water. These guys thought it was a great way to get beers out of each other and started making up their own Heineken and Tiger fines. On the fourth day I congratulated them for not being caught in a beer fine (if I don’t see it, it doesn’t count!) On the last day, in between dives, the group were posing for photos again when one of them came up to me and grassed his colleagues up, by pointing out two upright, unattended tanks! At that, I bellowed at the top of my voice ‘Beeeeeeer Fine!’ To which the whole group exploded in a fit of laughter.
It’s amazing what you perceive as normal and what you get used to. Now camouflage and low flying helicopters are normal everyday things here as is seeing the army and police carrying guns on the street. I was watching a film one night with a friend who is a NZ UNPol, when a colleague of his knocked on the door. He grumbled that it was his private time as he answered the door, then was given a gun as the colleague was going on leave. I commented that it was hardly something you could leave at the hotel reception for collection, a gun with live ammunition.
I was teaching another student who was firmly grasping a bum bag throughout the lesson. As we prepared to go to the pool, he nodded to the bum bag and asked if he could lock it up somewhere. ‘What’s in it?’ I asked. ‘Oh, just a couple of glocks’ was the reply. Obviously they were not waterproof! In my previous employment on resorts I would be asked ‘Where can I lock up my camera and wallet?’ Here I get asked ‘Where can I lock up my gun?’ Bizarre!
Everything seems to have calmed down, the security tree alerts are getting rarer and there is a sense of normality on the streets (again, define what’s normal!) It feels more like it did when I first arrived in February last year. There are still trouble spots around the IDP camps and certain areas that you just avoid, but that is true of any capital city. A few weeks ago we had a spectacular lunar eclipse. The moon looked like a big hot air balloon lit up in the sky. The whole city was noisy; all the local people were banging poles to warn off the evil spirits (not the UNPol are coming). I hadn’t heard noise like that since my first earthquake here last March.
The new government are already making themselves very visible by fixing up the pavement and roads. It seems like it’s everywhere in the city all at the same time, which means it will all need repairing at the same time. However, it will be nice to walk down the beach road (or any road come to that!) without the fear of breaking an ankle on a pothole. They have even painted white lines on the road all the way out to Metinaro. That was weird when I first saw it, as previous to that, the only white line in the 40K stretch marked an unofficial race track.
I have a shadow called Doris. It seems everywhere I go Doris follows me. She is a very social little dog and is known by all the locals by both her official name and her nickname ‘Fatty’. We have
a new bar next door called ‘Fat Boys’, which should actually be called ‘Fat Boys & Doris’, because she frequents it more than we do. And if the patrons keep feeding her, she is going to be a very fat girl, hopefully too fat to escape through the bars of the gate as she does at the moment. Having a bar next door is great, especially for students at lunchtime. The menu is basic, burgers and club sandwiches, but it is expanding, but so are our waistlines and the portions are huge. That’s why Doris gets such rich pickings.
Back to my shadow, the other day she followed my all the way to the Beach Cafe, which meant I had to get a take-away (too many people for her to scrounge from!) Then a hunky NZ Cop pulled up and offered me a lift home, of course I had no chance as the only thing Doris associates with cars is the vet! She comes with me to the Esplanada, whether it be to the pool or the upstairs restaurant, she even sits outside the toilets in reception when I get changed. Yesterday, I had to drop my laptop off at one of the rooms, so she followed me up the stairs. The rooms have glass sliding doors which need to be kept shut when the air con is on, so I slid the door closed as I set up the laptop. Doris sat on the balcony, staring at me through the glass and wagging her tail, adorable! I thought kids were supposed to cramp your style, not dogs!
The horrible windy weather has calmed down, thank god, because we are busier than ever on the diving front. Even my local training reef, Dili Rock, on one dive last week yielded a weedy pipefish, a 1½m white tip reef shark, a giant moray being cleaned by three shrimp and a clouded moray eel (which I have never seen before). It’s also coming into whale season again and one of our friends spotted the first humpback only 100m off of shore. The only down side is the water temperature is still down at 26 degrees, whereas normally it’s 28 degrees, so after an hour I’m really cold. I’m resisting going back to my 5mm long wetsuit though as I get heatstroke just putting the thing on.
It’s amazing what you perceive as normal and what you get used to. Now camouflage and low flying helicopters are normal everyday things here as is seeing the army and police carrying guns on the street. I was watching a film one night with a friend who is a NZ UNPol, when a colleague of his knocked on the door. He grumbled that it was his private time as he answered the door, then was given a gun as the colleague was going on leave. I commented that it was hardly something you could leave at the hotel reception for collection, a gun with live ammunition.
I was teaching another student who was firmly grasping a bum bag throughout the lesson. As we prepared to go to the pool, he nodded to the bum bag and asked if he could lock it up somewhere. ‘What’s in it?’ I asked. ‘Oh, just a couple of glocks’ was the reply. Obviously they were not waterproof! In my previous employment on resorts I would be asked ‘Where can I lock up my camera and wallet?’ Here I get asked ‘Where can I lock up my gun?’ Bizarre!
Everything seems to have calmed down, the security tree alerts are getting rarer and there is a sense of normality on the streets (again, define what’s normal!) It feels more like it did when I first arrived in February last year. There are still trouble spots around the IDP camps and certain areas that you just avoid, but that is true of any capital city. A few weeks ago we had a spectacular lunar eclipse. The moon looked like a big hot air balloon lit up in the sky. The whole city was noisy; all the local people were banging poles to warn off the evil spirits (not the UNPol are coming). I hadn’t heard noise like that since my first earthquake here last March.
The new government are already making themselves very visible by fixing up the pavement and roads. It seems like it’s everywhere in the city all at the same time, which means it will all need repairing at the same time. However, it will be nice to walk down the beach road (or any road come to that!) without the fear of breaking an ankle on a pothole. They have even painted white lines on the road all the way out to Metinaro. That was weird when I first saw it, as previous to that, the only white line in the 40K stretch marked an unofficial race track.
I have a shadow called Doris. It seems everywhere I go Doris follows me. She is a very social little dog and is known by all the locals by both her official name and her nickname ‘Fatty’. We have
a new bar next door called ‘Fat Boys’, which should actually be called ‘Fat Boys & Doris’, because she frequents it more than we do. And if the patrons keep feeding her, she is going to be a very fat girl, hopefully too fat to escape through the bars of the gate as she does at the moment. Having a bar next door is great, especially for students at lunchtime. The menu is basic, burgers and club sandwiches, but it is expanding, but so are our waistlines and the portions are huge. That’s why Doris gets such rich pickings.Back to my shadow, the other day she followed my all the way to the Beach Cafe, which meant I had to get a take-away (too many people for her to scrounge from!) Then a hunky NZ Cop pulled up and offered me a lift home, of course I had no chance as the only thing Doris associates with cars is the vet! She comes with me to the Esplanada, whether it be to the pool or the upstairs restaurant, she even sits outside the toilets in reception when I get changed. Yesterday, I had to drop my laptop off at one of the rooms, so she followed me up the stairs. The rooms have glass sliding doors which need to be kept shut when the air con is on, so I slid the door closed as I set up the laptop. Doris sat on the balcony, staring at me through the glass and wagging her tail, adorable! I thought kids were supposed to cramp your style, not dogs!
The horrible windy weather has calmed down, thank god, because we are busier than ever on the diving front. Even my local training reef, Dili Rock, on one dive last week yielded a weedy pipefish, a 1½m white tip reef shark, a giant moray being cleaned by three shrimp and a clouded moray eel (which I have never seen before). It’s also coming into whale season again and one of our friends spotted the first humpback only 100m off of shore. The only down side is the water temperature is still down at 26 degrees, whereas normally it’s 28 degrees, so after an hour I’m really cold. I’m resisting going back to my 5mm long wetsuit though as I get heatstroke just putting the thing on.
Thursday, September 06, 2007
Baptism under fire – East Timor 28th August 2007
Things are starting to calm as the troublemakers went a bit too far in Baucau. They raped an 8 year old girl and attacked the Bishops house. It smacks of the terror of the Indonesian times. So Fretlin could no longer be seen to support this level of violence and their campaign is losing steam. Evidence of this was the mass two day demonstrations last week, only 50 demonstrators turned up!
During the days when the security alerts were pinging every 5 minutes, we found ourselves without divers, which is unheard of on a Sunday afternoon. Taking advantage of this rare occurrence, we went to the Ocean View for a drink by the sea. En-route we stopped and watched a most amazing baptism, the sea was incredibly rough and the clergymen, all suited and booted, were finding it difficult to keep upright in the waves. There were a group of Timorese singing I guess equivalent to hymns, while each child, dressed in white robes, would enter the waves into the hands of the clergymen to be dunked. It was an incredible sight, especially in the midst of all the trouble around town. Life and faith go on.
To get to the best dive sites we need to go through a place called Metinaro, which is where the biggest IDP camp of 6,000 people is situated, right next to the Metinaro Barracks. On Thursday its market day in Metinaro town and trouble flared up between the residents of the IDP camp and the residents of the town, which took the UNPol all day to calm down. Apparently over 20 houses were burnt down over a football match! This means that the travel restrictions for the UN are not lifted, so we are Dili bound again this weekend.
The barracks have a large firing range behind them and last week the local army decided to carry out target practice. They told the UN, but unfortunately the message didn’t filter down to the 6,000 residents of the IDP camp living less than a mile away. Can you imagine the terror of those people hearing the mass gunfire so close when the country is as unstable as it is? Doh!
Talking of Metinaro Barracks, a friend had to go and see the dentist there, the day after the IDP/Town trouble. He sailed through, all was calm again. In the Barrack itself they have 3 resident crocodiles. One very large male about 4 meters long, a large female and a smaller female who has to be kept separate because the other two keep attacking her. Can you imagine a 4 meter long croc? Terrifying! As they approached the cage the male croc made a loud guttural noise and opened his mouth against the bars. One of the guys noticed one tooth was protruding sideways and hanging out, so he levered the tooth out with his car key. The croc then grunted and ambled away. The guy is insane, I’ve seen the tooth which is as big as my little finger, this is an 4 meter crocodile we are talking about!
A few weeks ago, we were going out diving and just past Rubbish Ridge I saw a familiar face. I turned to Wayne and said ‘That looked like Ross Kemp’. It was; he was here to film a documentary on gang wars which I had actually seen advertised when I was back in the UK. So when Caroline (Irish) said to me yesterday, ‘I know this sounds bizarre, but I’m sure I saw Phil Mitchell in Castaways a few weeks ago’, I could confirm that she wasn’t seeing things. From Easterners to East Timor, watch out for the episode. (UK viewers only!)
We have had a few tourists in town over the past couple of weeks. The local hangout for budget travellers is Backpackers, run by a guy called Henry who is another local character. He met Jim (a Brit tourist) after a couple of days and the first thing he said to him was ‘What! Don’t they have newspapers in your country then?’ Amazingly one night, we had 6 Brits around one table and it wasn’t even Pancake Day at the British Embassy.
Although we were restricted to Dili, the weekend was great. The boys set up a marquee on Dili Rock beach and we had a big BBQ with about 20 people, divers, snorkelers and some just hungry lunchers. It was a great social day. On the diving front I also did a couple of Bubble Makers this week which are always good fun, but this time the kids were Timorese. We reckon that we have the youngest ever Timorese on scuba at 9 years old and a girl at that.
During the days when the security alerts were pinging every 5 minutes, we found ourselves without divers, which is unheard of on a Sunday afternoon. Taking advantage of this rare occurrence, we went to the Ocean View for a drink by the sea. En-route we stopped and watched a most amazing baptism, the sea was incredibly rough and the clergymen, all suited and booted, were finding it difficult to keep upright in the waves. There were a group of Timorese singing I guess equivalent to hymns, while each child, dressed in white robes, would enter the waves into the hands of the clergymen to be dunked. It was an incredible sight, especially in the midst of all the trouble around town. Life and faith go on.
To get to the best dive sites we need to go through a place called Metinaro, which is where the biggest IDP camp of 6,000 people is situated, right next to the Metinaro Barracks. On Thursday its market day in Metinaro town and trouble flared up between the residents of the IDP camp and the residents of the town, which took the UNPol all day to calm down. Apparently over 20 houses were burnt down over a football match! This means that the travel restrictions for the UN are not lifted, so we are Dili bound again this weekend.
The barracks have a large firing range behind them and last week the local army decided to carry out target practice. They told the UN, but unfortunately the message didn’t filter down to the 6,000 residents of the IDP camp living less than a mile away. Can you imagine the terror of those people hearing the mass gunfire so close when the country is as unstable as it is? Doh!
Talking of Metinaro Barracks, a friend had to go and see the dentist there, the day after the IDP/Town trouble. He sailed through, all was calm again. In the Barrack itself they have 3 resident crocodiles. One very large male about 4 meters long, a large female and a smaller female who has to be kept separate because the other two keep attacking her. Can you imagine a 4 meter long croc? Terrifying! As they approached the cage the male croc made a loud guttural noise and opened his mouth against the bars. One of the guys noticed one tooth was protruding sideways and hanging out, so he levered the tooth out with his car key. The croc then grunted and ambled away. The guy is insane, I’ve seen the tooth which is as big as my little finger, this is an 4 meter crocodile we are talking about!
A few weeks ago, we were going out diving and just past Rubbish Ridge I saw a familiar face. I turned to Wayne and said ‘That looked like Ross Kemp’. It was; he was here to film a documentary on gang wars which I had actually seen advertised when I was back in the UK. So when Caroline (Irish) said to me yesterday, ‘I know this sounds bizarre, but I’m sure I saw Phil Mitchell in Castaways a few weeks ago’, I could confirm that she wasn’t seeing things. From Easterners to East Timor, watch out for the episode. (UK viewers only!)
We have had a few tourists in town over the past couple of weeks. The local hangout for budget travellers is Backpackers, run by a guy called Henry who is another local character. He met Jim (a Brit tourist) after a couple of days and the first thing he said to him was ‘What! Don’t they have newspapers in your country then?’ Amazingly one night, we had 6 Brits around one table and it wasn’t even Pancake Day at the British Embassy.
Although we were restricted to Dili, the weekend was great. The boys set up a marquee on Dili Rock beach and we had a big BBQ with about 20 people, divers, snorkelers and some just hungry lunchers. It was a great social day. On the diving front I also did a couple of Bubble Makers this week which are always good fun, but this time the kids were Timorese. We reckon that we have the youngest ever Timorese on scuba at 9 years old and a girl at that.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Here we go again! – East Timor 11th August 2007
East Timor has a new Prime Minister, Xanana Gusmao (not a surprise!) There were a few problems leading up to the announcement, which we expected. Monday, I was trying to be a tourist and replace some of the photos that I lost when my hard drive crashed. I’d picked the worst day for it, as it was overcast and threatening rain, not great for photos. My phone started pinging at an alarming rate with security text messages; avoid this area, disturbances in that area, it seemed that all over town there were rock fights, burning tyres and unofficial road blocks. I’d been all over Dili that day and seen absolutely nothing; it’s really a case of being caught at the wrong place at the wrong time because as soon as the UNPol get there, the show is over.
At the time of the mass texts, I was at the Casbar for sundowners, probably one of the furthest places I could be from Bebonuk where I’m house sitting. Prompting Robbie we finished our drinks as I didn’t want to drive around town in the dark. The boys are less discriminating at night; luckily I wasn’t driving a white car that could be mistaken for UN, but still I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. As we left the Casbar we could see smoke rising over Dili so I dropped Robbie off and picked a route that avoided all the usual hotspots such as the IDP camp in front of Hotel Timor. Driving through Colmera I found the source of the fire, flames licking out of the top of the customs building. The rest of the route home was trouble free although sitting on the porch that night I could hear gunfire in Comoro and at 1am there were 4 UNPol cars outside the house.
The next day in Bebonuk there was evidence of the previous night’s events, the remains of smouldering tyres on the road but for the rest of the day it seemed calm, except they set fire to the Customs building again and really finished it off this time. We are wondering if this wasn’t a strategic move to get rid of any evidence of dodgy deals over the last 7 years! I phoned Tony to find out if the new handle for the car had arrived, he assured me that it had arrived on Monday, but no-one could find it as the paperwork had gone up in flames, in the Customs House!
Wednesday, I left the house to go to work as the UNPol were apprehending a few local lads. The phone pinged again ‘Reported disturbances at Bebonuk Primary School’, already too late, the show was over. By Thursday I was diving at Dili Rock, no problems at the airport which had previously been shut. Although there were a few UNPol around as Rogerio Lobato, who was jailed for 7½ years in 2006, was grounded on a plane awaiting the OK to take off, apparently to receive treatment for heart problems. There were reports of trouble brewing in some of the districts including Metinaro, so diving in the East was out.
By Friday I was diving at K41 as Metinaro was fine, the incidents were now reported further East in Baucau and Viqueque. I had been teaching a wonderful lady who was here visiting her daughter (what a week to come!). Unfortunately, her daughters’ workload had increased due to the problems and the only thing Mum had seen was the house and the Dive Centre, so I showed her what a beautiful country this is once you get outside of Dili. In the afternoon I played tour guide, stopping at the basket village, the Tais Market and a couple of souvenir shops. Boy does this lady know how to shop! It was good fun.
Wayne is playing reporter again, so the dive truck is now a press truck. He’s gone off to Baucau which is the latest trouble hotspot along with Viqueque where combined, reportedly 120 buildings have been burnt and in Baucau an UNPol car that was escorting an NGO was attacked with guns and the vehicles torched. However, no-one has been able to get into Viqueque including the press, so any reports of trouble are unconfirmed.
As for Dili, its business as usual, people on the streets, chicken vendors firing up their BBQ’s, market stalls open. The only thing that’s been affected is the diving as the UN has put a ban on travel to the districts. So I guess its Dili Rock again!
At the time of the mass texts, I was at the Casbar for sundowners, probably one of the furthest places I could be from Bebonuk where I’m house sitting. Prompting Robbie we finished our drinks as I didn’t want to drive around town in the dark. The boys are less discriminating at night; luckily I wasn’t driving a white car that could be mistaken for UN, but still I didn’t want to take unnecessary risks. As we left the Casbar we could see smoke rising over Dili so I dropped Robbie off and picked a route that avoided all the usual hotspots such as the IDP camp in front of Hotel Timor. Driving through Colmera I found the source of the fire, flames licking out of the top of the customs building. The rest of the route home was trouble free although sitting on the porch that night I could hear gunfire in Comoro and at 1am there were 4 UNPol cars outside the house.
The next day in Bebonuk there was evidence of the previous night’s events, the remains of smouldering tyres on the road but for the rest of the day it seemed calm, except they set fire to the Customs building again and really finished it off this time. We are wondering if this wasn’t a strategic move to get rid of any evidence of dodgy deals over the last 7 years! I phoned Tony to find out if the new handle for the car had arrived, he assured me that it had arrived on Monday, but no-one could find it as the paperwork had gone up in flames, in the Customs House!
Wednesday, I left the house to go to work as the UNPol were apprehending a few local lads. The phone pinged again ‘Reported disturbances at Bebonuk Primary School’, already too late, the show was over. By Thursday I was diving at Dili Rock, no problems at the airport which had previously been shut. Although there were a few UNPol around as Rogerio Lobato, who was jailed for 7½ years in 2006, was grounded on a plane awaiting the OK to take off, apparently to receive treatment for heart problems. There were reports of trouble brewing in some of the districts including Metinaro, so diving in the East was out.
By Friday I was diving at K41 as Metinaro was fine, the incidents were now reported further East in Baucau and Viqueque. I had been teaching a wonderful lady who was here visiting her daughter (what a week to come!). Unfortunately, her daughters’ workload had increased due to the problems and the only thing Mum had seen was the house and the Dive Centre, so I showed her what a beautiful country this is once you get outside of Dili. In the afternoon I played tour guide, stopping at the basket village, the Tais Market and a couple of souvenir shops. Boy does this lady know how to shop! It was good fun.
Wayne is playing reporter again, so the dive truck is now a press truck. He’s gone off to Baucau which is the latest trouble hotspot along with Viqueque where combined, reportedly 120 buildings have been burnt and in Baucau an UNPol car that was escorting an NGO was attacked with guns and the vehicles torched. However, no-one has been able to get into Viqueque including the press, so any reports of trouble are unconfirmed.
As for Dili, its business as usual, people on the streets, chicken vendors firing up their BBQ’s, market stalls open. The only thing that’s been affected is the diving as the UN has put a ban on travel to the districts. So I guess its Dili Rock again!
Wednesday, August 01, 2007
Love Is.......................70 Buffalo – East Timor 30th July 2007
Nelson is a very handsome, intelligent, single Timorese guy, who earns a good wage by Timorese standards. However, should he wish to marry, the dowry would eat up his savings and any potential earnings for the next few years at least. Nelson comes from Bacau and there the dowry price for a girl is 10 buffalo. At $300 a piece, that’s a hefty sum of $3,000, especially when you consider that the average labourers wage in East Timor is a mere $2 a day. Now, if Nelson aspired to marry a girl from LosPalos (considered the most beautiful girls in East Timor) then it would set him back 70 buffalo! $21,000! Let’s hope he falls in love with a local Bacau girl, much more affordable, although at the moment he’s set his sights on a new motorbike.
Although East Timor is staunchly catholic for the majority of the population (the island of Atuaro is mostly protestant), some non catholic values are accepted, probably because of the dowry. If a couple can’t afford the dowry, they live together and if the girl gets pregnant, the dowry price comes down. Strange that contraception is a no-no because it is against the church, but sex before marriage is ok, figure that one out!
Getting back to the LosPalos girls, they are considered the most beautiful because of their fairer skin. I found the same thing in Egypt, the supermarkets stock all of these ‘Whitening’ beauty products to bleach the skin. The paler the girls skin is, the more beautiful she is considered, whereas in Europe you find bronzing products and fake tan and we clamour to get ourselves a tan to look healthy.
We have just had our busiest 3 weeks since I have been in East Timor, we even had a couple of genuine tourists! Unfortunately, someone upset the wind god and the sea has been the roughest I’ve seen it. On one dive we saw Wayne and his group literally surf back into shore. They had spent five minutes working their way out to the dive entrance only for one huge wave to take them straight back to where they started. Wayne said it was the biggest wave he had seen in the 7 years he’s been here. I attempted a dive at Dili Rock one afternoon, only to be spat out 3 times, much to the amusement of Manuel, who started giggling as if to say ‘Are you going to give up now?’ I did as my legs won’t take many more cuts and bruises. There is something to be said for struggling into a long suit.
I surfaced from a night dive at Dili Rock to see the shore ablaze with red and blue flashing lights, there were three or four UNPol cars with their lights on. While we were on the dive, Jose had been attacked by 3 guys with knives. Luckily Jose is a savvy kid and made a run for the PNTL headquarters where he managed to telephone Wayne, who then raised the alarm to UNPol. Thank god Jose got away with no more than a scratch and wasn’t seriously hurt. Luckily, I had told everyone to leave their valuables at the dive centre so the only things stolen were my bag, $40 from one customer and a pair of shoes from another. The Malaysian UNPol questioned me as I was shivering in my wetsuit (I couldn’t change as they had stolen my clothes!) and asked me to list the things stolen. It’s not until later you remember everything, but the main things were my phone, a compass, $20, keys and my clothes. The UNPol thanked me and asked if I had a phone number, ‘Yes’ I replied, ‘But they stole it!’. He sheepishly grinned and apologised for the stupid question.
About 10 minutes after we returned to the dive centre, the UNPol turned up saying they had apprehended 2 guys fitting the description and would like Jose to identify them. So as Jose couldn’t be identified, Wayne dressed him in one of his T-Shirts (about 5 times too big for Jose) and his straw hat; he looked very stylish. Sure enough one of the guys apprehended did attack Jose, but no sign of the stolen goods, which included, we remembered later, a full first aid kit. Let’s hope that that was put to some use.
We had to go and file a report today at the UNMIT HQ. A rather tedious affair as the girl detailing the incident could only type with one finger and some things like an Oceanic Wrist Compass don’t translate easily into Tetum. I amused myself by trying to identify all the different nationalities of police working there who all have different uniforms. Apart from Timorese, there were cops from Portugal, Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Nigeria, Gambia, New Zealand and Australia. I guess that‘s why they are called the United Nations Police!
The microlets and taxis are displaying a new batch of windscreen stickers, which is a good sign as last year everyone was keeping their head down trying to be inconspicuous. It’s refreshing to see this trend appearing again, as it means that things are relaxing. Joe and I were giggling our way back from Dili Rock making up sentences from the windscreen stickers, a new type of car game. The best one we came up with was ‘O’M’GOD’ ‘SHEILA’, it’s a ‘TRADGEDY’’ HONEY’! Other stickers of note are Tomboy, White Zombie and Rick. But still my favourite so far is O’m’God.
There has been very little trouble over the elections, the occasional security tree alert about the usual areas and one rumour about the attempted assassination of the Liberal party leader with a bomb that failed to explode. However, you never know with these rumours, they have a tendency to take on a life of their own and get embellished with each reiteration. The Fretlin party won the majority, but it will be a coalition government and at the moment they are trying to decide who will be Prime Minister. The deadline for that decision is tomorrow, and then if no decision is made, Ramos Horta, the President will appoint someone. This could cause a few problems, as someone, somewhere, will not be happy with his decision.
I’m house sitting in an area called Bebonuk which is nearer the airport than the dive centre. An Air North plane passed overhead as I was sitting in the garden and I found myself wincing at the noise. It was at that point I reflected that I used to live 7 miles from Europe’s busiest airport, where flights used to go over my house every two minutes from 5a.m. onwards. When Concorde went over, you would have to stop conversation as you couldn’t hear yourself speak. I was wincing at the maximum of 2 scheduled flights a day and the occasional low flying helicopter. Time for a reality check!
John Howard paid Dili a visit, a kind of morale boost mission for the Ozzy troops. He then went on to Bali to open an eye hospital. I missed the concert in Dili as I flew to Bali the day before him and then got stuck in a traffic jam as he and his entourage sped past the day he left. Talk about a police escort, it took a good 5 minutes for all the cars and motorbikes to pass. I spent a few days in Bali, but this time it wasn’t quite as great. I think it’s because I’ve been house sitting prior to the trip in a really nice house, so I wasn’t clamouring to get away from it all quite as much as I would normally after 3 months in Dili. Still the break was nice; I had a shopping trip to the new Central shopping centre in Kuta, where I bought T-Shirts from Marks & Spencer’s! Plus my usual full body scrub and massage and upon Ann’s recommendation, a cream bath, where they lather up conditioner on your head and give you a most amazing head, neck and shoulder massage, bliss!
Saying that, there are loads of new massage parlours opening in Dili, one called ‘Cozy’ is so popular, you have to book an appointment weeks in advance. At least the presence of UN is helping the local economy in that way, unlike the PX. I can’t understand why the UN has a facility to buy booze at duty free prices, when alcohol is readily available in shops and restaurants around town. The UN are given the perk of cut price alcohol (for what?) when they could be boosting the local economy. I’d understand it more if the mission was in a Muslim country in the middle of nowhere, but the capital city of East Timor with its bars and restaurants is a far cry from somewhere like Afghanistan.
Although East Timor is staunchly catholic for the majority of the population (the island of Atuaro is mostly protestant), some non catholic values are accepted, probably because of the dowry. If a couple can’t afford the dowry, they live together and if the girl gets pregnant, the dowry price comes down. Strange that contraception is a no-no because it is against the church, but sex before marriage is ok, figure that one out!
Getting back to the LosPalos girls, they are considered the most beautiful because of their fairer skin. I found the same thing in Egypt, the supermarkets stock all of these ‘Whitening’ beauty products to bleach the skin. The paler the girls skin is, the more beautiful she is considered, whereas in Europe you find bronzing products and fake tan and we clamour to get ourselves a tan to look healthy.
We have just had our busiest 3 weeks since I have been in East Timor, we even had a couple of genuine tourists! Unfortunately, someone upset the wind god and the sea has been the roughest I’ve seen it. On one dive we saw Wayne and his group literally surf back into shore. They had spent five minutes working their way out to the dive entrance only for one huge wave to take them straight back to where they started. Wayne said it was the biggest wave he had seen in the 7 years he’s been here. I attempted a dive at Dili Rock one afternoon, only to be spat out 3 times, much to the amusement of Manuel, who started giggling as if to say ‘Are you going to give up now?’ I did as my legs won’t take many more cuts and bruises. There is something to be said for struggling into a long suit.
I surfaced from a night dive at Dili Rock to see the shore ablaze with red and blue flashing lights, there were three or four UNPol cars with their lights on. While we were on the dive, Jose had been attacked by 3 guys with knives. Luckily Jose is a savvy kid and made a run for the PNTL headquarters where he managed to telephone Wayne, who then raised the alarm to UNPol. Thank god Jose got away with no more than a scratch and wasn’t seriously hurt. Luckily, I had told everyone to leave their valuables at the dive centre so the only things stolen were my bag, $40 from one customer and a pair of shoes from another. The Malaysian UNPol questioned me as I was shivering in my wetsuit (I couldn’t change as they had stolen my clothes!) and asked me to list the things stolen. It’s not until later you remember everything, but the main things were my phone, a compass, $20, keys and my clothes. The UNPol thanked me and asked if I had a phone number, ‘Yes’ I replied, ‘But they stole it!’. He sheepishly grinned and apologised for the stupid question.
About 10 minutes after we returned to the dive centre, the UNPol turned up saying they had apprehended 2 guys fitting the description and would like Jose to identify them. So as Jose couldn’t be identified, Wayne dressed him in one of his T-Shirts (about 5 times too big for Jose) and his straw hat; he looked very stylish. Sure enough one of the guys apprehended did attack Jose, but no sign of the stolen goods, which included, we remembered later, a full first aid kit. Let’s hope that that was put to some use.
We had to go and file a report today at the UNMIT HQ. A rather tedious affair as the girl detailing the incident could only type with one finger and some things like an Oceanic Wrist Compass don’t translate easily into Tetum. I amused myself by trying to identify all the different nationalities of police working there who all have different uniforms. Apart from Timorese, there were cops from Portugal, Uruguay, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Nigeria, Gambia, New Zealand and Australia. I guess that‘s why they are called the United Nations Police!
The microlets and taxis are displaying a new batch of windscreen stickers, which is a good sign as last year everyone was keeping their head down trying to be inconspicuous. It’s refreshing to see this trend appearing again, as it means that things are relaxing. Joe and I were giggling our way back from Dili Rock making up sentences from the windscreen stickers, a new type of car game. The best one we came up with was ‘O’M’GOD’ ‘SHEILA’, it’s a ‘TRADGEDY’’ HONEY’! Other stickers of note are Tomboy, White Zombie and Rick. But still my favourite so far is O’m’God.
There has been very little trouble over the elections, the occasional security tree alert about the usual areas and one rumour about the attempted assassination of the Liberal party leader with a bomb that failed to explode. However, you never know with these rumours, they have a tendency to take on a life of their own and get embellished with each reiteration. The Fretlin party won the majority, but it will be a coalition government and at the moment they are trying to decide who will be Prime Minister. The deadline for that decision is tomorrow, and then if no decision is made, Ramos Horta, the President will appoint someone. This could cause a few problems, as someone, somewhere, will not be happy with his decision.
I’m house sitting in an area called Bebonuk which is nearer the airport than the dive centre. An Air North plane passed overhead as I was sitting in the garden and I found myself wincing at the noise. It was at that point I reflected that I used to live 7 miles from Europe’s busiest airport, where flights used to go over my house every two minutes from 5a.m. onwards. When Concorde went over, you would have to stop conversation as you couldn’t hear yourself speak. I was wincing at the maximum of 2 scheduled flights a day and the occasional low flying helicopter. Time for a reality check!
John Howard paid Dili a visit, a kind of morale boost mission for the Ozzy troops. He then went on to Bali to open an eye hospital. I missed the concert in Dili as I flew to Bali the day before him and then got stuck in a traffic jam as he and his entourage sped past the day he left. Talk about a police escort, it took a good 5 minutes for all the cars and motorbikes to pass. I spent a few days in Bali, but this time it wasn’t quite as great. I think it’s because I’ve been house sitting prior to the trip in a really nice house, so I wasn’t clamouring to get away from it all quite as much as I would normally after 3 months in Dili. Still the break was nice; I had a shopping trip to the new Central shopping centre in Kuta, where I bought T-Shirts from Marks & Spencer’s! Plus my usual full body scrub and massage and upon Ann’s recommendation, a cream bath, where they lather up conditioner on your head and give you a most amazing head, neck and shoulder massage, bliss!
Saying that, there are loads of new massage parlours opening in Dili, one called ‘Cozy’ is so popular, you have to book an appointment weeks in advance. At least the presence of UN is helping the local economy in that way, unlike the PX. I can’t understand why the UN has a facility to buy booze at duty free prices, when alcohol is readily available in shops and restaurants around town. The UN are given the perk of cut price alcohol (for what?) when they could be boosting the local economy. I’d understand it more if the mission was in a Muslim country in the middle of nowhere, but the capital city of East Timor with its bars and restaurants is a far cry from somewhere like Afghanistan.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Love Is - East Timor 28th June 2007
Love is bringing two 2ltr bottles of fresh water and heating them in the sun while your boyfriend goes diving. Then standing on the back of the car and pouring the water over his head, so that he washes the salt from his hair. I thought this was so sweet, it reminded me of those ‘Love Is’ cartoons you used to get in the Daily Mail.
Back in February this year there was spate of rice raids around town. Well to prevent a reoccurrence, rice is now transported with a police escort; one car at the front, then three rice trucks, then another police car. The rice trucks themselves are so overloaded, they look extremely precarious. On the way to lunch I commented that the police car at the back was only there to pick up stray bags if they fall off. On the way back from lunch, that’s exactly what happened! The UN Policeman was hauling the stray bags into the back of his truck causing an enormous traffic jam.
At the start of the crisis last year, one vigilant Timorese labourer was digging a trench outside the centre for the new water pipes. He was even doing this when the shots started! However, the trench was then abandoned until September when the new pipes were finally put in. It’s now June and one of the pipes up the road has sprung a leak, causing a swamp and water flooding into the road. But the Timorese being an inventive lot have turned the water source into an impromptu car wash for taxis, as the water is pretty clean. That would just never happen back home.
Everyone has different memories and experiences of the last year. For the new batch of New Zealand cops staying in the Esplanada, the situation is a picnic compared to what their predecessors faced. However, they are still getting to grips with what the conflict is all about. They had to break up a 300 strong stone fight. Was it politically motivated? Was it an East/West thing? Was it a gang fight? No it was the result of a Karaoke competition!
I dived with one of the cops last week on Pertamina jetty, only to surface and be faced with a gun wielding FDTL officer and his cronies. Apparently, diving on the jetty is a security risk as I may be a terrorist like the Bali bombers. I explained that I was diving with a policeman and showed him photos of fish on my camera, but it didn’t cut it. Luckily the Minister for fisheries popped in the dive centre the next day, so hopefully we will soon get our nearest dive site back.
A couple of weeks ago, I finally visited the cemetery at Santa Cruz. This was the place that on the 12th of November 1991, the Indonesian military opened fire on a peaceful demonstration killing over 200 Timorese. The Indonesian government admitted killing 19, then upped it to 51, but every report I’ve read, states around 200 were killed. There is no memorial there, but the place is so packed with graves it’s hard to walk around. Many of the graves are tiny as infant deaths here are high. The graves are all shapes and sizes, many of them tombs, colourfully adorned with pictures, statues and flowers.
You would think that after all this tiny country endured under the Indonesian occupation and how hard that they fought for independence, that the nation could live in harmony, united by their history. Unfortunately this is not the case. I saw some of the footage of the massacre of the 11 unarmed policemen last May. It was horrific. Being here at the time, I remember the day, but didn’t see the footage that went out to the world. The photos I saw wouldn’t have been broadcast either because they were too gory. There is only so much blood that the public can endure on national television. For months after there were stones blocking the road like an unofficial memorial, a no-go zone. Now there is an official memorial with 11 headstones of those that were killed and a large inscription honouring them for dying serving their country.
A few nights ago there was a shooting incident where the FDTL fired warning shots in the air to break up a crowd. Normally warning shots would be one or two, but this was around 30 shots. What the FDTL haven’t grasped is the law of gravity, what goes up must come down and unfortunately they came down a bit too close to the Australian troops who returned fire. Luckily I haven’t heard of any fatalities from this incident.
It’s now a few days until the election and the atmosphere around town is becoming tense, you can feel it. Political rallies are taking place and there are UNPol everywhere. The GNR have screamed past with sirens blaring several times today, and we have seen several lorry loads of Fretilin supporters driving into town as it’s their rally today. One lorry just went past and got stoned by our local boys. Two minutes later, all the Kiwi cops from the Esplanada were out on the street in flak jackets, but not before my two Norwegian neighbours dressed only in bath towels. That made me laugh more than anything.
Tuesday, June 05, 2007
'Used to be.....' - East Timor 6th May 2007
All is quiet at the moment, however there has been shooting near Viqueque and a hand grenade went off in Fatuhada. I hope it’s a one off incident and they are not upping the ante. Until now the weapons of choice have been stones and ambon arrows. That’s probably why there is such a low death toll. Don’t get me wrong, any death in a conflict is a needless waste of life, but considering how long the unrest has been going on here; the death toll is very low in comparison to other countries in similar circumstances.
The whole place seems so different from a year ago; a sense of normality is starting to come back, although the IDP camps seem to be a permanent fixture. The huge camp at Metinaro Barracks now seems to be a living, breathing town, complete with shops, restaurants and according to rumour, two brothels.
A year ago Xanana had just declared a ‘State of Emergency’ and I saw my first Ozzy foot patrols. It was a state of emergency, people were running in droves to the hills or IDP camps as their houses were being burned down, the supermarkets had been closed for nearly a week and food and petrol were scarce. Now, the Ozzy foot patrols are still around but you don’t blink an eye at the sight of camouflage. New restaurants, bars and businesses are popping up everywhere around town, it’s hard to keep up.
Ryan from the Lonely Planet has been in town to get an update for the new East Timor guide. He came across a very popular saying in Dili, which is ‘You know where such and such used to be?’ No I’m afraid I don’t! Whereas in the UK you are given directions by the pubs, here directions are given on the basis of where things used to be! Very helpful!
One of Ryan’s frustrations is that he has to put the proper official names of roads and places on the maps, not the names they are known by. For example the road that we live on is officially named ‘Avenue de Portugal’, but it’s known by the locals as Pantai Kelapa (Coconut Beach) or the Beach Road.
Other common names include:-
Banana Road – The only dual carriageway in Dili that funnily enough is lined with banana trees.
Pig Bridge – A small bridge that has always got pigs feeding under it.
Rubbish Ridge – An unofficial dumping ground up the hill, which was recently cleared by a bulldozer pushing all the rubbish over the edge of the ridge. Very eco friendly!
Jesus’ Backside – The beach behind the Jesus statue
Cock Rock – This was named by a recent visitor and needs no explanation!
Ryan had his work cut out for him visiting all the new hotels and restaurants. Unfortunately the first day he arrived we had a freak downpour and I arrived back from a dive to find a power cut, Nelson stuffing towels into crevices and Ann and Wayne running round the house lifting any electrical wires and appliances off of the floor. By the time Ryan arrived, the electricity was back but the veranda was soaked through with soggy cushions and a very muddy floor. Two days later he was laid up in bed with Timor Tummy after eating at one of the old favourite haunts, what a great impression he must have!
Another interesting couple turned up at our door, Liliana and Emile are from Switzerland and have been travelling for 22 years in the same Toyota Truck. East Timor was country number 156, but they got themselves into the Guiness Book of Records at country number 114! Their truck is amazing, bright turquoise with every country they have visited, (in order), painted down the side. Lilliana showed me the inside; they have everything in there from a stove, to a pull out sink to a spice rack. A real mobile home, amazing!
I recently paid a visit to Ross's new place. It ‘Used to be’ the Monkey Bar, but when the crisis hit, he got the contract to do the Ozzy troops laundry. With the money he made from that he has opened a fantastic furniture shop with beautiful, stylish pieces imported from Indonesia, that’s one thing that is sorely lacking here. Before Ross arrived, I spotted a trampoline in his garden and couldn’t resist a bounce. It was great fun; I haven’t done that in years.
Taxis are still not running after dark, so some of Ross's staff gave Robbie and I a lift to One More Bar where a great Timorese band were playing. As I climbed in the front of the minivan, I heard a squeal like a pig, it turned out I had stepped on a chicken which was in the dark foot well of the van. That’s another first for me; well you don’t expect a chicken to be there do you?
Ann was invited to the Birthday party of the owner of Hotel California, a new hotel and bar that has opened on the beach. The view over the bay watching the sunset is fantastic. The bar itself is decorated with shells and stones and very stylishly done, although personally I would rather see shells on the beach. The food was great and the same band as I saw a couple of nights before were playing. They opened with ‘Hotel California’ which of course was very appropriate, then played a mixture of Portuguese and English songs. It doesn’t matter whether the song is slow or fast, the Timorese all dance to in the same way, arm around the waist, the other hand holding their partners hand and held away from their body in a kind of waltzing shuffle. When Ann got up and strutted her stuff to a fast number, I watched a table of Timorese girls giggling shyly and imitating her moves. I wonder what they would make of a rave?
On the way to a dive at K41, we pulled in by the side of the road to join the rest of the village watch a Blackhawk helicopter take off. It had landed on their football pitch. They are amazing things to watch, but so noisy! It reminded me of the Vietnam movies. I was teaching an American UN volunteer at the time, so to make car conversation we started comparing English English against American English. It went something along the lines of......
‘So this is the hood?’......’No, it’s the bonnet’
‘So this is the Windshield?’......’No, it’s the Windscreen’
‘So this is the Trunk?’.......’No, it’s the boot’
‘So this is the Sidewalk?’.......’No, it’s the pavement’
Etc, etc.
Then he asked me why we spelt theatre and centre wrong. Bloody Americans, you’d think they invented the English language! However, despite the language differences he was a great student and our dive at Ricks Rapture was excellent. The clarity of the water that morning was exceptional and you could see for 20 to 25 meters.
Another great dive this week was at Dili Rock where we spent a full five minutes watching Fred the turtle, literally 3 meters away from us, until he got bored and buggered off. I also saw my second frog fish in East Timor this week, a little lemon one. I think Andy thought that Jurgen and I had got Nitrogen Narcosis at 12 meters, coz we were doing a silly little underwater scuba dance after we had seen it.
The whole place seems so different from a year ago; a sense of normality is starting to come back, although the IDP camps seem to be a permanent fixture. The huge camp at Metinaro Barracks now seems to be a living, breathing town, complete with shops, restaurants and according to rumour, two brothels.
A year ago Xanana had just declared a ‘State of Emergency’ and I saw my first Ozzy foot patrols. It was a state of emergency, people were running in droves to the hills or IDP camps as their houses were being burned down, the supermarkets had been closed for nearly a week and food and petrol were scarce. Now, the Ozzy foot patrols are still around but you don’t blink an eye at the sight of camouflage. New restaurants, bars and businesses are popping up everywhere around town, it’s hard to keep up.
Ryan from the Lonely Planet has been in town to get an update for the new East Timor guide. He came across a very popular saying in Dili, which is ‘You know where such and such used to be?’ No I’m afraid I don’t! Whereas in the UK you are given directions by the pubs, here directions are given on the basis of where things used to be! Very helpful!
One of Ryan’s frustrations is that he has to put the proper official names of roads and places on the maps, not the names they are known by. For example the road that we live on is officially named ‘Avenue de Portugal’, but it’s known by the locals as Pantai Kelapa (Coconut Beach) or the Beach Road.
Other common names include:-
Banana Road – The only dual carriageway in Dili that funnily enough is lined with banana trees.
Pig Bridge – A small bridge that has always got pigs feeding under it.
Rubbish Ridge – An unofficial dumping ground up the hill, which was recently cleared by a bulldozer pushing all the rubbish over the edge of the ridge. Very eco friendly!
Jesus’ Backside – The beach behind the Jesus statue
Muscle Beach - The beach in front of the Caz Bar where the GNR work out
Cock Rock – This was named by a recent visitor and needs no explanation!
Ryan had his work cut out for him visiting all the new hotels and restaurants. Unfortunately the first day he arrived we had a freak downpour and I arrived back from a dive to find a power cut, Nelson stuffing towels into crevices and Ann and Wayne running round the house lifting any electrical wires and appliances off of the floor. By the time Ryan arrived, the electricity was back but the veranda was soaked through with soggy cushions and a very muddy floor. Two days later he was laid up in bed with Timor Tummy after eating at one of the old favourite haunts, what a great impression he must have!
Another interesting couple turned up at our door, Liliana and Emile are from Switzerland and have been travelling for 22 years in the same Toyota Truck. East Timor was country number 156, but they got themselves into the Guiness Book of Records at country number 114! Their truck is amazing, bright turquoise with every country they have visited, (in order), painted down the side. Lilliana showed me the inside; they have everything in there from a stove, to a pull out sink to a spice rack. A real mobile home, amazing! I recently paid a visit to Ross's new place. It ‘Used to be’ the Monkey Bar, but when the crisis hit, he got the contract to do the Ozzy troops laundry. With the money he made from that he has opened a fantastic furniture shop with beautiful, stylish pieces imported from Indonesia, that’s one thing that is sorely lacking here. Before Ross arrived, I spotted a trampoline in his garden and couldn’t resist a bounce. It was great fun; I haven’t done that in years.
Taxis are still not running after dark, so some of Ross's staff gave Robbie and I a lift to One More Bar where a great Timorese band were playing. As I climbed in the front of the minivan, I heard a squeal like a pig, it turned out I had stepped on a chicken which was in the dark foot well of the van. That’s another first for me; well you don’t expect a chicken to be there do you?
Ann was invited to the Birthday party of the owner of Hotel California, a new hotel and bar that has opened on the beach. The view over the bay watching the sunset is fantastic. The bar itself is decorated with shells and stones and very stylishly done, although personally I would rather see shells on the beach. The food was great and the same band as I saw a couple of nights before were playing. They opened with ‘Hotel California’ which of course was very appropriate, then played a mixture of Portuguese and English songs. It doesn’t matter whether the song is slow or fast, the Timorese all dance to in the same way, arm around the waist, the other hand holding their partners hand and held away from their body in a kind of waltzing shuffle. When Ann got up and strutted her stuff to a fast number, I watched a table of Timorese girls giggling shyly and imitating her moves. I wonder what they would make of a rave?
On the way to a dive at K41, we pulled in by the side of the road to join the rest of the village watch a Blackhawk helicopter take off. It had landed on their football pitch. They are amazing things to watch, but so noisy! It reminded me of the Vietnam movies. I was teaching an American UN volunteer at the time, so to make car conversation we started comparing English English against American English. It went something along the lines of......
‘So this is the hood?’......’No, it’s the bonnet’
‘So this is the Windshield?’......’No, it’s the Windscreen’
‘So this is the Trunk?’.......’No, it’s the boot’
‘So this is the Sidewalk?’.......’No, it’s the pavement’
Etc, etc.
Then he asked me why we spelt theatre and centre wrong. Bloody Americans, you’d think they invented the English language! However, despite the language differences he was a great student and our dive at Ricks Rapture was excellent. The clarity of the water that morning was exceptional and you could see for 20 to 25 meters.
Another great dive this week was at Dili Rock where we spent a full five minutes watching Fred the turtle, literally 3 meters away from us, until he got bored and buggered off. I also saw my second frog fish in East Timor this week, a little lemon one. I think Andy thought that Jurgen and I had got Nitrogen Narcosis at 12 meters, coz we were doing a silly little underwater scuba dance after we had seen it.
Wednesday, May 23, 2007
He Handsome! - East Timor 23rd May 2007
He Handsome! – East Timor 23rd May 2007
The second Presidential elections were held last week and it was a landslide victory to Ramos Horta as rumour predicted. Although it’s not surprising that he got the majority vote, as when a couple of female voters were asked why they were going to vote for Ramos Horta, they replied ‘He Handsome!’ I guess political campaigning is a new concept in East Timor.
The actual voting day appeared to go without too much trouble, although there were rumours that Fretlin were threatening to destroy the polling stations in some areas. Unfortunately the day of the new Presidents inauguration didn’t quite go so smoothly. One local character described it as a ‘Rock concert starring ‘The Throwing Stones’ and ‘The Smashing Pumpkins’’.
A friend was in Tiger Fuels when a guy turned up on a motorbike and walked into the shop. His mobile phone rang and as he pulled it out of his pocket to answer it, out fell a grenade! The guy grabbed it and sped away on his motorbike. Unfortunately because there are very few motorbikes with number plates, it’s a waste of time reporting it, but a grenade going off in a petrol garage doesn’t bear thinking about.
The UN report highlighting the erratic driving practices of UN personnel and the subsequent report in the Sydney Morning Herald, appears to have brought the speed down around town, which is a good thing. I just wish they would apply the mobile phone use rule as well. Waiting to pull out of Tiger Fuels I watched the driver of a UN Police car texting with his eyes completely off the road. In the UK and Australia, using a mobile phone which is not hands free whilst driving is subject to a heavy fine and points on your licence. So if it is illegal to do something in your own country, what makes it acceptable to do here? Here ends the soapbox speech!
It was Fat Old Sod’s birthday last Monday so he threw a party at the Smokehouse which was great. Mrs Sod and I managed to sneak down there earlier and arrange with the girls to put up a banner and some balloons. Since then I’ve been flat out on the diving front with a mixture of courses including teaching Philippine cops Open Water, Discover Scubas and night dives. We have been so busy that Jurgen and I have been sharing the teaching. I had to call him the other day and request in my polite English Manner, ‘Could you please ask Jurgen if he would mind dropping off the DVD after he drops the kids at school please?’ This was translated by his wife as ‘She wants the DVD first thing in the morning!’ Slightly lost in translation, the difference between the over polite English and the direct, efficient Germans!
The night dive at Dili rock this week was stunning, we saw crabs, cuttlefish, squid, shrimp, a huge moray in a hole and a free swimming moray, angel fish and a really unusual nudibranch called a Pleurbranchus grandis, I’ve never seen one before.
As we surfaced, the sky was glittering with stars, which is one of my favourite parts of a night dive. I looked around to check on my divers and noticed that I had gained one! Instead of 3 other torches I counted four. Where the hell had the extra diver appeared from? It wasn’t until the diver said ‘Bon Noite Mister. Fish?’ that I realised it was a local spear fisherman in a divers mask holding an underwater torch. I’ve met this guy at Dili Rock before, he often sits on his haunches, spear in hand watching us kit up, intrigued with what we are doing.
When we got out of the water, the fisherman showed us his catch which included an enormous squid that one of my divers bought for $10. It weighed 7 kilos and was fresh out of the water, I bet it tasted delicious.
The second Presidential elections were held last week and it was a landslide victory to Ramos Horta as rumour predicted. Although it’s not surprising that he got the majority vote, as when a couple of female voters were asked why they were going to vote for Ramos Horta, they replied ‘He Handsome!’ I guess political campaigning is a new concept in East Timor.
The actual voting day appeared to go without too much trouble, although there were rumours that Fretlin were threatening to destroy the polling stations in some areas. Unfortunately the day of the new Presidents inauguration didn’t quite go so smoothly. One local character described it as a ‘Rock concert starring ‘The Throwing Stones’ and ‘The Smashing Pumpkins’’.
A friend was in Tiger Fuels when a guy turned up on a motorbike and walked into the shop. His mobile phone rang and as he pulled it out of his pocket to answer it, out fell a grenade! The guy grabbed it and sped away on his motorbike. Unfortunately because there are very few motorbikes with number plates, it’s a waste of time reporting it, but a grenade going off in a petrol garage doesn’t bear thinking about.
The UN report highlighting the erratic driving practices of UN personnel and the subsequent report in the Sydney Morning Herald, appears to have brought the speed down around town, which is a good thing. I just wish they would apply the mobile phone use rule as well. Waiting to pull out of Tiger Fuels I watched the driver of a UN Police car texting with his eyes completely off the road. In the UK and Australia, using a mobile phone which is not hands free whilst driving is subject to a heavy fine and points on your licence. So if it is illegal to do something in your own country, what makes it acceptable to do here? Here ends the soapbox speech!
It was Fat Old Sod’s birthday last Monday so he threw a party at the Smokehouse which was great. Mrs Sod and I managed to sneak down there earlier and arrange with the girls to put up a banner and some balloons. Since then I’ve been flat out on the diving front with a mixture of courses including teaching Philippine cops Open Water, Discover Scubas and night dives. We have been so busy that Jurgen and I have been sharing the teaching. I had to call him the other day and request in my polite English Manner, ‘Could you please ask Jurgen if he would mind dropping off the DVD after he drops the kids at school please?’ This was translated by his wife as ‘She wants the DVD first thing in the morning!’ Slightly lost in translation, the difference between the over polite English and the direct, efficient Germans!
The night dive at Dili rock this week was stunning, we saw crabs, cuttlefish, squid, shrimp, a huge moray in a hole and a free swimming moray, angel fish and a really unusual nudibranch called a Pleurbranchus grandis, I’ve never seen one before.
As we surfaced, the sky was glittering with stars, which is one of my favourite parts of a night dive. I looked around to check on my divers and noticed that I had gained one! Instead of 3 other torches I counted four. Where the hell had the extra diver appeared from? It wasn’t until the diver said ‘Bon Noite Mister. Fish?’ that I realised it was a local spear fisherman in a divers mask holding an underwater torch. I’ve met this guy at Dili Rock before, he often sits on his haunches, spear in hand watching us kit up, intrigued with what we are doing.
When we got out of the water, the fisherman showed us his catch which included an enormous squid that one of my divers bought for $10. It weighed 7 kilos and was fresh out of the water, I bet it tasted delicious.
Monday, May 07, 2007
The Magic Man - East Timor 7th May 2007
This week is the one year anniversary of the start of the trouble in East Timor. To mark the occasion we had a Lulik ceremony where we each chucked a stone at the wall to mark hopefully the last stone to be thrown, the Timorese however took a more solemn approach and lined the streets with candles to mark the occasion.
Talking of Lulik ceremonies, our housekeepers youngest child has been sick for 10 days, so she took him to the doctors but he hasn’t got any better, so now she is taking a few days off and travelling 4 hours to Same to see her village Lulik man (witch doctor), so much for modern medicine. Good news though, she returned today and it seems the magic has worked.
A friend of mine had a bit of a neighbourhood dispute while I was away; unfortunately their house was stuck between the guy the village had a gripe with, and some feisty villagers that would not make the Red Socks. Their aim with the stones was so bad that they were landing on my friend’s roof instead. To solve this, the Lulik man of the village took some soil from the battleground, mixed it with water and made both parties drink it, so that if anyone fights on that ground again they will face the curse of Lulik magic. Case closed, the Timorese are very superstitious and wouldn’t dare upset the gods.
I love some of the ways Timorese translates, some of my favourites are:-
Ulun-fatuk moras – Head stone sickness (Headache)
Isin rua – Body two (Pregnant)
Laran Sa’e – Inside to go up (Feel like vomiting)
Recently, the incidents against Malai have increased, not major incidents but more opportunistic. These types of incidents can happen (and do happen) in any major city of the world, muggings, hotel rooms burgled, car vandalism, etc. However, a couple came round to return some snorkelling equipment on Saturday and they had been robbed by a couple of guys, one wielding a machete. They came out of the water to find a couple of guys by the car demanding money, the girl made a run for it and while the guys were distracted, the boyfriend gunned the engine and managed to screech away picking up his girlfriend en-route, not before they had lost a wallet and a camera though. Rest assured we always take security when we go snorkelling or diving, it’s just a shame that we need to.
Talking of screeching away, the UN has been given a ticking off this week. At a town hall meeting this week it was announced that in 2 months there have been over 80 traffic accidents where UN vehicles were the only vehicles involved. Last Saturday, a UN car was stopped at 1.35 am because of erratic driving. Needless to say the driver was drunk, but then proceeded to assault the police!
In response to this incident, UN Security set up a check point between Pig Bridge (Yes it really is known as that!) and the Dili 2001 Hotel. Between the hours of 1 am and 4 am, 26 UN vehicles were stopped, 4 UN staff members tested positive to a breath test. 1 refused to take the test! 3 vehicles and 2 weapons were impounded and 7 non UN staff were being carried as passengers in UN cars without permission. Mmmm, alcohol, guns and driving, a pretty lethal combination me thinks!
In the same speech it was stated ‘Many of you say that the driving conditions here can be challenging’. I don’t disagree, what with taxis doing 15km per hour, motorbikes not having mirrors, pigs/goats/dogs/kids running out in the road unexpectedly, indicators that are ornaments, pot holes and now traffic lights that are sporadically adhered to. But we were always taught to ‘read the road ahead’, if the UN slowed down a bit, then they may be able to find it less challenging and decrease the number of accidents!
The Presidential elections were not 200,000 votes over; apparently someone got the decimal in the wrong place! However, to win the election the candidate must have 50% plus 1 vote, which none of the candidates did. So the re-election is on Wednesday, and so far there has been no trouble just a few isolated incidents in the normal trouble spots. The atmosphere actually seems calmer and more positive since my return, taxis are actually running just after dark and it feels safer to walk around at night. Obviously with an air of caution, there are still absolute no go areas. I think everyone is sick to the back teeth of the violence and hopefully the June parliamentary elections will close the chapter on this unsettled year. Only time will tell, you come to expect the unexpected in East Timor.
Diving has been a bit quiet this week, mainly due to me being stuffed up with a cold. A real shame because the water is calm and the visibility is about 20 meters. Still it looks like what was the little rainy season we had is over, so the visibility just gets better and better from now on.
Talking of Lulik ceremonies, our housekeepers youngest child has been sick for 10 days, so she took him to the doctors but he hasn’t got any better, so now she is taking a few days off and travelling 4 hours to Same to see her village Lulik man (witch doctor), so much for modern medicine. Good news though, she returned today and it seems the magic has worked.
A friend of mine had a bit of a neighbourhood dispute while I was away; unfortunately their house was stuck between the guy the village had a gripe with, and some feisty villagers that would not make the Red Socks. Their aim with the stones was so bad that they were landing on my friend’s roof instead. To solve this, the Lulik man of the village took some soil from the battleground, mixed it with water and made both parties drink it, so that if anyone fights on that ground again they will face the curse of Lulik magic. Case closed, the Timorese are very superstitious and wouldn’t dare upset the gods.
I love some of the ways Timorese translates, some of my favourites are:-
Ulun-fatuk moras – Head stone sickness (Headache)
Isin rua – Body two (Pregnant)
Laran Sa’e – Inside to go up (Feel like vomiting)
Recently, the incidents against Malai have increased, not major incidents but more opportunistic. These types of incidents can happen (and do happen) in any major city of the world, muggings, hotel rooms burgled, car vandalism, etc. However, a couple came round to return some snorkelling equipment on Saturday and they had been robbed by a couple of guys, one wielding a machete. They came out of the water to find a couple of guys by the car demanding money, the girl made a run for it and while the guys were distracted, the boyfriend gunned the engine and managed to screech away picking up his girlfriend en-route, not before they had lost a wallet and a camera though. Rest assured we always take security when we go snorkelling or diving, it’s just a shame that we need to.
Talking of screeching away, the UN has been given a ticking off this week. At a town hall meeting this week it was announced that in 2 months there have been over 80 traffic accidents where UN vehicles were the only vehicles involved. Last Saturday, a UN car was stopped at 1.35 am because of erratic driving. Needless to say the driver was drunk, but then proceeded to assault the police!
In response to this incident, UN Security set up a check point between Pig Bridge (Yes it really is known as that!) and the Dili 2001 Hotel. Between the hours of 1 am and 4 am, 26 UN vehicles were stopped, 4 UN staff members tested positive to a breath test. 1 refused to take the test! 3 vehicles and 2 weapons were impounded and 7 non UN staff were being carried as passengers in UN cars without permission. Mmmm, alcohol, guns and driving, a pretty lethal combination me thinks!
In the same speech it was stated ‘Many of you say that the driving conditions here can be challenging’. I don’t disagree, what with taxis doing 15km per hour, motorbikes not having mirrors, pigs/goats/dogs/kids running out in the road unexpectedly, indicators that are ornaments, pot holes and now traffic lights that are sporadically adhered to. But we were always taught to ‘read the road ahead’, if the UN slowed down a bit, then they may be able to find it less challenging and decrease the number of accidents!
The Presidential elections were not 200,000 votes over; apparently someone got the decimal in the wrong place! However, to win the election the candidate must have 50% plus 1 vote, which none of the candidates did. So the re-election is on Wednesday, and so far there has been no trouble just a few isolated incidents in the normal trouble spots. The atmosphere actually seems calmer and more positive since my return, taxis are actually running just after dark and it feels safer to walk around at night. Obviously with an air of caution, there are still absolute no go areas. I think everyone is sick to the back teeth of the violence and hopefully the June parliamentary elections will close the chapter on this unsettled year. Only time will tell, you come to expect the unexpected in East Timor.
Diving has been a bit quiet this week, mainly due to me being stuffed up with a cold. A real shame because the water is calm and the visibility is about 20 meters. Still it looks like what was the little rainy season we had is over, so the visibility just gets better and better from now on.
Friday, April 27, 2007
At one with nature – East Timor 27th April 2007
East Timor is not a place for the squeamish or insect phobic, apart from mosquitoes; we have mice, geckos, ants, tics, termites, grubs, wasps, spiders, centipedes and even crabs! (And that’s just in the house!) A few months ago the visa card reader gave up the ghost; the cause of death was gecko shit! Appar
ently if a gecko shits on you it’s supposed to be lucky, (East Timor’s equivalent to seagulls), well that’s what I tried to convinced Rob when he got peed upon one night. Ants are also destructive to electrical appliances; our kitchen light went kaput because ants have chewed through the wiring. Not to mention the bamboo grubs that live and eat their way through our patio furniture, luckily it was a regular customer that was sitting on the chair when it collapsed. Some insects have collective names; all big spiders are Boris’s and all crabs that wander in from the beach are Colin’s.
I’ve been away from East Timor for about 6 weeks in the somewhat more civilized UK. After this amount of time you become somewhat complacent with the technology and choice and forget that back here you have to deal with slow and clunky internet connections, constant dirt under your fingernails and the necessity of slathering yourself with mosquito repellent. Back to the real world! Oh, the luxury of walking into someone’s place, opening your laptop and connecting to their wireless broadband, or walking into a Tesco’s superstore and blowing your mind with the choice and range of goodies for sale. INet and Leader just don’t cut it.
I kept an eye on the news from Dili through two blog sites ‘Xanana Republic Gazette’ and ‘Diligence’, both of which are very amusing reading. I was planning to return after the presidential elections, but in true Timor style, they all went badly wrong. You would think that in a country of 1 million people, 520,000 of eligible voting age, someone would notice that an extra 200,000 had voted, doh! They did! So a revote is now happening in May. What I can’t understand is the voting system was supposed to be fingerprint voting with adjudicators that have been here for months, how the hell did they manage to get an extra 200,000 votes?
So I returned anyway and managed to get away with nearly 40 kilos of luggage which is double the allowance. I hung round the check-in desk in Bali, prostituting myself to every passenger that looked like they were underweight, trying to check in with them. Eventually the check-in guy got either fed up with me or felt sorry for me and checked my bags in without a quibble. Returning to Dili International Airport, I made an arrangement with one of the Timorese Nationals, a lovely guy called Olivio. As he wouldn’t have the delay of getting a visa, he would nab me a trolley for my copious amount of luggage. Speaking from a bad previous experience, I didn’t want to be dragging two very large bags of dive gear through the airport. However being a prestigious international airport with 140 people coming in at a time, they only have 12 trolleys in total. Luckily, Olivio nabbed the last one for me.
Wielding a severely overloaded and very precarious trolley (I still managed to get the one with the dodgy wheel!); I met Wayne & Ann who took me off to the traditional welcoming ceremony, a Tiger beer at the airport bar. After observing how white I was, I gave Ann her traditional present of 200 menthol cigarettes (a rare commodity in East Timor). Last time I returned Wayne had commented (tongue in cheek) that he never got a present, so I brought him back a bumper bag of Cheesy Wotsists from the UK. It’s amazing how these chemically flavoured, orange finger staining, little puffs of corn bring such joy to a grown man’s palette.
Tomorrow, I’ll get my act together and sort out my schedule for the next few weeks and then Sunday I’m diving, I can’t wait to get back in the water again and top up my rapidly fading tan.
I’m now writing this thinking back to the UK where I would listen to the distant hum of traffic on the M4 and Heathrow bound planes circling overhead, now I have the gentle lapping of the sea and the distant whine of Blackhawks overhead. The dogs went into overdrive during the night so when bleary eyed I was asked how I slept; I replied that ‘I heard Boris darking all night!’ And now we have our first power cut of the day so the sea is drowned out by the droning of the generator. Welcome back to East Timor!
ently if a gecko shits on you it’s supposed to be lucky, (East Timor’s equivalent to seagulls), well that’s what I tried to convinced Rob when he got peed upon one night. Ants are also destructive to electrical appliances; our kitchen light went kaput because ants have chewed through the wiring. Not to mention the bamboo grubs that live and eat their way through our patio furniture, luckily it was a regular customer that was sitting on the chair when it collapsed. Some insects have collective names; all big spiders are Boris’s and all crabs that wander in from the beach are Colin’s.I’ve been away from East Timor for about 6 weeks in the somewhat more civilized UK. After this amount of time you become somewhat complacent with the technology and choice and forget that back here you have to deal with slow and clunky internet connections, constant dirt under your fingernails and the necessity of slathering yourself with mosquito repellent. Back to the real world! Oh, the luxury of walking into someone’s place, opening your laptop and connecting to their wireless broadband, or walking into a Tesco’s superstore and blowing your mind with the choice and range of goodies for sale. INet and Leader just don’t cut it.
I kept an eye on the news from Dili through two blog sites ‘Xanana Republic Gazette’ and ‘Diligence’, both of which are very amusing reading. I was planning to return after the presidential elections, but in true Timor style, they all went badly wrong. You would think that in a country of 1 million people, 520,000 of eligible voting age, someone would notice that an extra 200,000 had voted, doh! They did! So a revote is now happening in May. What I can’t understand is the voting system was supposed to be fingerprint voting with adjudicators that have been here for months, how the hell did they manage to get an extra 200,000 votes?
So I returned anyway and managed to get away with nearly 40 kilos of luggage which is double the allowance. I hung round the check-in desk in Bali, prostituting myself to every passenger that looked like they were underweight, trying to check in with them. Eventually the check-in guy got either fed up with me or felt sorry for me and checked my bags in without a quibble. Returning to Dili International Airport, I made an arrangement with one of the Timorese Nationals, a lovely guy called Olivio. As he wouldn’t have the delay of getting a visa, he would nab me a trolley for my copious amount of luggage. Speaking from a bad previous experience, I didn’t want to be dragging two very large bags of dive gear through the airport. However being a prestigious international airport with 140 people coming in at a time, they only have 12 trolleys in total. Luckily, Olivio nabbed the last one for me.
Wielding a severely overloaded and very precarious trolley (I still managed to get the one with the dodgy wheel!); I met Wayne & Ann who took me off to the traditional welcoming ceremony, a Tiger beer at the airport bar. After observing how white I was, I gave Ann her traditional present of 200 menthol cigarettes (a rare commodity in East Timor). Last time I returned Wayne had commented (tongue in cheek) that he never got a present, so I brought him back a bumper bag of Cheesy Wotsists from the UK. It’s amazing how these chemically flavoured, orange finger staining, little puffs of corn bring such joy to a grown man’s palette.
Tomorrow, I’ll get my act together and sort out my schedule for the next few weeks and then Sunday I’m diving, I can’t wait to get back in the water again and top up my rapidly fading tan.
I’m now writing this thinking back to the UK where I would listen to the distant hum of traffic on the M4 and Heathrow bound planes circling overhead, now I have the gentle lapping of the sea and the distant whine of Blackhawks overhead. The dogs went into overdrive during the night so when bleary eyed I was asked how I slept; I replied that ‘I heard Boris darking all night!’ And now we have our first power cut of the day so the sea is drowned out by the droning of the generator. Welcome back to East Timor!
Monday, February 26, 2007
Rice Race – East Timor 23rd February 2007
There is a shortage of rice in East Timor at the moment, apparently the government didn’t order enough plus with the very late wet season, the crops are down. The price of a 50kg bag of rice has gone up from $15 to over $30, some rumours put it up as high as $55. So the latest unrest in Dili is all about rice, or lack of it, which seems crazy as before the crisis most people couldn’t afford rice and existed on cassava and potatoes which do grow easily here. But because rice has been handed out for free during the last few months by aid agencies, the shortage and black market inflated prices are causing rioting in the streets.
We had been out to lunch and popped into Landmark supermarket to pick up some shopping. Landmark at the moment is a caution area as trouble often kicks off along that road. There were a few UNPol around and a bit of an atmosphere, as we drove through Bebeno we found out why, loads of guys running down the street with rice bags on their backs and happy smiling faces. They had just raided one of the government rice stores.
I was talking to a lady who’s job was looking after rice distribution at the (ex) British Embassy pancake do that night. She told me about the raid and the fact she waited ½ an hour before calling UNPol. “It’s their rice after all”. Good lady.
Much, much earlier that morning, 6am to be precise, I was driving to Dili Rock for an early morning dive. Coming up to the new traffic lights, they started to turn red so I slowly braked, but nothing happened, I went cruising through the red lights, luckily it was early an nothing was on the road. Coming back was a different matter, unfortunately the traffic lights are on a dip, so I couldn’t stop the truck, I had to turn the wheel into some gravel to stop myself going into the back of the line of traffic. That was more than a little hairy. Crawling back to the dive centre, Nelson was waiting for me at the gate, and started to laugh when I overshot the dive centre and had to reverse back, he thought I’d just been daydreaming until I explained about the brakes. Today, we heard a loud bang and the whole house shook, Wayne rammed the outside wall and Ann came out with the classic line ‘I take it we’ve got no brakes then!’ Needless to say we can’t drive it until the spare parts arrive.
Apparently the traffic lights are going to be turned off again because since they have been working there has been an increase in car muggings when car stop at the red light. Another unsuccessful project!
In other hairy moments this week, we had gunfire behind the Esplanada the other night, and a few days ago the FDTL (local army) fired 2 shots from an M16 into the Kampong next to us. Two men from the IDP camps have been killed by the Australian military, the first casualties by foreign troops. One of the men killed was firing an Ambon arrow at the soldier when he shot him. I don’t blame him, if I was faced with an Ambon arrow, I’d probably do the same. They are nasty things with hooks at the end which they dip in poison or excrement.
Anyway, the result of these fatalities was a protest yesterday to present a petition to the Australian Embassy, and then the protest would proceed to Bacau for the funeral. The UNPol and GNR were out in force, but no with no Australian UNPol or troops. They re-routed the protest and let a small faction present the petition which basically demanded that all foreign troops pull out of East Timor. Like that’s going to happen! As a precaution, Lindsay arrived from Darwin yesterday with a load of Union Jacks for us. The last thing you want to be flying at the moment is an Australian flag.
When he went to hire a car, Lindsay asked what the policy was if the car got rocked, as there is no insurance in this country. He was told, any damage he had to pay for. Then he asked what if he caught the scrote that did it, and brought him to them. The reply was, they would kill the scrote, but he still had to pay for any damage!
Meanwhile Alfredo ransacked three police stations and made off with a load of guns. You may recall Alfredo is a rebel leader that escaped from prison some months back. He’s supposedly hiding out in Same, so the UN have evacuated all personnel from Same and surrounding areas. The place is surrounded by troops. Let’s hope this time if they catch him, that they can keep hold of him.
On the diving front, I’ve had a fantastic week. I’ve been teaching speci
alities and will certify my first master scuba diver tonight. I did my first n
ight dive in East Timor at K41 and had a huge turtle an arm stretch away from me as well as a frogfish, lobster and blue spotted stingray. At the weekend I saw 4 humphead parrotfish and today, shark, moray eels, a flying gurnard, barracuda, mantis shrimp and squid, incredible.
Jurgen came back from his IDC (Instructor Development Course) and IE (Instructors Exams) in Bali. He passed with flying colours as I knew he would, but I was like an expectant mum back here waiting for the results. The other good news is that we are a tic free zone again, the injections worked, thank god.
We had been out to lunch and popped into Landmark supermarket to pick up some shopping. Landmark at the moment is a caution area as trouble often kicks off along that road. There were a few UNPol around and a bit of an atmosphere, as we drove through Bebeno we found out why, loads of guys running down the street with rice bags on their backs and happy smiling faces. They had just raided one of the government rice stores.
I was talking to a lady who’s job was looking after rice distribution at the (ex) British Embassy pancake do that night. She told me about the raid and the fact she waited ½ an hour before calling UNPol. “It’s their rice after all”. Good lady.
Much, much earlier that morning, 6am to be precise, I was driving to Dili Rock for an early morning dive. Coming up to the new traffic lights, they started to turn red so I slowly braked, but nothing happened, I went cruising through the red lights, luckily it was early an nothing was on the road. Coming back was a different matter, unfortunately the traffic lights are on a dip, so I couldn’t stop the truck, I had to turn the wheel into some gravel to stop myself going into the back of the line of traffic. That was more than a little hairy. Crawling back to the dive centre, Nelson was waiting for me at the gate, and started to laugh when I overshot the dive centre and had to reverse back, he thought I’d just been daydreaming until I explained about the brakes. Today, we heard a loud bang and the whole house shook, Wayne rammed the outside wall and Ann came out with the classic line ‘I take it we’ve got no brakes then!’ Needless to say we can’t drive it until the spare parts arrive.
Apparently the traffic lights are going to be turned off again because since they have been working there has been an increase in car muggings when car stop at the red light. Another unsuccessful project!
In other hairy moments this week, we had gunfire behind the Esplanada the other night, and a few days ago the FDTL (local army) fired 2 shots from an M16 into the Kampong next to us. Two men from the IDP camps have been killed by the Australian military, the first casualties by foreign troops. One of the men killed was firing an Ambon arrow at the soldier when he shot him. I don’t blame him, if I was faced with an Ambon arrow, I’d probably do the same. They are nasty things with hooks at the end which they dip in poison or excrement.
Anyway, the result of these fatalities was a protest yesterday to present a petition to the Australian Embassy, and then the protest would proceed to Bacau for the funeral. The UNPol and GNR were out in force, but no with no Australian UNPol or troops. They re-routed the protest and let a small faction present the petition which basically demanded that all foreign troops pull out of East Timor. Like that’s going to happen! As a precaution, Lindsay arrived from Darwin yesterday with a load of Union Jacks for us. The last thing you want to be flying at the moment is an Australian flag.
When he went to hire a car, Lindsay asked what the policy was if the car got rocked, as there is no insurance in this country. He was told, any damage he had to pay for. Then he asked what if he caught the scrote that did it, and brought him to them. The reply was, they would kill the scrote, but he still had to pay for any damage!
Meanwhile Alfredo ransacked three police stations and made off with a load of guns. You may recall Alfredo is a rebel leader that escaped from prison some months back. He’s supposedly hiding out in Same, so the UN have evacuated all personnel from Same and surrounding areas. The place is surrounded by troops. Let’s hope this time if they catch him, that they can keep hold of him.
On the diving front, I’ve had a fantastic week. I’ve been teaching speci
alities and will certify my first master scuba diver tonight. I did my first n
ight dive in East Timor at K41 and had a huge turtle an arm stretch away from me as well as a frogfish, lobster and blue spotted stingray. At the weekend I saw 4 humphead parrotfish and today, shark, moray eels, a flying gurnard, barracuda, mantis shrimp and squid, incredible.Jurgen came back from his IDC (Instructor Development Course) and IE (Instructors Exams) in Bali. He passed with flying colours as I knew he would, but I was like an expectant mum back here waiting for the results. The other good news is that we are a tic free zone again, the injections worked, thank god.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Green for Stop? – East Timor 5th of January 2007
New Years Eve we did a bit of a tour starting at Hotel Dili, then Castaways, popped into Tiger fuels and said happy new year to Jim and Whitey, then the Smokehouse, One more Bar who had a band playing, and finally Yoey’s place. Unfortunately we missed midnight by about 2 minutes but driving along the Banana Road the Timorese were out banging metal poles for all they were worth and dancing outside the nativity scenes. We were in time however for the fireworks at Yoey’s, which was the busiest place we had been all night. Leading up to Christmas you couldn’t get a flight out of Dili, they were fully booked from the 12th to the 24th so many people took the opportunity to get away over New Years, so Dili was relatively quiet.
Late that night we heard that Whitey had been in a motorcycle accident and was being medivaced to Darwin. The accident had happened around 9.30 that evening only 10 minutes after we had spoke to him at Tiger Fuels where he had been wearing his crash helmet. Apparently the local army (FDTL) were overtaking each other at speed in their trucks and had run over Whitey. Unfortunately he’s not in a good way and the guys responsible have gone into hiding and are refusing access for the trucks to be inspected. Somebody needs to be held accountable for the accident, if the tables were turned and a Malai was involved in an accident with a Timorese, then the Malai pays whether it’s their fault or not. We are advised that in the case of an accident, to just keep driving, don’t stop, no matter what and get to the nearest police station.
My only run in with the FDTL was a few months back when I was crawling up the hill fully loaded in the truck. The first of 10 FDTL trucks came tearing down the hill, packed with machine gun wielding soldiers and screamed at me ‘Get out of the way!’ This is easier said than done when you are in first gear going uphill in a heavy truck. But these were the guys that were responsible for shooting 9 unarmed policemen back in April. The road has been blocked off with stones in memoriam to the dead ever since it happened.
Crash helmets are compulsory in East Timor, but since the trouble started this law is being ignored. You often see a family of four on a moped and not one of them with a crash helmet. For those that do wear them they are often thin moulded plastic, not even as protective as a hard hat and in fact would probably cause more damage by shattering into the skull on impact. We watched one guy yesterday, stop his motorbike to pick up his crash helmet when it fell off. He promptly put it back on over his baseball cap, didn’t do it up and it would probably fall off again in the next five minutes. The problem is the Timorese were told they had to wear crash helmets, but no one explained to them why and the benefits.
To cause more chaos on the streets, the UN are putting in 10 sets of traffic lights. For a capital city with no traffic lights, no street lights and a rule that you stop on a roundabout to let traffic come on, this seems pretty ludicrous. They are either going to be ignored or some drivers are going to sit and stare at them because they don’t know what to do. They are also painting pedestrian crossings on the road. Let’s see how many accidents they cause. The UN would be better off either investing the money in a proper driving education scheme or getting the street lights working again and making Dili feel safer at night.
Tonight I was driving home and the streets were pitch black (hence the need for street lights!). I wasn’t driving fast but there was a dog lying in the middle of the road, as soon as it saw the car, it bolted, and there was a sickening yelp as it went under the wheels. I drove another half a mile then pulled over and bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t stop to put the dog out of its misery as the local villagers would demand money for the dog and it could get nasty. They certainly demand money for livestock such as pigs, cows, goats and chickens if Malai run them over. I felt devastated, especially when our three dogs have taken to escaping recently because they are petrified of the fire crackers. Sickie has cut his head open trying to get out of the fence and Bandit went AWOL on New Years Eve in the middle of a thunderstorm. I know how I would feel if anything happened to them as I’m completely soppy about dogs, I even had a soft spot for our scabby instructors dog called Chicken Bones in Egypt.
I’m going to get on my soapbox again, this time it’s about the American Embassy. Of course like most embassies here it’s on prime time land overlooking the sea and they have just built a 25meter, 4 lane swimming pool in the grounds, visible by all the surrounding kampongs, the residents of which think rice is a luxury. Anyway if that wasn’t bad enough, American residents of East Timor only were allowed to use the pool and up to 5 of their guests, this was recently changed to Embassy staff only were allowed to invite guests, providing the were Malai, not Timorese, how racist it that, it’s disgraceful! It really pisses me off when the Malai act as if it’s just a job and the country doesn’t exist. This is Dili not Washington or Sydney, live with it!
Another incident involving the American Embassy was on Christmas Eve. Ros’s daughter had a temperature on nearly 40 degrees which in this country is usually a sign of malaria. She is an American citizen so they tried to see the American doctor at the Embassy on Christmas Day only to be told she could only see the doctor if they had a letter from the Ambassador himself. Luckily they managed to find another doctor and it wasn’t malaria just a virus.
We often get overlanders coming through East Timor doing the trip either UK to Australia or the other way round. Also we get people that want to visit every country on earth and East Timor is one of the newest. Lynda is the latest overlander starting out from Spain 21 months ago on her 600cc Kawaski motorbike. Lynda is tiny and the bike is huge in comparison, especially since she’s lost 10 kilos during her trip. To get any vehicle into Australia is must be taken apart and meticulously cleaned as Australia is very fussy regarding bugs entering the country. I remember years ago travelling in Australia and you were not allowed to take any foodstuffs into Queensland because of the fruit fly risk. Usually the overlanders hang around for a week or so, doing the cleaning themselves (which is a hell of a job), or getting their vehicle cleaned (which is very expensive), ready to be shipped to Darwin. Throughout the journey, Lynda had cushioned her bum with a sheepskin rug which was very dirty and bedraggled by now. Obviously there was no way that the Australians would let her take that into their country so she had a cremation ceremony for it and played Baa Baa Black Sheep on a whistle while it burned
I’ve been reasonably busy on the diving front with Open water courses, a mixture of soldiers, doctors and now a geologist. One of the GNR I have been teaching to dive is banned from drinking throughout his whole six month mission in East Timor. Apparently, when he first got here he went on a binge and got himself lost in Dili, so the whole of the GNR were scouring the streets looking for him. After that his boss banned him from drinking!
Late that night we heard that Whitey had been in a motorcycle accident and was being medivaced to Darwin. The accident had happened around 9.30 that evening only 10 minutes after we had spoke to him at Tiger Fuels where he had been wearing his crash helmet. Apparently the local army (FDTL) were overtaking each other at speed in their trucks and had run over Whitey. Unfortunately he’s not in a good way and the guys responsible have gone into hiding and are refusing access for the trucks to be inspected. Somebody needs to be held accountable for the accident, if the tables were turned and a Malai was involved in an accident with a Timorese, then the Malai pays whether it’s their fault or not. We are advised that in the case of an accident, to just keep driving, don’t stop, no matter what and get to the nearest police station.
My only run in with the FDTL was a few months back when I was crawling up the hill fully loaded in the truck. The first of 10 FDTL trucks came tearing down the hill, packed with machine gun wielding soldiers and screamed at me ‘Get out of the way!’ This is easier said than done when you are in first gear going uphill in a heavy truck. But these were the guys that were responsible for shooting 9 unarmed policemen back in April. The road has been blocked off with stones in memoriam to the dead ever since it happened.
Crash helmets are compulsory in East Timor, but since the trouble started this law is being ignored. You often see a family of four on a moped and not one of them with a crash helmet. For those that do wear them they are often thin moulded plastic, not even as protective as a hard hat and in fact would probably cause more damage by shattering into the skull on impact. We watched one guy yesterday, stop his motorbike to pick up his crash helmet when it fell off. He promptly put it back on over his baseball cap, didn’t do it up and it would probably fall off again in the next five minutes. The problem is the Timorese were told they had to wear crash helmets, but no one explained to them why and the benefits.
To cause more chaos on the streets, the UN are putting in 10 sets of traffic lights. For a capital city with no traffic lights, no street lights and a rule that you stop on a roundabout to let traffic come on, this seems pretty ludicrous. They are either going to be ignored or some drivers are going to sit and stare at them because they don’t know what to do. They are also painting pedestrian crossings on the road. Let’s see how many accidents they cause. The UN would be better off either investing the money in a proper driving education scheme or getting the street lights working again and making Dili feel safer at night.
Tonight I was driving home and the streets were pitch black (hence the need for street lights!). I wasn’t driving fast but there was a dog lying in the middle of the road, as soon as it saw the car, it bolted, and there was a sickening yelp as it went under the wheels. I drove another half a mile then pulled over and bawled my eyes out. I couldn’t stop to put the dog out of its misery as the local villagers would demand money for the dog and it could get nasty. They certainly demand money for livestock such as pigs, cows, goats and chickens if Malai run them over. I felt devastated, especially when our three dogs have taken to escaping recently because they are petrified of the fire crackers. Sickie has cut his head open trying to get out of the fence and Bandit went AWOL on New Years Eve in the middle of a thunderstorm. I know how I would feel if anything happened to them as I’m completely soppy about dogs, I even had a soft spot for our scabby instructors dog called Chicken Bones in Egypt.
I’m going to get on my soapbox again, this time it’s about the American Embassy. Of course like most embassies here it’s on prime time land overlooking the sea and they have just built a 25meter, 4 lane swimming pool in the grounds, visible by all the surrounding kampongs, the residents of which think rice is a luxury. Anyway if that wasn’t bad enough, American residents of East Timor only were allowed to use the pool and up to 5 of their guests, this was recently changed to Embassy staff only were allowed to invite guests, providing the were Malai, not Timorese, how racist it that, it’s disgraceful! It really pisses me off when the Malai act as if it’s just a job and the country doesn’t exist. This is Dili not Washington or Sydney, live with it!
Another incident involving the American Embassy was on Christmas Eve. Ros’s daughter had a temperature on nearly 40 degrees which in this country is usually a sign of malaria. She is an American citizen so they tried to see the American doctor at the Embassy on Christmas Day only to be told she could only see the doctor if they had a letter from the Ambassador himself. Luckily they managed to find another doctor and it wasn’t malaria just a virus.
We often get overlanders coming through East Timor doing the trip either UK to Australia or the other way round. Also we get people that want to visit every country on earth and East Timor is one of the newest. Lynda is the latest overlander starting out from Spain 21 months ago on her 600cc Kawaski motorbike. Lynda is tiny and the bike is huge in comparison, especially since she’s lost 10 kilos during her trip. To get any vehicle into Australia is must be taken apart and meticulously cleaned as Australia is very fussy regarding bugs entering the country. I remember years ago travelling in Australia and you were not allowed to take any foodstuffs into Queensland because of the fruit fly risk. Usually the overlanders hang around for a week or so, doing the cleaning themselves (which is a hell of a job), or getting their vehicle cleaned (which is very expensive), ready to be shipped to Darwin. Throughout the journey, Lynda had cushioned her bum with a sheepskin rug which was very dirty and bedraggled by now. Obviously there was no way that the Australians would let her take that into their country so she had a cremation ceremony for it and played Baa Baa Black Sheep on a whistle while it burned
I’ve been reasonably busy on the diving front with Open water courses, a mixture of soldiers, doctors and now a geologist. One of the GNR I have been teaching to dive is banned from drinking throughout his whole six month mission in East Timor. Apparently, when he first got here he went on a binge and got himself lost in Dili, so the whole of the GNR were scouring the streets looking for him. After that his boss banned him from drinking!
Population! Who has a clue! - East Timor 15th January 2007
This weekend we did a diving trip to Atauro and stayed on the Island overnight. The island is beautiful and very different from Dili. The population here is approx 8000, 70% of which are strict protestant, rather than the mainland which is nearly all catholic. According to folklore, when the Indonesians invaded and landed on the island, the chief from the village came down to meet them. He asked the troops ‘Who was in charge?’ And when the leader identified himself, the chief picked up his gun and shot him! So shocked by this, the troops ran back to their boat and high tailed back to Dili.
The only way to get to the island is by ferry that runs once a week (sporadically!) or by chartering a boat. Some backpackers have taken the cheap fishing boat route, but have come back with tales of endurance, sunburn, and sodden possessions, and with the weather turning now, it really isn’t a safe option. Barry runs an Eco Lodge over on the island and back in March his wife Nema was eight months pregnant with their first child. We had cyclone warnings at the time and the sea was very rough when Nema developed preeclampsia. Despite having 3 doctors staying at the lodge and the valiant efforts of 5 boats trying to get to the island, Nema and her unborn child died because she couldn’t get to medical care. In her memory, Barry renamed the resort Nema’s.
Barry is the only Malai in the village, but because he and Nema were so integrated in the community, Nema’s family and the village have supported him in developing the lodge, which now has a 4th hut being constructed. I say hut, but the buildings are sturdy two storeys affairs with a small veranda and a hammock outside. At night the lights are powered by solar electricity and the generator only goes on for an hour a day to keep the freezers cold for beer. The beer is bought from the local kiosk and resold to guests. Rather than bringing it in from the mainland, Barry would rather put the money into the local economy. Stocks brought in from Dili are transported via one of the 5 vehicle on the island (2 of which are not working!). There is only one road, so hopefully traffic lights won’t be the next UN project here!
The Timorese are very superstitious and believe an old couple in the village are witches and put a curse on Nema because she married a Malai. In Liquica this week three women were killed by the community for being witches. The UN have got their work cut out for them trying to develop this country if they are still witch hunting like they did in medieval times.
We set off on Saturday afternoon and stopped en-route to Nema’s to dive at Manta Cove. This is still up in my top 10 dives of all time, I just wished I had my camera with me, you cannot describe how beautiful the coral and sponges are. We then moored up outside Nema’s and were transported to the lodge is a very precarious dug out which wobbled with the slightest movement.
Barry gave us a tour of the lodge including his latest building which is under construction at the moment. The bathroom facilities are separate to the buildings because the toilets are dug out pits in the ground. He has built a raised block above the toilet and stuck a toilet seat with a lid on top of it, so it feels like a real toilet. Loo roll is kept in a plastic bucket next to the loo to keep it dry in the rain as the toilets don’t have roofs. The washing areas are separate again with a mandi arrangement. A mandi is a large bucket of water with a pail which is very common throughout Asia. The idea is you douse yourself with water, soap up, then rinse off. I actually enjoy washing this way and it’s much more economical on water compared to a shower.
The lodge is on the beach so it has superb sunsets and sunrises. We watched a local fisherman walk out of the water with 10 sardines between his fingers. That was the last of the fishing for the weekend, because being strict protestant they are not allowed to work on Sundays. We wandered round the village before sunset, everyone is so friendly here, they are so poor, and their living arrangements are so basic, but you don’t get the ‘One dollar Mister!’ like you do in Dili. We only spotted one IDP tent, but at the height of the troubles there were 2000 IDP’s here which increased the population by 25% and put a big strain on the natural resources.
They don’t have birth certificates in East Timor, but there is a register when a child is baptised. However, they don’t have death certificates either and the last couple of Census they tried to do here were disasters. The population is supposed to be around the million mark, but who knows without any form of registration.
We were offered a pre-dinner appetiser of deep fried tiny crabs which you eat whole, they were delicious. Dinner was fresh tuna with cassava chips, vegetables and rice followed by a sticky toffee made from boiled condensed milk, (the nearest thing they have to chocolate on the island). The room that I was sleeping in was quite hot and sticky under the mosquito dome so I ended up sleeping under the starts in the hammock on the veranda with a lovely cool breeze from the sea.
The next days diving took us to Barstool, then made our way back to Dili. Sailing through the channel between the two islands we were surrounded by dolphins as far as the eye could see, there were hundreds of them. They were jumping and somersaulting, I’ve never seen dolphins jump that high out of the water, it was spectacular.
The only way to get to the island is by ferry that runs once a week (sporadically!) or by chartering a boat. Some backpackers have taken the cheap fishing boat route, but have come back with tales of endurance, sunburn, and sodden possessions, and with the weather turning now, it really isn’t a safe option. Barry runs an Eco Lodge over on the island and back in March his wife Nema was eight months pregnant with their first child. We had cyclone warnings at the time and the sea was very rough when Nema developed preeclampsia. Despite having 3 doctors staying at the lodge and the valiant efforts of 5 boats trying to get to the island, Nema and her unborn child died because she couldn’t get to medical care. In her memory, Barry renamed the resort Nema’s.
Barry is the only Malai in the village, but because he and Nema were so integrated in the community, Nema’s family and the village have supported him in developing the lodge, which now has a 4th hut being constructed. I say hut, but the buildings are sturdy two storeys affairs with a small veranda and a hammock outside. At night the lights are powered by solar electricity and the generator only goes on for an hour a day to keep the freezers cold for beer. The beer is bought from the local kiosk and resold to guests. Rather than bringing it in from the mainland, Barry would rather put the money into the local economy. Stocks brought in from Dili are transported via one of the 5 vehicle on the island (2 of which are not working!). There is only one road, so hopefully traffic lights won’t be the next UN project here!
The Timorese are very superstitious and believe an old couple in the village are witches and put a curse on Nema because she married a Malai. In Liquica this week three women were killed by the community for being witches. The UN have got their work cut out for them trying to develop this country if they are still witch hunting like they did in medieval times.
We set off on Saturday afternoon and stopped en-route to Nema’s to dive at Manta Cove. This is still up in my top 10 dives of all time, I just wished I had my camera with me, you cannot describe how beautiful the coral and sponges are. We then moored up outside Nema’s and were transported to the lodge is a very precarious dug out which wobbled with the slightest movement.
Barry gave us a tour of the lodge including his latest building which is under construction at the moment. The bathroom facilities are separate to the buildings because the toilets are dug out pits in the ground. He has built a raised block above the toilet and stuck a toilet seat with a lid on top of it, so it feels like a real toilet. Loo roll is kept in a plastic bucket next to the loo to keep it dry in the rain as the toilets don’t have roofs. The washing areas are separate again with a mandi arrangement. A mandi is a large bucket of water with a pail which is very common throughout Asia. The idea is you douse yourself with water, soap up, then rinse off. I actually enjoy washing this way and it’s much more economical on water compared to a shower.
The lodge is on the beach so it has superb sunsets and sunrises. We watched a local fisherman walk out of the water with 10 sardines between his fingers. That was the last of the fishing for the weekend, because being strict protestant they are not allowed to work on Sundays. We wandered round the village before sunset, everyone is so friendly here, they are so poor, and their living arrangements are so basic, but you don’t get the ‘One dollar Mister!’ like you do in Dili. We only spotted one IDP tent, but at the height of the troubles there were 2000 IDP’s here which increased the population by 25% and put a big strain on the natural resources.
They don’t have birth certificates in East Timor, but there is a register when a child is baptised. However, they don’t have death certificates either and the last couple of Census they tried to do here were disasters. The population is supposed to be around the million mark, but who knows without any form of registration.
We were offered a pre-dinner appetiser of deep fried tiny crabs which you eat whole, they were delicious. Dinner was fresh tuna with cassava chips, vegetables and rice followed by a sticky toffee made from boiled condensed milk, (the nearest thing they have to chocolate on the island). The room that I was sleeping in was quite hot and sticky under the mosquito dome so I ended up sleeping under the starts in the hammock on the veranda with a lovely cool breeze from the sea.
The next days diving took us to Barstool, then made our way back to Dili. Sailing through the channel between the two islands we were surrounded by dolphins as far as the eye could see, there were hundreds of them. They were jumping and somersaulting, I’ve never seen dolphins jump that high out of the water, it was spectacular.
Damp and Rank – East Timor 20th January 2007
The diving went a bit quiet this week, the UN are back from their extended holidays but need to be seen to be working. Dedication and all that! You can tell that the UN are back with the return of the 3 hour nightly power cuts. Bless them; they just can’t survive without their air-con.
So when a Thai guy walked in and asked us to do a commercial salvage job, it was more than welcome. He described the job as locating and raising a propeller of a large Thai fishing boat, ½ a kilometre off shore in 30 meters of water. The prop was supposed to weigh 20 kilos which sounded a bit suspicious as Thai fishing boats are normally big so the prop would normally weigh 200kg not 20. The location of the boat was on the south coast which is unexplored territory as far as diving. We would be the first people in history to scuba dive the south coast of East Timor (we think!).
We set out on our adventure on Wednesday morning, loaded up with tanks, lines, torches and snack food, we literally raided Tiger Fuels (Dili’s equivalent of a 24hr BP Garage). The road out of Dili is steep and we were soon shrouded in thick fog, we were in the clouds! It was weird to be cold for the first time in East Timor, in Dili it’s a humid 33 degrees at the moment and doesn’t vary much from that. Because of the moisture, it’s really lush up there and you immediately see different vegetation and flowers. The road took us to Aileu where the heavens opened and unfortunately because the truck was filled with bodies, we had to put our overnight packs in the back so our clothes got soaked. What the hell, we were on an adventure.
The scenery on the way to Maubisse reminded me of Bali with tiered rice paddies and water buffalo. In Maubisse itself there is a hotel which is situated on top of a hill overlooking the valleys below. This is where Alfredo was camped out with his rebel troops in May/June this year.
Throughout the journey to Same the scenery changed, I was reminded of the lush hills and dark earth of Guatemala, the flat roads of Dartmoor, the wood smoke of Nepal and at one point the mountains of Switzerland with the clouds cutting the mountains and cabins dotted everywhere. We even started referring to Switzerland, on the way back we agreed to stop at Switzerland for a pee stop. In fact we stopped at Dartmoor because Switzerland was on an uphill gradient. A dog decided to bark at us there and the sound echoed through the mountains.
All through the journey, with some awful roads, we passed small villages where the kids waved and screamed ‘Malai,
Malai’. You see more and more horses up here and often see old guys riding them, one guy wore a cowboy hat with ‘Marlboro’ emblazoned on in, a different type of ‘Marlboro Man’ than the American cigarette adverts, this one was smoking a clove cigarette.
The boat was situated about 5km from the costal village of Betano, a 7hr drive from Dili. The boat was about 1½ km from shore, not ½ a km and although the sea was calm but there was a huge swells which could make the job more hairy. The fishing boat sent a tinny out (a tinny is an Ozzy description of a small boat with an outboard motor, but in this case it was a traditional Thai motor with a propeller on a stick), which the Thai guys promptly capsized much to the amusement of the local village. Of course the Thai guys didn’t speak English or Tetum, so with improvisation and fingers we arranged to meet them at 6am the next morning.
One of the guys wanted to sleep on the beach but after being ravaged by sand flies in two minutes flat we revised the plan and talked to chief of the village. We were not exactly sure that he was the chief but certainly the caretaker of the school, which, we were heartened to see, was the most modern, well kept building in the village. The boys were going to camp out but because I wasn’t married to any of them, ‘Missus’ had to sleep separately, so the villagers offered me a bed in their house. I’d had similar treatment in Lombok years ago when I stayed on a tobacco farm. If a Malai is a guest then they are given the best room in the house no matter how many people it normally sleeps. I was presented with a small airless room with a double bed, mosquito net and a garish pink bedspread and matching frilly pillow, the best room in the house. There was no running water and the toilets were a hole in the ground, but we were given special treatment because the caretaker unlocked the school toilets for us which were clean with running water (literally!). I actually slept like a log because we had had a power cut for the whole night the night before. The power surge had actually blown up our connection this time, so I hadn’t had more than 3 fitful hours the night before.
After sleeping arrangement negotiations, Wayne opened the cooler and offered the elder men of the village a beer which they accepted with flourish, he had to stop the kids helping themselves though. The boys then erected the tent which fascinated everyone; I bet that they have never seen a house made like that before. Unfortunately the boys didn’t get such a good night’s sleep, drenched in their own sweat and dew and listening to the villagers talk half the night, topped off with a baby crying. I didn’t hear any of that; I was dead to the world.
The next morning we set off for the boat, we decided to swim in, kitted up rather than torture the Thais into beaching the tinny again. Wayne had the idea of being towed in, but unfortunately I had my long wetsuit on and my legs were incredibly buoyant, so I was hanging on with my arms outstretched unable to get my fins down, after a while my arms wouldn’t take it any more so we gave up on that idea and got on board. Once we boarded the Thai fishing boat we were greeted by coffee, biscuits and 5 pigs! Poor things, their fate is pretty much sealed. The captain of the boat was Indonesia with a mixed crew of Thai and Timorese. They explained that we were not looking for the prop but a cap/nut that holds the prop on, hence the weight of 20kg. Wayne and I dropped down the line that marked the search site and the visibility was OK for the first 20 meters, but after that it was like diving in soup, a maximum of 2 foot visibility. After letting our eyes adjust we realised the bottom was pure silt, and anything heavy would have probably sunk, any movement and you had no visibility whatsoever. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack and at 31 meters the maximum time we had down there was 17 minutes.
During the surface interval we boarded the fishing boat again and were presented with a lunch of rice with fish, or fish, or fish, funny that! At least it wasn’t fresh pork. The crew had managed to secure a line down to mark the site and we found out how. At the back of the boat there was a small compressor, commonly used for inflating tyres. Attached to this was 40 or so meters of clear thin rubber tubing which was directly attached to an old fashioned divers mask, with a valve to exhale out of the nose. It’s a wonder they didn’t kill themselves.
Our second attempt gave us a couple more foot visibility and we changed the search pattern but to no avail. When on the 3rd attempt one full circle couldn’t be achieved due to diabolical visibility, we gave up for the day and hot legged it to Same in search of a dry bed and wet beer. We found a small hotel that gave us just that as well as a slap up feed, after which we all crashed for the night, knackered! The only thing to add to this was the presence of Boris. At 4am I needed the loo, grabbing a candle as the generator was off, headed for the loo only to come face to face with an extremely large spider. Luckily I’m not faint hearted when it comes to spiders, but I did wave my candle near it to evict it from the loo seat as I didn’t fancy sharing.
We decided to give it one last shot in the morning, although we had enough tanks for a 2nd dive we were keen to get home. Firstly because we had found out from Ann that some little scrote had shot our dog Doris with an Ambon arrow during the night (she’s ok) and secondly because our damp clothes were now rank and we couldn’t stand the smell of each other. The 4th dive was no more fruitful than the previous 3, the visibility was bad again and the swell was up to two meters which made getting in and out pretty dangerous. We managed to get out with our kit on but the Thais managed to capsize the tinny again, worryingly with one of them trapped underneath, but luckily he emerged 30 seconds later, but we lost a weight-belt in the mean time.
The constant presence of 50 plus kids was also getting a little claustrophobic. Initially they had been shy and giggling, but now they were getting bolder, so every time we were on shore we had a throng of kids standing and staring not two feet away from us, which was great when I was trying to get changed. The previous day, I walked up to use the school loo and as I walked back I could hear the shuffle of small feet behind me getting louder and louder. I turned suddenly and shouted ‘Waaaaaaah’ at them, they scampered away only to dissolve in fits of giggles seconds later. You can’t really blame the kids for being curious, we are probably the first Malai they have seen in a long time, I am probably the only female they have seen with white blond hair in a wetsuit and scuba gear, in fact, we are probably the first scuba divers they have seen. Most of the locals where we dive regularly just think we are really bad fishermen, we go in with all this technical gear on, and come up an hour later with no fish!
It was a shame that we didn’t manage to find the treasure, it felt quite dissatisfying, but we hadn’t really got a chance in hell, if we had found it, it would have been sheer luck. But the trip itself was worth it, for the journey, not the diving and we were getting paid for it. Can’t be bad!
So when a Thai guy walked in and asked us to do a commercial salvage job, it was more than welcome. He described the job as locating and raising a propeller of a large Thai fishing boat, ½ a kilometre off shore in 30 meters of water. The prop was supposed to weigh 20 kilos which sounded a bit suspicious as Thai fishing boats are normally big so the prop would normally weigh 200kg not 20. The location of the boat was on the south coast which is unexplored territory as far as diving. We would be the first people in history to scuba dive the south coast of East Timor (we think!).
We set out on our adventure on Wednesday morning, loaded up with tanks, lines, torches and snack food, we literally raided Tiger Fuels (Dili’s equivalent of a 24hr BP Garage). The road out of Dili is steep and we were soon shrouded in thick fog, we were in the clouds! It was weird to be cold for the first time in East Timor, in Dili it’s a humid 33 degrees at the moment and doesn’t vary much from that. Because of the moisture, it’s really lush up there and you immediately see different vegetation and flowers. The road took us to Aileu where the heavens opened and unfortunately because the truck was filled with bodies, we had to put our overnight packs in the back so our clothes got soaked. What the hell, we were on an adventure.
The scenery on the way to Maubisse reminded me of Bali with tiered rice paddies and water buffalo. In Maubisse itself there is a hotel which is situated on top of a hill overlooking the valleys below. This is where Alfredo was camped out with his rebel troops in May/June this year.
Throughout the journey to Same the scenery changed, I was reminded of the lush hills and dark earth of Guatemala, the flat roads of Dartmoor, the wood smoke of Nepal and at one point the mountains of Switzerland with the clouds cutting the mountains and cabins dotted everywhere. We even started referring to Switzerland, on the way back we agreed to stop at Switzerland for a pee stop. In fact we stopped at Dartmoor because Switzerland was on an uphill gradient. A dog decided to bark at us there and the sound echoed through the mountains.
All through the journey, with some awful roads, we passed small villages where the kids waved and screamed ‘Malai,
Malai’. You see more and more horses up here and often see old guys riding them, one guy wore a cowboy hat with ‘Marlboro’ emblazoned on in, a different type of ‘Marlboro Man’ than the American cigarette adverts, this one was smoking a clove cigarette.The boat was situated about 5km from the costal village of Betano, a 7hr drive from Dili. The boat was about 1½ km from shore, not ½ a km and although the sea was calm but there was a huge swells which could make the job more hairy. The fishing boat sent a tinny out (a tinny is an Ozzy description of a small boat with an outboard motor, but in this case it was a traditional Thai motor with a propeller on a stick), which the Thai guys promptly capsized much to the amusement of the local village. Of course the Thai guys didn’t speak English or Tetum, so with improvisation and fingers we arranged to meet them at 6am the next morning.
One of the guys wanted to sleep on the beach but after being ravaged by sand flies in two minutes flat we revised the plan and talked to chief of the village. We were not exactly sure that he was the chief but certainly the caretaker of the school, which, we were heartened to see, was the most modern, well kept building in the village. The boys were going to camp out but because I wasn’t married to any of them, ‘Missus’ had to sleep separately, so the villagers offered me a bed in their house. I’d had similar treatment in Lombok years ago when I stayed on a tobacco farm. If a Malai is a guest then they are given the best room in the house no matter how many people it normally sleeps. I was presented with a small airless room with a double bed, mosquito net and a garish pink bedspread and matching frilly pillow, the best room in the house. There was no running water and the toilets were a hole in the ground, but we were given special treatment because the caretaker unlocked the school toilets for us which were clean with running water (literally!). I actually slept like a log because we had had a power cut for the whole night the night before. The power surge had actually blown up our connection this time, so I hadn’t had more than 3 fitful hours the night before.
After sleeping arrangement negotiations, Wayne opened the cooler and offered the elder men of the village a beer which they accepted with flourish, he had to stop the kids helping themselves though. The boys then erected the tent which fascinated everyone; I bet that they have never seen a house made like that before. Unfortunately the boys didn’t get such a good night’s sleep, drenched in their own sweat and dew and listening to the villagers talk half the night, topped off with a baby crying. I didn’t hear any of that; I was dead to the world.
The next morning we set off for the boat, we decided to swim in, kitted up rather than torture the Thais into beaching the tinny again. Wayne had the idea of being towed in, but unfortunately I had my long wetsuit on and my legs were incredibly buoyant, so I was hanging on with my arms outstretched unable to get my fins down, after a while my arms wouldn’t take it any more so we gave up on that idea and got on board. Once we boarded the Thai fishing boat we were greeted by coffee, biscuits and 5 pigs! Poor things, their fate is pretty much sealed. The captain of the boat was Indonesia with a mixed crew of Thai and Timorese. They explained that we were not looking for the prop but a cap/nut that holds the prop on, hence the weight of 20kg. Wayne and I dropped down the line that marked the search site and the visibility was OK for the first 20 meters, but after that it was like diving in soup, a maximum of 2 foot visibility. After letting our eyes adjust we realised the bottom was pure silt, and anything heavy would have probably sunk, any movement and you had no visibility whatsoever. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack and at 31 meters the maximum time we had down there was 17 minutes.
During the surface interval we boarded the fishing boat again and were presented with a lunch of rice with fish, or fish, or fish, funny that! At least it wasn’t fresh pork. The crew had managed to secure a line down to mark the site and we found out how. At the back of the boat there was a small compressor, commonly used for inflating tyres. Attached to this was 40 or so meters of clear thin rubber tubing which was directly attached to an old fashioned divers mask, with a valve to exhale out of the nose. It’s a wonder they didn’t kill themselves.
Our second attempt gave us a couple more foot visibility and we changed the search pattern but to no avail. When on the 3rd attempt one full circle couldn’t be achieved due to diabolical visibility, we gave up for the day and hot legged it to Same in search of a dry bed and wet beer. We found a small hotel that gave us just that as well as a slap up feed, after which we all crashed for the night, knackered! The only thing to add to this was the presence of Boris. At 4am I needed the loo, grabbing a candle as the generator was off, headed for the loo only to come face to face with an extremely large spider. Luckily I’m not faint hearted when it comes to spiders, but I did wave my candle near it to evict it from the loo seat as I didn’t fancy sharing.
We decided to give it one last shot in the morning, although we had enough tanks for a 2nd dive we were keen to get home. Firstly because we had found out from Ann that some little scrote had shot our dog Doris with an Ambon arrow during the night (she’s ok) and secondly because our damp clothes were now rank and we couldn’t stand the smell of each other. The 4th dive was no more fruitful than the previous 3, the visibility was bad again and the swell was up to two meters which made getting in and out pretty dangerous. We managed to get out with our kit on but the Thais managed to capsize the tinny again, worryingly with one of them trapped underneath, but luckily he emerged 30 seconds later, but we lost a weight-belt in the mean time.
The constant presence of 50 plus kids was also getting a little claustrophobic. Initially they had been shy and giggling, but now they were getting bolder, so every time we were on shore we had a throng of kids standing and staring not two feet away from us, which was great when I was trying to get changed. The previous day, I walked up to use the school loo and as I walked back I could hear the shuffle of small feet behind me getting louder and louder. I turned suddenly and shouted ‘Waaaaaaah’ at them, they scampered away only to dissolve in fits of giggles seconds later. You can’t really blame the kids for being curious, we are probably the first Malai they have seen in a long time, I am probably the only female they have seen with white blond hair in a wetsuit and scuba gear, in fact, we are probably the first scuba divers they have seen. Most of the locals where we dive regularly just think we are really bad fishermen, we go in with all this technical gear on, and come up an hour later with no fish!
It was a shame that we didn’t manage to find the treasure, it felt quite dissatisfying, but we hadn’t really got a chance in hell, if we had found it, it would have been sheer luck. But the trip itself was worth it, for the journey, not the diving and we were getting paid for it. Can’t be bad!
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