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.

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.