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.