Maubara, Classes and a Canadian Lodge

Hello fellow adventurers, lots has happened since we last spoke, so this could be a big one. Though maybe not as many photos as last time, as photos take about 10 minutes each to upload, which is a pain.

Our day to day activities are pretty much the same as last week, we are still doing our language classes four hours a day and organising accommodation, licences, contacts and sorting out things for work in the other hours of the day. Which doesn’t sound like too much, but everything happens at a slower pace In Timor, it’s called ‘Timor Time’. Nemo loves ‘Timor Time’ and has settled into it perfectly, she walks at half the pace that she used to, just as the locals do, and when we go for bike rides I’m afraid that she is going to start rolling backwards she goes so slowly!

Language classes are going well. I’m not sure if I mentioned it last week but the AFP (Australian Federal Police) had booked up basically all the good Tetun teachers in the city for a massive training program they are running with their staff, so for the first few days we were underwhelmed by the tutelage. But on Thursday we got a new teacher, Louisa, and she is amazing! I felt like I learnt more on the last hour of Thursday with her than I did in the 12 hours from Mon-Wed. It is still really difficult, but I think we are getting there slowly, well I am anyway. Nemo is flying, she doesn’t like it too much but I make her do all the speaking when we try and go somewhere or do something. Like today we had to hire a bike, so she did all the negotiating in Tetun, she doesn’t think she is very good, but she got it for $10 when two minutes earlier I spoke to them and the best I could do was $20. 

There is a coconut stand right out front of class, so breaks are usually refreshing! This was my first cocnut

Classes are good though, challenging but good, who would have thought that learning a new language would be so difficult?? Though we do a four hour block each day just gets a little draining. It is hard work getting your brain into getting a grip on the grammar, vocab, spelling, sentence structure and remembering it all to a level where you can first understand the question and then reply. It is especially hard with Tetun, as it has only ever been a spoken language. It has been around as long as Timor’s local people have been here, 100s of years most likely, but every district has their own dialect, which has slight variations and none of them were ever a written language. That’s partly because no one ever had the need or ability to write and Timor has always been a country governed by someone else. When the Portuguese were here, Portuguese was the official language, when it was under Indonesian rule people were made to speak Bahasa. It’s only since independence in 1999 that people have spoken Tetun in the streets of Dili. That makes learning it difficult, while it is all written down now it is only that way so that it can be taught to all the foreign aid workers and UN personal that have been coming into the country over the last decade or so. That being the case, the spelling is inconsistent between teachers and texts, words have various meanings depending on who you speak to signs around town are all either misspelled or no one told them that their districts spellings isn’t the new official version.

I thought I’d give you guys all an update on what’s going on over here and why we are still in Dili and will be for another two and a half weeks. The parliamentary elections are on the 7^th of July and although no one is expecting trouble (UN, NGOs, locals ect ect) our organisations have decided that it’s just safer to have all the volunteers in one place (Dili) just in case the worst happens. Again, no one is expecting anything to happen, but that being said, 2006 wasn’t that long ago, so better to be safe than sorry. The elections are quiet unusual in the fact that everyone has to go to where they were born or first enrolled to vote. So if you were enrolled in one of the far flung districts that takes upwards of six hours to get to by car on a dodgy road, (say for example Same….) then you need to get yourself out there, at your own expense to vote in the election. Being that it is on a Saturday most people will take the Thursday and Friday off work to travel back out to their homes and a lot of businesses will shut down for the weekend in Dili. As a result we are expecting Dili to be fairly quiet. In fact it’s likely not going to be the election weekend that anything happens, if it were to happen it would more likely be later the next week as the results start to come through. So that’s the reason we aren’t heading out to Same until the 16^th, a week after the elections. Beginning next week Nemo and I will be starting work for our organisations, but in their Dili offices, getting our heads around what work they are doing in country and what our roles might look like when we get out to the districts. We are both really looking forward to that!

I’m not sure if I have said it before, but the country is soccer mad! Over the last few weeks the European championships have been on and the country has been watching every game. Having strong ties to Portugal there have been a lot of people losing sleep staying up till the wee hours of the morning watching the games. When Portugal won their game last week, what seemed like all the men/boys in the city decided the best way to celebrate would be to get on their motorbikes and scooters and do bog laps of the city/suburbs revving the bikes and tooting their horns as loud as they could……at 4am. There are also a lot of Spanish fans in country as well, so things got pretty loud the night that they won. I’m looking forward to tonight when Spain plays Portugal………. I have been wondering whether they would be louder if they won and they get to celebrate or if they lost and they wanted to take out their frustrations by rioting in the streets. I guess tonight I will find out, either way the game goes, it’s gonna get loud!

That’s enough serious stuff. On Sunday we went on a little day trip out west to Maubara. Liquica is the district just west of Dili and Maubara is a town in that district. It took about an hour and a half to get there by car. The Red Cross were kind enough to organise the trip, a driver and a car to get us out there for the day. Paul (one of the other vollys), Nemo and I headed off just after 10am. The drive was pretty amazing, the countryside is stunning, very similar to Dili but it was good to get out where it isn’t so congested and it’s far more rural just outside the city limits. Straw type huts, fishing villages and wild animals mostly boars and goats, everywhere. It took about 90 minutes to get there, it couldn’t have been more than about 20 or 30km but the roads are just so terrible that you cant go very quickly as you are forever dodging potholes or on a dirt road. The scary thing is that the lonely planet said that the road to Maubara is one of the best district to district roads around, so ill be interested to see the one from Maubissi to Same, which is apparently one of the worst!

The drive was defiantly worth it though as there is an amazing Dutch fort in the town; it’s the main exhibit really, that and the markets anyway. During the Portuguese occupation the Dutch took the town and built the fort, which still has a few ornamental cannons sitting on the walls that strand three or four meters tall.  It’s been kept in really good condition and is now a touristy type restaurant, so we had lunch there and made the most of the shaded eating area.

The cannon overlooking the market and the bay

King of the castle!

The market

After that we went to the beach (which is across the road) for a bit of a snorkel. Nemo got me a mask/snorkel and flippers for my bday so I was keen as to give it a go. But when we got there, there were heaps of kids on the beach playing and being a little paranoid I decided that not all of us should go snorkelling at once because that would leave all of our things unattended. So I took first watch while Paul and Nemo went for a swim. After about twenty mins Naomi came out to relive me. I had a really good time snorkelling, saw some fish, saw some coral and had a good splash around, but when I came out of the water I saw that Naomi had made a few friends, a few dozen friends. They were all sitting around her in a circle, they were practicing their English on her and she was practicing her Tetun on them. She was a massive hit, the loved her, especially the girls. They all spoke pretty decent Tetun and it turned out they were all from Dili out at Maubara for the day just like us. We got a few photos with them, headed to the markets quickly so Nemo could satisfy her retail cravings and we headed back towards Dili.

Kids playing on the beach

Nemo and her mates

On the way back we stopped in downtown Liquica. Or what is left of it…. I don’t pretend to know anything about what happened there, but the part of town the driver stopped in for us to get out and have a look around looked like it was hit pretty hard when the Indonesians left and it hasn’t ever really recovered or been repaired. A lot of derelict buildings, toppled structures, broken fences and the like. If it wasn’t for the hundreds of children running around the streets I would swear that no one had walked through the town in ten years. Naomi got a bunch of photos of the town, it is stunning, in its own way.

Paul and I

A kid in fluro running across an old run down soccer pitch

We have been finding time for a bit of exercise here and there. Doing a few little runs in the afternoons, which is nice being that it is along a beach, but it can get a little dusty/smoggy running along the roads in the centre of the city. Being that it gets much nicer as you head away from the city we planned out a pretty awesome work out for last Sat morning. We rode just over 7km to Areia Brunka, locked the bikes up, ran another 2k ish to Christo Rae, ran up the 300 odd steps to Jesus, then turned around and went all the way back. Though we did stop at Areia Brunka (the place where I have my feet up on the chair sitting at the beach) for breakfast on the beach and a coffee on the return trip. The place where we ate is apparently known as ‘Melbourne Café’ as it has Melbourne quality coffee, but Melbourne prices. Which we found to be true, cracking coffee, but $3 and considering you can have lunch and a drink for less than $3 dollars if you know where to go, it is a little steep for a coffee, though much better than the $5 you would pay in Perth.

After that we went for a trek to Timor Plaza, just to have a look around at the western shopping mall in the middle of the poorest nation in Asia. It was like stepping through a portal back into Australia only all the shop keepers were Timorese and all the shops were empty…… You can find anything you want there, all at Aussie prices. The only thing is no one in their right mind is going to pay $85 USD for a Billabong shirt when you can get a no name shirt for $1 at the market and a rip of Billabong shirt for $5 in Bali. I suppose the Plaza has its purpose, catering for the tourist or foreign consultant with too much money that is too lazy to go find the local equivalent at a local price. The only flaw in the plan is that Timor isn’t exactly tourist central, so I wouldn’t be surprised if the place closed down after the UN and all the money it brings in through staff and needs goes with it.

The plaza has everything! Including dried fish skeletons. Just thought you should know in case you have a craving in the middle of the night and need to know where to get some!

After we stepped out of the Timor Plaza portal we headed to our local expat bar for some really expensive beer and my dose of sport. It was awesome, 7 different TVs, all with sport on them and waitresses that bring beers to the table, heaven! We got there just in time to watch the Australia v Wales game. Hi Stuart J . While that was on so was the Bulldogs v Brisbane game. They both finished at the same time, luckily straight after I saw NZ massacre the Irish and the pies get over the line against the eagles. I feel dirty even doing it, but it’s the only game of the year I will let myself go for the pies…… In the end it didn’t really matter who won it was a cracker of a game. Then after that the main event, the Bombers and Dockers. Again a great game, both teams had a crack at it, but the bombers put their foot down and pulled off a great win. Hi Jay J. If Jobe isn’t leading the votes at the half way point of the season in the Brownlow I’m not sure what’s going on. The only thing that left a slightly bitter taste in my mouth was that in all the last 10 or so years, that I have lived in Perth and had money to buy a ticket to the footy I have gone to every game the bombers have played in WA that I have been able to and I have never seen them win. The won in 2005 in the final against the Dockers, but I couldn’t get a ticket (and it wasn’t for lack of trying), they won in 2009, again against the Dockets, but I was stuck in Kalgoorlie and they won in 2012 (poor Dockers) and this time I was in Timor. So while it was good to see us finally get a win in the west, it felt funny watching it being played at Subi on a tv screen…..

Back to Timor. We finally got some word on a possible place we might be able to live when we get to Same. Nemo and I have been wondering what our accommodation in Same would be like for months….. Will it be a tree house, a mud hut with a straw roof or a Portuguese hotel? Well it turns out that it might be a wooden Canadian Lodge. That’s right a Canadian style, wooden ski type lodge, nestled up in the jungle of Same. We aren’t sure just yet what it might look like or anything really about it but it is a pretty exciting idea, especially seeing it’s not at all like a mud hut! Apparently people who have stayed there (it is currently being used as a guest house) say it’s amazing and one of the best places to stay in Timor, so watch this space!

Well that’s it for this blog entry, I know that was epically long, but a lot of stuff has happened in the last week, maybe I need to start blogging twice a week. I didn’t even include the saga that was the licencing centre trying to get my drivers and motorbike licences, a story for another day perhaps. Just quickly, one more thing, I almost forgot. The markets here are all really good, especially the second hand clothes markets. Nemo had been wanting to go for ages and she finally had an hour spare this arvo and managed to get down there. She said there were heaps of bargains, she got 4 shirts and a dress. The tops were $1 each and the dress $5.

One last thing, while writing the blog tonight I found out that my uncle Geoff passed away this morning. He was diagnosed with Cancer about 18 months ago and has been fighting it with all that he had since then. He smashed the original estimates the doctors gave him and fought right up until the end. Last year I ran in the Perth HBF Run for a Reason to raise money for Cancer Council WA in his name and many of you gave your hard earned for a good cause. That ignited my love of running and I will always be grateful to Geoff for that.

I was lucky enough to get over to Victoria last year around ANZAC day to see him as I thought that it might be the last time I would see him, which sadly it was. Three weeks ago my brothers, Dad, Julie, Nemo and I had planned to drive down from Canberra to see him for the weekend, but we had to cancel when a few of us were sick as we didn’t want to pass it on to Geoff. Although it deeply saddens me that I didn’t get to see my uncle one last time, especially only weeks before the end it means I will always remember him the way I last saw him, ANZAC weekend 2011, fighting fit, beating the odds, carefree, smiling and full of life.

My thoughts and prayers are with his wife; my Aunt Kary, the boys; Justin, Jeremy and Thorin, all our family, anyone that had the privilege of knowing him and especially his brothers; Uncle Laurie and my dad. Your brother and my uncle was an amazing man, we all loved him dearly and he will be sorely missed by all.

R.I.P Uncle Geoff

Ben