The Oxford Dictionary on-line defines discomfort, the noun, as “something that causes one to feel uncomfortable” and discomfort the verb as “make (someone) feel anxious or embarrassed”. If I was compiling an accompanying thesaurus, I might suggest substituting discomfort – both noun and verb – with ‘Timor’.
At the moment we are melting through numerous power outrages. It seems more correct to say that we have no electricity with sporadic and apparently unscheduled bursts of power. Since our house is not terribly open to natural breezes being at home is quite uncomfortable and I’ve consequently taken to spending much time elsewhere. This does little for my budgeting process; since cooking in an airless kitchen followed by eating under an unmoving ceiling fan is not the most enjoyable of events, I have taken to eating out. The upside to this is meeting more interesting people.
The other night at The Dili Club, a welcoming little establishment that offers a variety of options from an Aussie meat pie to a Thai curry (though only Tues-Sun for the Thai dishes), I met an interesting Russian man who works for the UN. We spent an enjoyable hour or so exchange banter about our amusing experiences of Timor. We mused about the dogs which have a propensity to create the most amazing cacophonies, often spanning suburbs in their geography and a couple of octaves in their vocal range, at 3am or thereabouts. We laughed about the traffic and the snail’s pace that taxi drivers adopt and how driving down Beach Road is physically longer but quicker than the driving down Comoro Road. I told him about the cats in my ceiling and he told me about the peeling church bells that make his walls vibrate. Then I went home . . . to the darkness and the heat and yes, the discomfort.
The lack of electricity certainly plays a major role in the discomforts of Timor, but it’s actually not what might tip someone over the edge. What strikes me is that it’s the little things; the unexpected taste of tomato sauce; the odd tang to the bottled water; the saccharine bent to the bread – available in one variety, white. It’s comparing your favourite brands with the cheaper Asian version and realising that if you buy two-minute noodles as opposed to packet pasta, you can afford the family block of Cadbury’s chocolate and that, at least is guaranteed to taste like home. Then there’s the internet. My dongle is a godsend. But it too has proven unreliable – or more specifically, Timor Telecom has lived up to its less-than-favourable reputation. My Russian friend was telling me about a survey that someone had done to find out the worse country for internet connections. Indonesia had apparently won the title, but here’s the thing, you had to log on to the internet to be a part of the survey. Right, like that’s going to happen in Dili. It might. It does sometimes, but essentially you don’t know when or where. It’s like internet by stealth; it’ll work when you least expect it.
Though the erratic internet is more than annoying, the most uncomfortable thing for me is the traffic. People might joke about the road rules and their adaptation from Portuguese regulations, but the reality is that riding in Timor traffic is an unnerving experience. Though we might grumble and curse and even wave a select finger at other motorists, Australian drivers luxuriate in a veritable safety bubble. In Timor the only thing I can advise is to truly expect the unexpected. And therein lies the most discomforting thing of all – you just don’t know what is going to happen and when it might occur.
This is as true for the availability of the internet and electricity as it is for a chicken or goat running onto the road. At least, though, the chickens and goats can’t be expected to know better.
Pedestrians make a point of not making eye contact with drivers; they simply step onto the road, expecting that you will either stop or should you be unfortunate enough to hit them, pay compensation. Drivers of all nationalities (and dare I reiterate that the worst offenders are marked with big UN’s?) fail to look before entering traffic, fail to give way at intersections, fail to overtake only when it’s safe to do so and basically, fail, fail, fail. It is horrendously scary to be faced with an oncoming truck – on your side of the road!!! But they don’t care. If you value your life, clearly it’s up to you to protect it. And of course, you do. So there is doubly no reason for them to modify their behaviour.
Sometimes I see an underlying arrogance, the idea that “I am doing what I’m doing and there’s not a damned thing you can do about it.” Someone suggested that it’s about living in the moment. That sounds very Zen; after all, the present is really all we have. But that’s not quite what was meant. The Timorese live in the moment because death is so prevalent that there might not be a next year, next week or even a tomorrow. Unemployment is at 50%; education levels are low; opportunities are minimal. There are some who grit their teeth and do whatever needs to be done; one of my nightime students is still in high school; another comes twenty minutes late on Wednesdays because she’s also studying biology at the national university. The majority though haven’t even had the opportunity to glimpse a better life; old men, young men, boys pushing vegetable carts and calling out to households to buy some lettuce for twenty-five cents, a cabbage for fifty.
Perhaps behind the ‘arrogant inattentiveness’ lies not a nation of narcissicists but a nation of people suffering from a terminal lack of control in their own lives.
It’s that lack of any control that I’m sure could eventually send someone barking mad – indeed there is so much barking in the wee small hours that perhaps it isn’t the dogs at all, but malae and Timorese alike who’ve lost themselves to the futility of wishing, wishing, wishing that they could escape the discomfort zone in which they live.
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