I lived on a postcard

The twists and turns of life are often unexpected, uninvited and sometimes they provide unwanted challenges. 

Before I left for my Bali trip I was asked to resigned because I didn’t value the Director, his second-in-charge and ‘other teachers’.  I think here he was referring to the teacher that would talk with you then repeat the conversation – with her interpretations, right or wrong, to him.  Worse, he would take action.  Misguided me thinks.  So you can imagine the philosophical differences that existed.

For the last few months I’ve felt that I’ve been marking time until my contract ends in September.  I was training for the Tour de Timor, yet even that seemed lifeless; like I was just waiting, waiting, waiting. 

Now I am heading back to Australia.  I’m culling my possessions – hopefully to under the excess baggage restrictions.  I’m catching up with friends and generally reflecting on the last seven months.

It hasn’t ended the way I had hoped and yet, I am so much richer for the wealth of experiences and amazing people I’ve encountered.

Yesterday was not a very good day; some plans did not come to fruition and I was feeling quite despondent.  I went to an ‘international mover’ to ask how much it would cost to freight my bike back to Australia.  They thought about it and said it would be cheaper to take it on the plane.  They asked if I had a box and I said no.  So here’s what they did – they found a box, loaded it, me and my bike onto the back of a truck, drove me home, gave me two rolls of packing tape, showed me how to fold the box so that it would take the bike, then showed me how to pack the bike.  What did that cost?  A thank you and a smile!!! 

Even when life throws us a curve ball, it gets better.  Though we may not think it at the time, it truly does.

The people I’ve met here are awesome.  They are calling and offering support – and taking some of my stuff off my hands too J

We’re meeting at Dili Beach Hotel on Saturday night for a final drinks session.  It seems appropriate.  I’m sitting here now, drinking tea and writing this final blog entry – just as I have written many other blog entries.  This is my home away from home; my little piece of Australia in a place that has both challenged and exhilarated. 

I was trying to explain to a friend in Bali what Timor was like: tepid water, bad water pressure, horrendous roads, appalling traffic and non-existence driving skills, poor cooking facilities, limited food choices, dust and heat.  Everything I said seemed to reinforce the image of a place perhaps people might like to avoid . . . and yet . . . and yet . . . despite all of that it has stolen a piece of my heart. 

What the future holds is the great unknown, a beautiful canvas on which I can paint whatever I choose – a bit like my experience of Timor really.  I’m leaving now.  That’s the way it needs to be but for seven amazing months I lived on a postcard and I wouldn’t change a thing.

Oh a castle!

Timor is neither Europe nor a goldfish bowl so cries of “Oh a castle!” rarely, if ever escape from the mouths of over-awed tourists or somewhat unobservant residents.  However, I have recently been privileged to not only utter this cry, but to move into said palace.  Oh and what a palace it is! 

But before I list its virtues let me expand a little more on accommodation in Timor.  It’s basic.  By basic I mean there is usually no hot water; toilets are 'flushed' using a bucket, a ladle and copious amounts of water - which may or may not be flowing; kitchens are one or two burners and rarely an oven; bedrooms may or may not have a window; there is generally air–conditioning; seldom a washing machine, often a cleaning lady who comes as part of the package and sometimes a landlord and family that live either in your compound or close by; and this family will include five or six children, a dog or three, numerous chickens and perhaps a pig.

The thing that I have found difficult is not so much the simplicity, it’s the general belief among some Malae that “this is Timor” is an excuse for living in semi-unhygienic conditions.  For example, in my last residence, the bathroom flooded every time someone used the washing machine.  And by flooded I mean two inches of water that took a couple of hours to subside. 

Now though, I am living in a palace!  A palace I tell you!!!  It’s owned by a Timorese – foreigners aren’t allowed to own property in Timor.  The tenant is a Hawaiian with a penchant for interior design.  By interior design I mean remodelling.  He has rented the house and it sequentially ‘fixing it up’.  While he can’t own the house, he can sublet and thus recoup and perhaps over time even make money.  At the end of it, the Timorese owner gets a fabulous house.   

So what makes this abode blog-worthy?  To begin with it has a real bathroom!  No, not even a real bathroom, a designer bathroom.  The shower is a huge outdoor room with a big wall around it so Toms can’t peep . . .unless they bring a ladder.  The bamboo tree from next door lends a beautiful ambiance and the hot water . . . well, that’s just luxury!!  Inside is a second room with a wash basin and a mirror and a flushing toilet.  Did you hear me people?  A flushing toilet.  And no traditional round button stuck on the top, no we have a square button that’s positioned on the side.  Very chic!  Not only that I have my own shelf – in the shower room and the inside room.  There are multiple places to hang my towel.

The kitchen is huge and houses two fridges, a freezer a microwave, a working electric jug, a two burner gas hot plate a wall-length bench and a huge table with stools.  No oven, but hey for the other advantages I’ll forego the Sunday roast.  There is a garden, a beautiful garden with green plants that even offer flowers and a grapevine which I’m told produces somewhat acidic fruit. 

If all that wasn’t enough to send me apoplectic with glee, we have a cleaning / washing woman.  Well, that’s her unofficial title.  Her official title is variously Saint who keeps our floors squeaky clean, Mystical woman who makes washing dry when it’s raining and Ironing angel who takes muddied clothes and turns them into neatly pressed and folded garments that appear in exactly the spot I’ve allotted them.

I know I’m supposed to come back to Australia . . . I know, I know . . . but seriously, it’s a castle!!!  And I’ve never lived in a castle before!  I could seriously get used to the ‘simple’ life of a developing country.

Rain, rain, rain, rain, rain

The rain in Spain may fall mainly on the plain, but in Timor it’s not as discriminatory; it falls everywhere.  At the moment it’s also falling with alarming continuity.  Yes, I know, it’s the rainy season, one should expect more than the average drop.  The thing of it is this, rainy season usually means one major storm or rain shower a day, usually mid to late afternoon.  What we’ve been treated to in the last week is rain with brief interludes of greyness.  There’s also been wind – enough to fell trees (which is damnably annoying when they chose to topple across a cycle track). 

The worst part is (as I’ve mentioned previously) that someone, in their infinite wisdom, has dug up the roads.  I’ve been told that the Japanese government gave Timor the money to dig the roads up. As a friend remarked, as we trundled along on our cycles, mud splattering up our fronts and backs, and as cars sped past, our sides, “Who’s going to give them the money to put them back?”  Beach Road used to be a scenic avenue (well as scenic an avenue as you’re going to get in Dili).  Despite the potholes, it worked.

I am told that all the work needs to be completed by 24^th May when numerous international dignitaries are flying in – probably for the grand opening of all the new pavement.  The challenge is that with all the rain, and the rather short timeframe, by Timor standards, the job is set to be haphazard at best.  So while the roads might hold up for the official visits, it won’t be long before it once again subsides into the crazy paving we used to love.  I give it until June.

While it’s frustrating slipping and sliding along on my motorcycle, I have found a more practical use – and though it might draw a crowd (at least of rowdy Australians), it isn’t female mud wrestling.  No, I am studying a mountain biking DVD and trying to work out how to do wheelies onto ledges and then take flight over drop-offs.  I’m thinking that a certain street of rectangular cut-outs is the perfect training ground for a beginner.

“Wanna go for a ride? I’ll buy you breakfast.”

As win-on lines go it’s not exactly subtle – if you’re sporting a Fortitude Valley, St Kilda, Fyshwick, Kings Cross frame of mind.  The thing of it is, if you accept such an offer in Timor, it’ll have less to do with copious amounts of alcohol and seedy hotel room than it will with an actual bicycle, numerous hills and a mushroom omelette on the foreshore. 

And so it has been for the past two weekends that I’ve found myself labouring up hills and then hurtling down them.  It’s sweet, in a way, that a more competent cyclist  might see fit to take me adventuring with them when I am clearly not in their league fitness or skill-wise.  I am, I now foolishly admit, I am apparently in their league when it comes to insanity.  Their madness lies in the way they chose arduous paths, mere tracks of gravel and mud with gradients comparable to the black diamond ski runs of Europe.  My madness lies in agreeing to join them!

Of course, since I am training for “The Tour” I am compelled to do so, to push myself to something akin to a limit and then attempt to exceed it.  I’m not doing too badly.  I time each ride and so far I don’t think I haven’t improved on a time . . .  though since I was seriously slow when I started that isn’t exactly a boast I’ll exclaim from a ridge-top. 

Still, I might venture to confess that I’ve been bitten by the bug.  The days I don’t get to ride seem slothful.  That my timetable was going to mean only one week-day ride sent me spiralling into a dilemma of whether or not to throw in the teaching towel and just ride my way to mid-September.  Fortunately my boss finally accepted my argument that I was, in fact, not the best teacher for one of the classes – well, if he didn’t accept it, he decided keeping me happy was a better option than three months of looks that might just kill, and him just about to become a father, my piercing stare was apparently not worth the risk.  Now I have three out of five mornings when I can ride. 

On those days I can ride, I don’t actually start work until 3:30.  If I organise myself and am able to extract myself from sleep at around 5am and be on the road by 6:30, that’s at least seven riding hours.  I can be doing mini Tours from now until the actual event!

Oh joy!  Oh bliss.  Oh God I am so not a morning person trying to remould myself into not only a person who gets up almost before the roosters crow, but into one that forces food down her napping gullet and steps onto a bike.  It’s the price I am willing to pay to get my little mitts on an official tour de Timor t-shirt and knicks combo.  Oh won’t I be the smart one.

Probably a broke one too.  Cycling, it seems, is not “all about the bike”, sorry Lance, even you know this is not true.  It’s about the gadgets that you can’t possibly ride without – the odometer that measures distance travelled, current speed, average speed; the heart-rate monitor that will tell you you’re doing it easy despite every muscle in your body screaming that you’re doing it tough; the transition lenses sunglasses that mean you won’t get bugs in your eyes whether you’re out there at 5am or 5pm; the goos and gels that mean you can carry little packets of goop rather than a backpack of bananas, passionfruit, peanut butter sandwiches and muesli bars; oh and how could I forget, the light, something that can illuminate potholes and idiot Un drivers intent on overtaking on narrow blind curves (I do not jest.  Just last week, I stopped and stared one such beast down, until he got off my side of the road.)

Seriously though, this cycling business is massively addictive – and a beautiful way to see Timor.  Any takers?  Come on!  I’ll buy you breakfast afterwards!

Give me a home . . .

. . . well there are some gum trees in Dili, but I don’t need to be nestled amongst them.  I’d settle for a home with some of the basic comforts I’ve come to know, love and okay, find it difficult to live without.  Simple things like a decent-sized fridge, water pressure that’s capable of rinsing the soap of me, plumbing that doesn’t flood whenever you use the washing machine.

This is perhaps one of the most challenging things about Dili – accommodation.  For those of us not lucky enough to have an employer willing to pay upwards of $1500 a month to assuage our cravings for creature comforts, finding decent and affordable accommodation can be a major challenge.  To give you an idea of how over-priced Malae accommodation is let me tell you what I’ve heard different Timorese workers earn.   And yes, these figures are based on heresay but even if you double or triple them, the numbers still don’t add up to a neat pad with reliable electricity, hot running water and a 24/7 internet connection. 

A security guard (and there are plenty) can earn as little as $90 – and yes that’s a month. Admin people in a good job might earn $400; NGO (non-government organisation) workers might earn $200. 

Clearly their rents are not as exorbitant as though for the cashed-up (and not-so-cashed up) foreigners.  I have to say this though, many Timorese who own rental properties are aware of their value and often negotiate upfront payment of say six month’s rent in exchange for an upgrade, say a new bathroom, kitchen or interior paint.  Some will also take the cost of any furniture the tenants buy off the rent.  Try finding an Australian landlord willing to do that.

The challenge is the disparity between the way the Timorese live and the way we (and I really mean I) have become accustomed to living.  Take fridges for example.  The fridges in most Timorese rentals are little more than over-sized bar fridges.  But only a Malae would have things to store in there.  The Timorese can buy their vegies daily and ice cream?  Who could afford ice cream, let alone keep such a sought-after treat long enough to need to be stored?  Geez, the relatives would here the container being opened and flock from a 5k radius.  This becomes problematic when there is more than say, oh one person living in the house.  There simply isn’t enough room to store a week’s worth of food for more than one and a half people.

Then there’s bathrooms.  Many, if not the majority, of bathrooms are based on the Indonesian style of a ‘mandi’ (yes, I am an amenity!)  This is basically a big square that comes up to my chest (and other people’s waist) level.  It’s filled with water and there’s a little plastic saucepan-like device that you use to bucket the water over you.  And yes, the water is cold and yes, the floor of the bathroom gets wet.  One bathroom I saw had barely enough room for you to stand there and douse yourself – and it had a toilet squeezed in too.

Ovens too are a luxury.  If you have an oven in Dili, you are a friend indeed – whether you want to be or not.

There also isn’t the emphasis on finding compatible personalities as there is in Australia.  Often the job of finding new roommates is palmed off to a friend and as long as the rent is paid, no one particularly minds if the body inhabiting the room comes home pissed, breaks a few things and then passes out while their phone rings merrily through the night.

I, of course, am the exception.  I want my comforts.  I want genial company.  And finally . . . dare I open the proverbial can of worms by shouting it loud enough to reach Dare (a rather high point just outside Dili that I might just boast of having ridden my cycle to), that I have found such a place.  Not only that, it is within my price range.  I move in on Saturday.  Yippeee!!!!  Hooray!!!! 

It’s even down my preferred end of town.  Oh don’t ask me how I’ve got a preferred and non-preferred end and no, although it’s closer to the school, it’s not necessarily closer to where I teach and yes, it is close to the beach, but there is beach at the other end, so no, I don’t know how and why I have a preference, I just do. 

Anyway, back to my new abode.  It has a new bathroom – with hot water and water pressure!  Oh the bliss of water pressure!!  It has two fridges, (Count them!  One!  Two) and a freezer.  It has a microwave, a two-burner stove (at least, this could be four, but I think two).  A garden, a cleaner who cleans and does the washing every day except Sundays – and she’s included in the rent, as is the electricity.  There is a dog!  Yay, a pet!!  And my new housemate spends two weeks every month in Bali. 

Of course I haven’t lived there yet . . . it could turn out to be a fizzer . . . oh who am I kidding the place is going to be heaven!  Heaven I tell you!!! . . . and I’ll confirm that in a couple of weeks ;-)

Pride cometh before a fall

This story is a few weeks old.  Nonetheless it requires telling.  Having taken possession of my bike, I set out to use it.  Within days I had ridden what I thought was three quarters of the way to Gleno.  Gleno is a town about fifty kilometres from Dili.  What separates it from Dili is what I would describe as two mountain ranges (Tour de France participants might describe them as not even close to two sets of mini-alps, probably mere speed bumps to their professionally trained bodies).  The thing of it is this though, at the time I was unaware that there were two mountains; in the flood of instructions on how to get there, I heard mention only of one.  And so it was that, having done what I thought was all the hard yards, I turned back to Dili, content that I was a mere thirty minutes from Gleno.  Oh the folly of it! 

Puffed up with my achievement, a week later, I agreed to ride with a friend along the same route.  Since he had to work in the morning, we set off in the afternoon.  We wouldn’t get to Gleno he told me, it’s too far.  Phfft! I thought, too far be damned.  But I acquiesced to his greater knowledge. 

The first part of the trip is a winding road out of Dili to a place called Tibar.  It seems to have a bit of split personality because the road divides and Tibar seems to follow both forks.  To head to Tibar resort, you take the right fork.  To head to Gleno you head straight ahead and up.  That’s it.  It is basically up and winding until you reach the top of the first range.  It’s so ‘up’ in places that the lesser inclines feel like they’re flat.  They’re not, but it’s nice to kid yourself that they are; it tends to make the legs more willing to continue on, up, up, up and on.  So, on we went. 

My companion is a seasoned campaigner – he’s done the Tour for the last two years.  And yet, I pedalled ahead.  Surely he was just behind me.  But when I got to the final peak – I wasn’t stopping before then – he was no where to be seen.  I waited five minutes or so and he finally appeared.  My gloating was short-lived when he admitted that he’d stopped for a dip in a creek and then for a chat with someone he hadn’t seen for a while.  “But,” he assured me, “you beat me up the hills.”  Yeah right.

We sailed down the other side of the range to the spot where I’d stopped and turned round on my last effort.  And here, perhaps, was our first error of judgement.  Well, I say error of judgement, can there be such an error if there was no judgement?  Instead of truly evaluating time against distance to travel, we almost goaded each other into continuing. 

Oh what the hell, I thought, Gleno’s only another thirty minutes away.  Easy peasy.  And so it puzzled me somewhat that we stopped for more water.  Why bother, I thought, when we’re almost there?  Surely Gleno has water.  Then we came to a mountain range.  It struck me then that perhaps I hadn’t been quite as close as I thought.  At the end of that range we stopped. 

The options were:  Go into Gleno, which was now only twenty minutes away – I could see it and so could at least evaluate this as a potentially correct calculation – and meet up with some friends that live there or we could turn around.  Of course we choose the social option and spent a lovely couple of hours sharing tea and good conversation. 

The light was still bright when my riding buddy looked at his watch and almost screeched, “It’s half past five!  We’ve got to go!”

We made hasty good-byes and pedalled – fast.  The challenge was to beat the darkness.  That wasn’t going to happen.  To be honest, I was too naïve to be really concerned.  I mean, so what if you ride in the dark . . . without lights.  The Timorese do it all the time.  Besides it’s not dark, dark.  There’s lights and the moon and . . .did I mention I was naïve?

My legs burnt and my lungs weren’t too happy either.  Still, I dragged myself up the hills.  We passed the first ridge, and then the second, but the light was fading.  Did I say fading?  I mean someone flicked the switch and suddenly there was only blackness and about twenty-one kilometres still to go – down hill, on a winding road, with pot holes, lots and lots of pot holes, and cars and trucks and motorbikes that did little more than momentarily blind us.

The choices were, stop and do what I don’t know or keep going.  As I had an 8am start the next day I didn’t quite know how my boss would take me calling up to say I was stuck in the darkness on the Tibar Road.  Perhaps not entirely with good grace – and so I forced my body to keep going.

Then it happened.  A motorbike came up the hill.  I couldn’t see a thing – and then I could.  A huge pot hole loomed in front and then underneath me.  I braked.  Hard.  Too hard.  One minute I was looking at the edge of what seemed like an abyss, the next I was on the ground with all sorts of bodily complaints.  I’d landed on my hands and knees and left elbow.  My bike was fine.  I couldn’t see to inspect the damage, but since I could move, albeit gingerly, I decided nothing was broken.  The worst part was that my hands were now peppered with gravel on the very parts I needed to apply the brakes.  I grit my teeth and we trundled onwards. 

Let me offer, at this point, a general observation.  Dark in Timor is dark.  There are few lights and if there was a moon that night, it was hidden behind the trees which lurked suspiciously close to the roadside.  It was difficult to see anything, let alone my riding buddy . . . or the car with only one headlight that seemed to careen towards me, and then, seeing me, or perhaps hearing me scream, careened away again. 

Finally a state ute passed and my riding buddy yelled out for him to stop.  He did and after a brief conversation, our bikes and bodies were hauled into the back – on top of the logs and the tyres and boy I didn’t really give a rat’s what I was sitting on, all I cared was that I was sitting on something other than a bike that was moving me towards home.

And here is another wonderful thing about Timor.  If you’re biking take small change to buy water and fruit and five and ten dollar bills to pay someone to give you a lift home.  Most people are happy to and if you’re got a flat tyre and no spare or repair kit or two busted up hands, you’ll be willing to part with more than ten dollars on a dark, dark, night with a winding, pot-hole-filled road between you and a warm bed.