16th March 2017

Firstly sorry no photos because am writing this on the iPad now as the youngest member of this party cracked the laptop screen last week, and figuring out how to make a Samsung phone talk to an iPad to get photos over is well beyond us all.
Charlie is heaps better just in the last couple of days which is a huge relief. He was pretty miserable being sick away from home and it was incredibly stressful having him sick in such an isolated place. So things are looking up. We moved into our house on Tuesday finally. Although it's very noisy - right now we can hear Timorese pop music (not recommended), motorbikes, pigs, people talking and roosters (they don't care what time of day it is) - on the upside having our own space is fantastic. Our house is connected to our landlord's, and his wife Ernestina gets up at about 4a.m to fry up all the pastries she sells in the Mercado. But it's ok because the roosters have already woken us up. We can hear them talking on the other side of the wall (there's no ceilings) and we presume they can hear us but it's all good as we can't understand a word the other is saying!
It's been a big couple of days in Balibomwith the unveiling of the plans for the convention centre Poz is going to project manage. There were tons of VIPs here, including Steve Bracks who is the patron of the Balibo House Trust, the Victorian minister for tourism, the Timorese minister for tourism, various other Timorese sefis (local government mayors) but the people we most enjoyed meeting were Terry Bracks and Rob Hudson who are members of the Balibo House Trust board and who, along with Ricardo Krauskopf in Melbourne have been our main contacts with all this. Meeting them and listening to all the speeches etc gave us more a sense of the history and the big picture we are involved with and what they are trying to achieve. We have been in survival mode a bit, but with Charlie's health improving, getting into our house and meeting all those people we have got a bit better perspective on why we are here. Although we did get a bit worried when everyone kept saying how brave we were. Brave, or stupid??? Or just plain crazy?!!




One of the people there for the ceremony was Professor Damien Kingsbury from Melbourne who is considered Australia's top expert on Indonesia and East Timor. He was incredibly interesting to talk to, he isn't just an academic but really gets into the field, so much so that he is black banned from Indonesia as they don't like what he writes about them. As in, after the vote for independence, the Indonesians, besides removing all windows and sheets of iron off houses then burning them, also basically kidnapped about 350 000 people by loading them into trucks at gunpoint and taking them over the border into Indonesia to try to hold them as hostages to retain some of the Timorese land.
He is coming back on Monday as he is leading the Australian observer team for the presidential election. So we are looking forward to seeing all that.
The most freaky thing at the ceremony which none of the Australian side knew was going to happen was the reading of the entrails of a rooster. They had a katuas who is a local elder there to do a traditional welcome - he had some betel nut leaves which he waved around and the next minute one of the hotel staff came in holding a rooster. We were inside at this stage as it had started to rain, and so the rooster was held down on the floor of the hotel lobby beside the katuas. A bit of trepidation set in at that point and then he got out this knife and while the poor rooster was being held down he stabbed it once in the side then waved some betel nut leaves on it and chanted, then 3 or 4 minutes later he stabbed it again in the same spot - IT WAS STILL ALIVE THE WHOLE TIME. Then the betel nut leaves again for another few minutes , then he sliced the back of it open and pulled out the entrails to read. Still it was alive and the squeal it made when he first stabbed it was not a noise I've ever heard from a chook.
This week the dental clinic at the CLC has also been open with two volunteer dentists from Australia. Tons of kids have turned up just independently with no parents in sight, waiting for however long it takes to see the dentist. It seems like it's a novelty they are keen to experience! The only problem is that if they need to do an extraction or something there are no parents in sight to give permission. Next week they are running an education program in local schools to encourage kids to brush their teeth regularly. The dental clinic is really impressive, with all the equipment and standard you'd expect to find in Australia. They deal with some cases they'd never find in Australia though, like scraping all the red betel nut residue off people's teeth (a really gross job apparently!) or finding an 8 year old kid with 5 abscesses in his mouth.

It’s probably safe to say that we have been finding it a bit tough here!  It’s hard to put into words why, partly just a bit of homesickness, but mostly just the battle every day to achieve the simplest things.  Nothing really works properly e.g, tonight while trying to cook dinner the hotplate we bought in Dili last week carked it (the plug was always dodgy) so we had to cook on the kerosene stove, but then we couldn’t find the lighter and it had run out of kerosene so we had to go buy some…aaargh!!  It seems like a little thing but every day there seems to be something like that, something which doesn’t work, something which is crap so it breaks etc. And there is always rubbish lying around everywhere, because they don’t have any kind of rubbish disposal system. On the bright side, the teaching is good, the kids are keen to learn and it’s really fun teaching them. 

  Poz has nearly finished the toilet, which is a simple structure but it has not been simple to build!  It has just been a big learning curve but as Poz has been building a bit more he is becoming more confident that he can figure out where to get hold of materials and how things work.  (or don’t in many cases!) 

We went to Dili last week to renew our visas.  We had to end up paying an Australian woman who runs a business here to organise a 60 day renewal for us because it is way too complicated to organise it ourselves.  A working visa can take 6 months to get and it is harder for us as Rotary does not have NGO status here – most of their volunteers are only here for less than a month so they’ve never encountered this problem before.  On the way to Dili we had a night in a really nice beach resort called Caimeo Beach Camping, stayed in a tent with mattress on the floor, clean, nice linen, electricity running to it with a fan etc and right on a lovely beach with palm trees etc so we felt pretty good about all that.  In the morning Poz went for a bike ride, we went for a swim, had a nice brekky so it was all good. 

  Then we went to Dili.  I’ll just say we aren’t big fans of Dili.  We were glad to get back to Balibo.  Although the town isn’t much, just a bit out of town the scenery is really pretty and it doesn’t smell!  Although we do like our Burger King in Dili.  Yes Ginny is eating Burger King and enjoying it, it is a big treat! 

The people around here love singing, they love to sing in church and sometimes there’ll be a kid walking up the street just singing which is really sweet.  They all dress up to go to mass every Sunday morning.  The girls are in frilly dresses and boys in button up shirts and long pants, and the women often in high heels etc.  It’s like they are off to the formal but they dress like that every week for church.  Every time you go anywhere everyone greets you and everyone sitting outside their houses calls out to find out where you are going.  So we know the Tetun for “Where are you going?” but mostly we’ve got no idea how to answer!

We are probably going to move into our house this week, we had to stay there last night as the hotel was full and Poz managed to make the toilet usable although it isn’t completely finished.   It was nice to be in our place but we need to get earplugs as soon as possible because it was so noisy!  All night there were dogs barking, pigs snorting, and worst of all roosters crowing, all bloody night!! So hopefully that will be something we get used to, like people who live near a busy road! 

7^th march

Ok are in Dili as Charlie has had a temperature on and off for 6 days so at 2am this morning when he hit 39.2 it was time to bring him in to Dili to the Stamford Clinic ( 1^st world clinic according to their web site ! ) Anyway a great doctor checked him out ,blood test etc . May have tummy bug left over from gastro a couple weeks ago. Probably will get him on antibiotics tomorrow. Bit of a worry when we are 3 hrs drive away on a pretty shit road.

There are elections here in a month or so and there is a lot of enthusiasm with rallys etc. Truck loads of people with flags yelling and screaming. It is all civilised and apparently fair and above board. They have only been an independent country for 15 years so must still appreciate having a say in their future. 

I have had 2 locals helping me build bathroom (see picture) The young bloke calls me sir so if anyone runs into Bani tell him that is the right way to speak to the boss !!.  It’s pretty funny trying to communicate when we cannot understand a word each other is saying, sometimes ending up with all laughing and shaking of heads. The buildings are really roughly built so I figure given the language difficulties all I can do is try to show them to take a little bit longer and take more care. These guys don’t seem to even own a level. Our landlord seems to be pretty excited to have an Australian builder working on his dunny although if I am considered to be the gun brick layer in town you know things are crook.

Their sand gravel etc comes in one load which they separate by throwing shovel loads at a sieve frame set up at 45 degrees to make sand or concrete is just cement and whatever is dug out of the river bank ( stones 75mm included )

I had a good pushy ride a week or two ago which ended up in a dry river bed which I followed back down and rode through these gravel pits where they dig and separate the aggregate by hand.