First Impressions

Timor-Leste, it's hard to know where to start. Overall it's positive, there’s a popular brand of cigarettes here called LA so that's made me feel welcomed. And the beach all along the edge of town is definitely a bonus. I don’t think there’s anyway a sane person could leave Missoula and not miss it but this is such a fascinating place that it takes the edge off. I think we'll like it here. It is a little hard to get out of Dili, the roads are super narrow, pot-holed, and super steep and windy because it's all mountains surrounding town except for the ocean. Chad did get a truck from CRS and that's been really nice, just to drive a bit and get a sense of what's outside the city. Next weekend we want to go climb Mt. Rameleu, the tallest mountain at nearly 10,000ft, hopefully it will work out. Then we're planning to start scuba certification the following weekends. It's kind of a rush right now because the rainy season starts in Oct/Nov ish and things like going to the mountains and scuba aren't as good/easy once it starts raining. Overall this town is pretty relaxed though, definitely not what I would call a city. Until recently the tallest building in town was 4 stories and now there's only a few building over two stories. The roads are narrow and biking will be a bit of a challenge with UN vehicles speeding everywhere while Timorese taxis crawl around and motorscooters carrying 1-4 passengers weave inbetween while vendors encroach on the road on either side. The average Timor motor scooter carries more people than the average American car we're convinced, easily. But hopefully we'll be biking soon. Right now we're staying in a hotel and our bike boxes are stored at CRS but we're scheduled to move into a house today. Getting a house here is near impossible given the extremely limited housing (most of it destroyed in 1999 by the Indonesians and more destruction in 2006 by Timorese) and the stiff competition for any decent housing among internationals. The housing/land situation here is nutty because of the factors above and because there's huge confusion and disagreement about who owns what because of the multiple waves of government and displacement and people trying to occupy anything they can. Very interesting. So we're feeling really lucky to have a house, hopefully. It's on the edge of town in a near perfect location. Close enough to markets, up on a hill just a bit for a view and hopefully fewer mosquitoes, a nice run along the water almost right out our door, and a 5km bike ride to a nice beach for ultimate, snorkeling, swimming, etc. There is such an incredible amount to learn here from language to politics to culture to who is doing what and why to the ecology to how to get around to scuba and more. It's pretty exciting and sometimes overwhelming to realize how much there is to learn. Even though I feel uncomfortable with not working at times, learning feels like a fulltime job. Hopefully another job will also come, there are jobs available and I will keep looking. I may also find a place or a couple places to volunteer. I like the idea of spending some time doing direct service (working with kids or farmers, etc) and sometime working with a professional NGO helping as needed on projects in the office. There is a lot going on here for a small city and country so right now I'm doing research... collecting information on who is doing what and the details of their projects. It's something I meant to do all summer in Missoula but never got to. It's fun to do, identify the players and projects. One way to do it is to sit on the street corner and read the decals of the vehicles that go by. About 1 in 5 is the UN and another is an NGO. There is a lot to learn, all the government ministries, all the UN entities, all the other INGOs, and all the local grassroots groups, impressive.