Laurie's Morning Run East of Dili

We are really lucky to live on the edge of the busy part of town.  After 20 minutes running, or a shorter bike, we can be pretty much alone in the mountains or along the beach on a weekday.  Here are some photos from the morning I took a camera along.  I always say asalaam alekum to the Pakistani peacekeepers at the checkpoint and talked them into having a photo with me this day.  Part of the run often includes herding some goats.  I still think it's funny to see the goats, pigs, chickens, and cows hanging out by the ocean...  Right now it's still really dry and hard to imagine everything being green but apparently soon the rains will come and everything transforms to lush green.

Baucau Frisbee

Last night we made it down the beach in Baucau with Chad's colleague for a few minutes before it got dark.  (We're in Baucau for two days for Chad's work, the second largest city/town in Timor.)  The beach was deserted when we arrived but as soon as we took out the frisbee kids come running towards us.  I'm not sure they had ever even seen a frisbee before but check out this slideshow to see them perfecting the "alligator" catch.  It was an everyone throw to everyone kind of game but next time we're here I hope we can go back and organize a game.

News from Timor Leste #1

1. Although the capital of Timor Leste is reportedly home to nearly 200,000 people, the lack of infrastructure and density makes it feel like a town.  At night there are few lights and we can see the stars.  I can pretty much ride my bike anywhere (with helmet firmly attached) in 20 minutes.  The largest (completed) buildings are the University and Parliament house, about the size of the UM Social Science building.  Until recently a 4 story apartment building downtown (imagine something smaller than Missoula’s antique mall) was the tallest building in town.  Now the Chinese are helping build a new government building which will be the tallest at 6 or so stories.  Dust and burning of vegetation and garbage diminish the air quality at times but the breeze from the ocean clears it out and overall it’s not too bad.  We live on the edge of town with better access to the hills than we had even in Missoula and can run and bike to a few beaches.
   
2. We saw the biggest spider we’ve ever seen, and it was walking in our front door while we sat outside after sunset.  Including its legs it was bigger than my palm but not quite as big as my whole hand.  It had black and brown flecks and would have been beautiful if it wasn’t a spider and/or wasn’t crawling into our house on it’s enormous eight legs.  Chad smashed it with a shoe before it got too far.  We didn’t want to kill it but it was just too gigantic to let go wandering around our house and we just weren’t sure of the safety of any kind of removal method.  We’re such North Americans.  And need to learn lots more about the tropical creatures of Timor.  Steve Siebert?  Alfred Wallace?  Will you come visit us? 
   
3.  The constants in our lives are 1. Ants, 2. Geckos, 3. Tropical heat.  And Chad goes to work while I go running, reading, meeting, householding, and buca hela servisu (looking for work).
   
4. We are certified open water scuba divers!  The snorkeling and diving here are really, really wonderful.  We see an amazing array of coral, sponges, fish, and other things.  I had no idea all of that life would exist just a few meters from the shore.
   
5. Here in Dili, camps for internally displaced people continue to close and people are returning home with the assistance of NGO and government dialogue teams to ensure peace and security.  Reportedly the process is going well with only a small percentage of people unable to return home due to land claims conflicts or continued tension among neighbors.  Within the government, Transparency International's 2008 international Perceived Corruption Index reports Timor-Leste's position fell 22 places from 123rd to 145th behind Kazakhstan and one place ahead of Bangladesh for the period August 2007 to August 2008.  More political news soon for those that are interested. Cheers, L&C
   

Timor Leste Slideshow

Okay, if this worked as planned there should be a slideshow just to the right of this post.  If you click on it, it should expand and there will be pictures of East Timor.  My finger's are crossed.  

Okay, I'm about to do my best to somehow view the Biden/Palin debate, wish me luck.  

Timor's Highest Point

Last Sunday we woke up at 3:50am for a sunrise hike up East Timor’s highest point, Mt. Ramelau.  The day before we’d driven the bone jarring 4 and half hours to Hati Balico where we stayed the night and met a village teenager who agreed to be our guide the next morning.  We were supposed to meet our “guide” at 4am so he could show us the trail.   By 4:30 he still hadn’t shown up so we went for it.  This led to us wandering down the wrong approach path until just before sunrise when we gave up and sat down on a high point to watch the sun come up over the mountains of East Timor, pretty beautiful.   Just about this time two guys came walking down the road.  We had only about 3 words in common which consisted of bondia, obrigada, and (thank god) polisia.  Through much discussion in which none of us really understood each other until the very end, they were finally able to communicate that the correct path took off from near the police station (a glorified name for a run down building with a flag and no cars or even people that we saw).  We headed back into town and by 6:45 we were on the right trail.  From there it was a really nice walk up Mt. Ramelau to something like 2963 meters.  It wasn’t Montana but hiking in the mountains always feels good and this morning it was just us and the occasional horse or water buffalo.  At the top of the mountain in vicious winds we got a 360 view of Timor Leste all the way to both the north and south coasts.  We sat up on top for a while with the virgin Mary statue and took it all in.  Back at the poussada our apologetic guide awaited.  We assured him it was no problem and sat down to coffee (the national drink of choice after palm wine) before heading back to Dili.

On East Timor Ultimate

So I've been wondering for awhile if there would be an ult scene in Timor... and guess what, there is.  On Saturday night some folks gave us the tip that there's pick up on the beach at 5pm on Sundays.  I was ecstatic.  Chad kept warning me not to get my hopes up.  At 5pm on Sunday we headed down to the beach in Chad’s beater CRS pick-up that says CRS 27 on the side in big print inside circles making it look like a news vehicle.  It doesn’t stand out too much though because it’s white just like every one of the hundreds of UN vehicles on the road and most of the other numerous NGOs working here.  As we drove up to the beach we saw tons of people running, swimming, laying in the sand in all directions.  And right in the middle of all this were two dudes standing in the water with Frisbees, Chad says, this must be it, I say, really? Maybe it’s a little further down?  It wasn’t, that was it.  We walk up on the narrow strip of sand between the trees and sunbathers and the ocean and introduce ourselves to the nice folks with the frisbees.  In the meantime people of all colors from all over the world emerged from the sand and we commenced playing ultimate on a “field” that encompassed a few feet of slanting beach and into ankle and then knee and then thigh deep water.  The tide happened to be in, pretty hilarious.  The play was chaos.  The Nigerians were all deep all the time yelling for the throw away huck from some excited new ultimate player.  Defense involved no coordinated effort, not even taking the person across from you.  As total inlanders it did take us awhile to figure out the strategy which is, on defense, run down the field in the shallow water and then spread out and on the pull, put it in the deep water where it’s more like Frisbee polo.  The scariest part of the game was erratic disks diving towards the heads of unsuspecting children and the occasional kayaker in the endzone, no marker discs available.  It was ultimate though and a ton of fun along with an amazing work out (running in water).  One Aussie guy had just returned from Singapore where he played with an Indonesian team and he’s hoping to organize an East Timor team for an April tourney in Bali.  Missoula?  Can anyone make it?  Go ultimor. 

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.