Dili: days one and two

Transport costs very little here in Dili, but taxis or even public buses would have robbed me of much of my day-one sense of the Timor Leste.  I prefer to explore and experience “for real” the cultures through which I travel, not just catch the sanitised tourist’s moving picture from taxi and hotel windows.  So I earned myself a pair of sore legs along with a great first impression of Dili yesterday, probably walking 15-20kms in total.  (Note to self.  Exercise is calling.  That shouldn’t leave me sore even if I’d been running!)

I’m far from the first “pale, stale male” that’s walked these streets, but a white fella wandering alone off the beaten tourist route nonetheless appears uncommon enough to cause some excited interest.  Even just height no doubt makes me a little remarkable – I think I’m yet to find a Timorese whose crown would reach my shoulder.  Maybe we could coin a new variant of the old phrase along the lines of “tall, pale, stale male”.  Doesn’t quite work – feel free to help me with my broken rhyming.

Spoken language is a definite barrier to cross-cultural understanding, although much can be shared and understood with a little effort, a broad smile and a sense of fun.  So many people want to say hello.  “Mister! Mister!” the school kids shout, running after me.  High fives are universal, smiles inevitable, laughing infectious, and it just doesn’t matter that our babbling to each other is close to mutually-meaningless.  Simple games transcend language any day of the week.  Taxi drivers assume that a white fella walking must be lost or in need, and can’t help themselves but pull up, honking and waving.  Street store-holders double their sales efforts as I pass.  And many of those just sitting and quietly chatting over a drink will jump on the opportunity to strike up a conversation.  Who needs to be a movie star?  Plenty of people asked to take photos both on their phone and on mine.  With a lot of miming and some laughable fails, I’ve explained each time that I’m keeping this diary, so any photo shared here is with permission, and each corresponding new friend has the URL to follow along.  To follow along, perhaps with help from the phone’s built-in translation features!

It is only two decades since Timor Leste had a bloody war and overthrew a previous administration.  I don’t pretend to be studied or knowledgeable on the politics of that period or this region.  But there is still very visible pain from those times, and a sense that infrastructure and community is yet to fully be rebuilt.  I can only comment first-hand on the capital at this stage, but here there’s a curious mix of pride of place and third-world slum-like heritage.  The streets and plazas are fastidiously swept and tidied often by quite visible armies of uniformed women (and an occasional man), and yet a seeming blind-spot allows a massive accumulation of litter most especially in open and semi-open drains.

I have found it a little confronting how proud and prominent China’s very public investment is in this region right on Australia’s doorstop, closer to Darwin than Sydney is to Hobart.  Right around the Pacific Rim our CCP neighbours are making their presence very felt through the Belt and Road project.  Chairman Dan even tried to quietly (secretly?) sign Victoria up with his left hand while with his right hand he dazzled and distracted with the world’s longest lockdowns.  Thankfully the Feds’ one reasonable action from that terrible term of government was to shut Dan down (frighteningly… after the fact) by affirming that the Constitution reserves international treaties for Canberra and doesn’t make room for a State messing with such matters.

I guess from China’s perspective, regional (and global) influence and control from unpayable debt is a good thing.  From Australia’s perspective, I’m pretty sure that’s less positive.  Anyway, China is making influence felt right through Asia, including here in Australia’s backyard and now half-encircling our island nation.  The West is clearly in a glasshouse to throw stones on just this basis – as we also use loans, donations and force to exercise influence and control – although to treat properly, such a comparison would need much more nuance than makes sense here.

 

You’ve really got to keep eyes open walking the streets of Dili.  Oftentimes if your gaze was ahead or focus somewhere other than your feet, you’d wonder why your view was suddenly swallowed in darkness, your nose drowned in stench, and body scared at every extremity.  The answer would be… you’ve fallen through one of the countless broken drain covers, if said cover was even constructed in the first place.  Many of the drains are just completely open, cutting straight across paths so you have to just pay constant attention to where each next foot lands.

They are strewn with litter, and the water is putrid and clearly quite toxic.  Like much of Thailand, Indonesia and India (my only other Asian points of comparison), outside of a CBD block or two, there’s a distinct contrast to Australia (and probably most of the West) on every such physical level.

All that said, culture here is definitely mixed with cross influences in faith, dress, language, advertising, and on and on it goes.  That is of course also true across the modern globe and nowhere more than a place like Melbourne Australia, where that diversity is celebrated to the patently-ridiculous extent that the only culture and faith not welcome is the one that built modern Australia and much of the West.  The third world is rushing to emulate and envious of a first world nation like Australia, at about the same rate as our self-loathing and cultural cringe is rushing towards self implosion.  Humans are curious creatures.

Dili’s Christo Rei Represents something of a contrast; a huge statue of Jesus stands with outstretched arms on an outcrop watching over the city.  It is a commanding image clearly putting the nation – where over 99% are recorded as Christian of overwhelmingly Catholic flavour – at His feet.  Number 12 minibus – one of several a “microlets” – is the best way to get there.  These massively crowded microlets are great public transport features that lack any “official” stops or travel schedule, yet there’s almost always a microlet approaching that can simply be hailed like a cab and will drop you exactly when you clink your 25c fee on the hand rail.

Although the 27m high Christo Rei seems like the sort of thing tourists would be more into than locals, every one of the reasonable number of people I came across looked to me to be citizens.  There was a group of young adults gathered at the base of the hill simply playing music and mingling, in what looked like a university student cohort or even perhaps young adult group from a local church.  It brought my own uni days to mind from what seems like just yesterday, spending days sitting with my friends under the gum tree on the lawn outside the Arts campus.  That’s where I first spent any time with my wife.  Good memories.  How things have changed since then.

The climb to the statue isn’t overly taxing, with only around 1/3 of the “Thousand Steps” in Melbourne’s Dandenong Ranges.  That said, the impact in other than physical ways was unexpected.  To call it “emotional” might be overplay, but it was something like that.  The steep path wound through beautiful bush wilderness, and was punctuated with white domes each containing a 2+ metre copper relief.  Each of these shared an aspect of Jesus crucifixion narrative, except the last which gloriously celebrated His resurrection.  The slight exertion of walking that path emphasised the terrible physicality of the hours leading to Jesus’ death, and has to confront a reasonable person with the impact of our own lives.  How can we but be struck by the depth of the Creator’s love in drawing justice and grace together in the blood of His own Son, shed for you and me?

That probably brings me to a point where I should offer a spoiler alert:  you’ll have seen from the home page that I’ve somewhat-opaquely called this adventure “A Ride for Hope”.  You might have wondered why, although curiously I don’t think anyone has ever voiced such a wondering.  The truth is, Jesus is most definitely Hope – with a capital H – anchored in eternity.  The eternity-anchored Hope is furthermore my hope – perhaps “with a small h” – for life this side of eternity, for whatever time my soul stays united with this current body.  I haven’t yet got much in the way of any answer for my own grief and pain and confusion and lostness from my recent life journey.  But I know where I need to go to find those answers.  So primarily this ride is just two adventurous spirits – God and me – spending quality time together on the road and exploring some of this glorious planet.  I don’t know how, but I’m confident this relational investment will reap a positive harvest that will one day more than make up for what my “locusts have eaten”.  I guess “hope is the substance of things hoped for”.

I’d walked enough by the time I came back from the statue yesterday, so two more microlets delivered me back to the backpackers for dinner.  It’s difficult to get a moment to myself away from conversation with my host or other guests, so after a morning of more chatting (mostly “listening”), this afternoon I’ve ironically taken a “quiet day” to rest weary legs by coming to a local plaza for a bite of lunch and some time to read and write.  This was interspersed with some WhatsApp chatting to Aussie friends, a bit of (failed) tech support for an old school mate (!), a high-powered colonnade of police and both national and foreign dignitaries that seemed to include the country’s Prime Minister.  It is probably as “quiet” as I’ll get for a while.  As a bit of an introvert, I’ll need to watch and manage that.

I walked the 15 minute trudge through streets darkened but still thriving.  Lots of kids were running around in community without obvious parental constraint.  No doubt there were boundaries and protections that my foreign eye wouldn’t pick.  It all seemed peaceful, safe and largely very happy.  Certainly those characteristics are in far greater abundance here in Dili’s suburbs than in Melbourne.

Intrigue got the better of me and I stopped to find out why there was a queue of people lining up on the street, many with kids in tow, at what signage apparently suggested was an electricity provider.  “English?” I asked vaguely in the queues direction?  “Of course”, responded one warmly, who turned out to be Amos.  Indeed he did speak English with a clearly-understandable accent and solid handle on our grammatical constructs.  It is always a great leveller to remember in such situations that whatever we think of Western culture, I’m here as a foreigner speaking only one language, and it is Moses and his generous-spirited colleagues who are clever enough and hospitable enough to welcome the foreigner in a non-native (to them) tongue.

But back to the reason I stopped.  Yes, in fact it did turn out that these people were queued outside an electricity provider.  The queue grew while I chatted.  Amos explained that you had to pay for electricity here at the booth to receive some kind of number or code to enter into your home electric metre.  Tonight’s queue was partly due, if I understood correctly, to “bad internet”.  Or maybe the provider’s systems were down?  Not sure.  On one hand it is clearly archaic from a first world perspective, but on the other hand there was something quaintly appealing about the “community” of queueing together for basic utilities.  Not that I’d advocate in a million years for that over the convenience and value of internet-paid always-reliable utilities.

Mokul again hospitably and capably prepared the two of us a meal, while the other guests seem to be eating elsewhere.  I’ve heard more of his life story, which is really quite fascinating.  But I’m tired.  It’s been a long enough day and now it’s 11pm.  I am holding my breath as it is time to load photos into this diary post, and history tells me that is a messy and frustrating task.  Must get this diary post finished before I call it a day.

If you’re still reading this, then i. Congratulations on a big effort!, and ii. I’d value your help.  I’ve got a month here in Dili or greater Timor Leste, and I don’t want to waste the wait for the bike to turn up (hopefully) at the end of the month.  So while I’ll certainly spend time looking around this small country, I’m also very open to explore some volunteer work while I’m here.  I’d love to hear from you if you have personal connections to charities here that might value a body with willingness but no relevant training or skill.  I’d hope any such volunteering might be helpful to others, but I know it will be important for me to lift my gaze from my own troubles and grief just once in a while! (Italics added for irony.)

 

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A little administration…

I’ve had a few people comment that I’m yet to post much video, and ask me to remedy that.  I agree.  I’ve found it pretty taxing to do the little bit of video so far, so I think what I’ll try to do is collect video while I travel and dedicate something like a day a week to summarising and publishing that content on that weekly rhythm.  Maybe aiming for Saturdays.  Watch this space.

On that score – a reminder for anyone who’s been following along for a while, or fresh news for others: I’m keeping this diary primarily for my own purposes.  This adventure ride is a Sabbatical, a way of processing grief and loss, a search for how to posture well into the rest of my life, having lost so much of what really matters to me under the sun.  I’ve realised early on that I need to keep a diary to help with that processing.  So, rather than writing my private diary and separately attempting to keep friends and family up to date, I’ve combined the two.  Keeping either narrative reliably is enough of a challenge for me, let alone doubling that effort.  So if you get bored with my ramblings or don’t like my video, my photos, or my writing, you’re very welcome to provide me feedback (on which I may or may not act) or to just ignore me!  It won’t impact my primary reason for keeping this diary.  Of course that isn’t to diminish one iota the enormous value and strength and courage represented by a circle of loving, caring friends and broader family many of whom are graciously encouraging about these wordy wanderings.  Love ya and care for ya right back!