Chapter 1 ~ Wednesday 3rd November 2010

The Air North 737-800 plunges through the cloud to take a shotgun landing on a strip that is a lot closer to the town than Google Maps had indicated. 

We scream down the tarmac and the shanty shacks; pig sty’s and banana patches remind me of Tuvalu, so long ago. We turn off the strip and there are more planes than expected, the UN is here with star lifters and helicopters dotted around the apron. Disembarkation causes some mirth for the
crew, who have never had the plane parked such a long way from the terminal before. We soon realise the cause for their mirth on the long walk through the thick tropical air. It’s 11:15am and the sun is at its Zenith, it intends to stay there for an hour and burn our skin off, which is about as long as it takes to buy a visa, go through immigration and customs. The customs man wants to look at the package that Alofa and I have hand carried all the way from New Zealand, whilst perplexed as to why anyone would want to hand carry a bug zapper, he is interrupted by a female associate that asks how much it cost in US$, we show them the NZ price tag, and explain that the NZ$ is half a US$ (well almost nearly the truth) and we are on our way out the door to be met by Jason.  We wait for Lisa, she is also a volunteer, and we had met once before on Auckland North Shore for a coffee and chat, we then met up again in Darwin in order to catch the flight up to Dili. Once Lisa is through Customs, we are bundled into the pickup double cab and are on our way, Jason has a schedule of things that he wants to get done today, we are all to shell shocked to dissent, so we head off into the traffic, Jason explains that he likes to think of the road as a shared resource. This is probably the greatest understatement of all times used to describe mayhem on wheels (and foot). Whilst it can be generally accepted that the Timor Leste road code defines the left hand side of the road as the correct driving side, the execution of this rule is more about using every piece of available road, so if
it’s expedient to zip up the right hand side in order to gain 10 seconds of valuable tropical time, then that’s what is about to happen at any moment. If the rule is left hand side, it’s probably safest to drive straight down the middle and look out for cars, trucks, SUV’s, motor cycles, push bikes and
pedestrians on either side in either direction looking to get into your path in order to commit some random act of suicide. Finally to add a certain charm and flavour to the mix, the United Nations vehicles all own the whole road and you are expected to just move out of the way, because the UN is here. Goats, cattle and small children display a better understanding of the random chaos and are
cautious when entering the playing field, but with all good humour it’s fair to say that nothing that visually assaults the senses is as bad as the noise.

 Where the rest of the world uses indicators, road rules and courtesy in order to navigate the highway, the Timor Leste driver has the horn. It is used to tell you that they are going to overtake you, (either on the left or right), they want to enter an intersection, exit and intersection, turn left or right and, most importantly, it is used by Taxi drivers to ask everyone if they want a taxi, how this conversation is consummated I was yet to learn, but the question as apparent and asked repeatedly of any pedestrian who was within a 200 meter radius of the taxi. It should be noted that there are literally hundreds of yellow taxis in Dili and each one takes it in turn to ask the same question of
the same pedestrian. They cruise like sharks taking bites at the crowd, trying to entice the unsuspecting pedestrian from the safety of their own feet into the wild malaise of transportation.  As
your senses attempt to take in this utter chaos, the thunder of the real sharks vibrate in the sky as a line of Black Hawke Helicopters head off to some unknown part of the surrounding mountains. It’s only now that you notice the mountains and realise that despite the madness of the street, you are in a beautiful tropical land whose green interior, promises tropical fauna and magical splendour and that this land is endowed with a surrounding cobalt sea. Ahead, overlooking the Ocean from his perch on the mountain is the statue of Christo Rei, with arms outstretched, palms up, in the universal symbolisation that “all may come and rest in me” and I am immediately relieved to have been
accepted into my new home.

There are street vendors, carrying poles with assorted wares, tied in strings, to either side of their pole, they have mango, papaya, pomegranates, banana, limes, lemons, sour sap, pineapples, water cress, some sort of cabbage and peanuts, they have fish of all shapes and sizes and lobsters too! There are hand carts that have cold drinks water, coca cola, sprite etc. for only 25 cents. They sell chips, cigarettes and snacks of all descriptions. There’s even a guy on the road selling live chickens, if you want it, there’s a street vendor selling it somewhere in Dili. They push the carts around or just park-up under a shady tree all along the Avienda. There are two prices, for most things one being the local price and one for the Malai (foreigners), but that’s Ok as it’s nice to be in a country where the word for us is not derogatory or based upon some historical gastronomic activity. The street vendors are pretty honest, to tell the truth, and we have found that the by-standing Timor Leste will put the vendor, and us, straight when an attempt is made to undertake some minor wrought.

Jason has organised a “care package” and after some paper work in the “office” (his desk in the corner) we pick up our boxes that we dispatched two weeks ago from Otaki and head for the house where we will spend the next two years.

We had always understood that the accommodation was going to be modest and so our expectations are not high, what is not explained is that the community where the accommodation is situated is a lot more “modest” than anticipated. The place is fine, and with a bit of work we can make ourselves comfortable. The shock is in the surrounding poverty and the close proximity that we have with our neighbours. Forget the NZ quarter acre Pavlova paradise. This is real integration into the community, at an unbelievable level. It’s also at this point that you realise the need for all of that immunisation back in NZ and more importantly we also remember why we are here, and what we are trying to - “if we can improve the quality of one person’s life, then that’s a success”.

I realise that our presence here whilst being an agent for change may not be “all good” and that there are hundreds of years of collective social memories that need to be taken into account when assessing our situation. There is a sudden sense of honour that this country would accept assistance
from a Kiwi IT guy. It is a humbling experience. Rather than be daunted by our surroundings, we head off for bed – no need for the electric blanket tonight! Sleep comes easy, day 1 is complete and we are here in Marconi, Timor-Leste!

Did I mention the dust? It’s day two, or is it day three?
It’s all starting to blur a little. My mind has taken on the same consistency
as the Comoro Road, there’s a lot going on, there’s a lot of noise, and there’s
this haze that hangs around from the dust. We seem to be going here and going
there, as part of our orientation, in and out of the pickup, trying to keep
cool and not break out in that waterfall of sweat. There is so much to do, in
too short a time, as we haven’t really unpacked. The first night we had dinner
out at a restaurant, as it was impractical to set up the kitchen after only one
day, and whilst the restaurant was a good idea, it means that we still haven’t
really got settled. We need a day or two to just get ourselves organised as our
worldly possessions are now in two suitcases, 6 cardboard boxes and a few
pieces of hand luggage (duty free single malt whisky).

Our programme Manager has taken us to the ANZ Bank to set up
Bank accounts. When he said it was the ANZ, I thought “Great, at least that’ll
be easy”, ah, I should know better than that, by now. Suffice it to say that the
visit to the Bank was an hour and a half of my life that I’ll never get back,
and the good news is that we have to wait three weeks before we can pick up our
Access (EFTPOS) cards. The program manager sagely advised us to retain enough
money, in cash, to last for the next three weeks. I stand in the queue wondering
“how long is that piece of string” and with no comprehension, or guidance, we
line up and sagely do mental arithmetic about living in a foreign country that
uses US$ as a currency, without a clue as to the cost of living. Obviously the
programme manager has been here before, and he has wisely shown us the
expensive supermarkets, and the expensive restaurants, so that we over
estimate, and keep too much money. All of this is in direct contravention of
the VSA guidelines of not carrying too much money in your wallet.

In the Bank we witness the local merchants depositing and
withdrawing “bricks of bank notes”. You could be excused for thinking that we
were in post-war Germany, but no, we are in post-conflict Timor Leste where the
US$ is king as long as it’s in small denominations. Whilst the merchants are
literally handling tens’s of thousands of dollars, the largest denomination is
a $20 bill. Don’t try to cash a $100 round here, it’s too much like hard work,
as this is a cash society and the smaller the denomination of the note, the
more it gets used, and more of that dust (remember the dust) gets ingrained
into the notes. It’s in your eyes; it’s up your nose, it gets under your finger
nails. If I had hair it’d be in there too, it gets in your food; it settles on
everything and somehow manages to crawl inside your socks. The good news is
that this is the wet season, “wait until it gets dry”, and old Timor hand
points out to me.

This dust comes from compacted and crushed rock, these
majestic mountains that surround us, are not the usual Sth. Pacific Volcanoes
per se, but were, and are, created as  Australia collides with Asia, thus forming the
Banda Arc, whether or not the Australian Plate goes under the Asian Plate or
the Asian plate goes under the Australian or (the more popularly held belief)
that a bit of both occurs, with a lot of pushing and shoving going on, these
majestic peaks have been thrust skyward and then stripped away to uncover their
naked beauty. This collision has created huge monoliths of quartz rippled
Precambrian schist’s and shale’s. We now know that the collision also was of such
a force, as to create the pressure needed to form hydrocarbons, but that is a
different part of the story, that I am yet to learn about.  It’s as if the collision, is slowly grinding
these old and hard rocks down into this fine abrasive dust, that collects at
the side of the road, waiting for another UN vehicle to pick it up scatter it
across the road inside a cloud of chaotic swirl and noise, in order for it to
settle in that nice clean spot that you just removed the dust from. When you dust
it off, it lifts into the air again, only to settle by the side of the Comoro
Road.