Chapter 4 ~ Revenge on the Comoro Road

I’d been issued with what was referred to as a Motor Scooter, I was told it was one of those “clutch less machines” that you just sat and rode around. I used to ride a Vespa 125, when I was 15 ( I was a Mod in Bristol, back in the days of Mods and Rockers), but hadn’t been near a bike since. So you can imagine my chagrin, when I was confronted with a Honda Zippy 125. This is not a “clutch less machine”, it has a 4 speed kick-gearbox, a rear footbrake and a front calliper brake, which strangely is on the same handlebar as the twist accelerator.

 

I had mentioned the madness that manifests itself on the Comoro Road back in chapter 1, in my first impressions of the place, as well as the concept of the road being a shared resource. So, I decided that I would try out the Bike by riding to and from work. I hit my first problem when I realised that the Bike didn’t come with any sort of facility in which to carry any bags or place to strap on your briefcase. Sort off pretty useless really as it cannot be used to go shopping with, and when traversing to work, you have to carry your laptop and your lunch in a bag that is coiled around your shoulder and neck. The bag takes on a life of its own every time you need to stop, by attempting to swing round and get in front of you and if you accelerate away, it attempts to slice of your throat and drag you back where you came from. Given that degree of complication, managing the bag is nothing compared to attempting to predict the foible of Timorese drivers who are sharing this resource with you. They overtake on either side of you, and whilst the all vehemently believe that there are no :Give-way” rules, traffic entering from either the left or the right hand side do so by blaring their horn and inching, slowly into the traffic. If however a gap is spotted then the entry into the traffic needs to be done at alarming speed.

The road itself is in various states of disrepair and there are whole sections where there is a 2 meter lane of gravel and mud alongside the road, which sort of takes the place of a footpath. At other times there is a foot path as well, with or without the footpath, this area can be used for a footpath or for taxis to make into a third lane along what was only ever designed as a single lane each way piece of roading.  There are a number of hazards, pot holes are probably the least of the obstacles, however, there are some pot holes out there that could swallow a bike. The major hazard is actually everyone else on the road as there is no formal structure to the way people drive on the roads, no adherence to whatever road rules that are in existence and little or no respect to the frailty of human life. Having seen a number of accidents on the Comoro road and being privy to the number of deaths and casualties that are occurring on the Timor-Leste Roads, I decided that I would follow the VSA Guidelines on Managing Risk and “Staying Safe”. I weighed up all the pros and cons of riding a motor bike in Timor-Leste and could not come up with a single reason, why I should endanger my life by attempting the use it as a means of Transport. I should add that VSA had expected both Alofa and I to ride on the bike at the same time, something that event a brand new Honda Zippy had several complaints about. So having made the decision, the next thing to do was to identify the alternative. I quickly learnt how to flag down a Taxi and with stumbling and slightly broken Tetum language skills, I managed to get from home to work and back again on a regular basis. I have to admit that on some rare days, it was really easy, but the overall experience was one of fear, stress and general annoyance.

Fear

The Fear was simple, Taxi drivers all over the world see themselves as the “Knights of the Road”, and as such are entitled to endanger the lives of their passengers in order to get the passenger to their destination earlier than the passenger had really intended. Let’s be honest about this, there is nowhere in Timor-Leste that you would be going to where punctuality is that important, that it should stop you from breathing.  They drive along the pavements, on the wrong side of the road and within a millimetre of other Taxis attempting similar manoeuvres.

Stress

The stress is a little more subversive, there is a rule that whatever costs a dollar in Timor-Leste, must be charged to the Malai at double. So, whilst everyone knows that the Taxi Fare is $1.00 from Aimutin to Motael(where I work) the “Malai” price is $2.00. Eventually I was able to accept the anomaly, however, once the Taxis had convinced all of the Malai that this was the correct rate, they started charging the Local’s the same rate, and seeing as how the Local rate was now unofficially $2.00 the Malai rate went up to $3.00. I knew we were all heading for trouble when I flagged down a Taxi, told the driver where I wanted to go and he asked me how much I was going to pay him! Taxi drivers also believe that as they own the Taxi, it’s up to them who they pick up, there are no regulated Taxi ranks where you can queue for a cab, but more an ad-hoc situation where they beep at you and you wave them down ensuring that your hand is palm down and that the gesture is a downward motion, all very PC until you get in the cab. You soon find that although you think you have hired a cab, you are about to share it with a Sister from the Catholic Church and a man with a chicken. Both of whom are going to some other location which is not on the most expeditious route to where you are going. All of the  passengers are going to have to pay the “full” fare either Malai or Local, and if you express any disappointment about not going the way that you had anticipated, the Taxi Driver has a valid excuse to create a new lane on the other side of the road and to accelerate down this newly found lane into the oncoming traffic at great speed.

Annoyance

The cars are dirty, the air conditioning never works, all gear boxes seem to be in a state where one or two of the gears isn’t really working and most of the drivers insist on having the music blaring at around 140 Db. Added to that they smoke inside the cab whilst driving, and when you get to your destination they don’t have any change. You learn very quickly that the only way to deal with these guys (note – There are no Women Taxi Drivers – Perhaps there should be) is to ensure that you have your $2.00 in the correct change, tell them where you want to go to, suffer the trip, and then upon arrival, get out of the cab, hand the driver the $2.00 and walk away!

Obviously, I was getting very disillusioned by my Taxi experiences and I began to wonder if I was just getting too “picky” in my old age, after all, no-one else seemed to mind. I talked to a number of people and found that the majority of people that I knew had given up on Taxis a long time ago. The most popular reason for abandoning Taxis as a valid means of transportation, being that they all go home as soon as it gets dark, the reasoning for this is the “security problems” but the general consensus is that they really don’t want to work the late shift! I also started to realise that the number of traffic accidents had not decreased, now that I was riding in a cab and whilst the majority of these macabre disasters involved motor bikes, the other main contender in the accident stakes were Taxis, who didn’t always come of second best, due to the dismal state of repairs to most of these vehicle they tended to fall apart on impact. A large number of the Cabs that I have driven in have these sunscreen stickers on the front windscreen, but unlike the ones in use elsewhere in the world these are not see through and the driver has to look through about 33% of what the vehicle  manufacturer has designed as a suitable windscreen for a vehicle of this size and shape. So, it’s not really surprising that a number of the windscreen also have the shattered imprint of a human head
on the inside of the glass too.

It was time to look at the alternatives again. I considered the Microlet, a refurbished combivan, with seat that go along the length of the van facing each other, however, whilst extremely cheap, the owners of these vans like to cram in as many passengers as is humanly possible. It’s a matter of quantity not quality travel, and given that I as a Malai am about twice the size of the average Timorese and that I suffer from claustrophobia, I decided against the Microlet. I also considered buying a car, but it just seemed to me that being a volunteer in a country and swanning around in last year’s Mercedes wasn’t quite the “look” I was going for, besides, did I really want to drive a car on these roads? – No, the answer was simple – Shanks’s pony – my own two good
legs. I walk to work and back now. I get a good bit of exercise doing this every day, I get to see what’s going on around me in the town, I get to say “Bondia” to all sorts of people and say “Botardi” on the way home. I have
learnt to avoid the mud puddles, the stray dogs and avoid being run over by miscreant vehicles that have elected to use the piece of the road or pavement, which I am walking on, as a new lane.

I am physically getting stronger with my walking and I have done away with the Fear, Stress and annoyance of the alternatives, not to mention the $20.00 a week I am saving, well I’m not really saving it as in order to endure this walking, I have it justified as either two bottles of wine or a dozen tiger beers, or maybe even one bottle of wine and a six pack.