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| 23 December 2000 Greetings and Happy Holidays from Dili! Since last time... Thanksgiving came a bit late here -- the dinner menu on Thanksgiving was paella, but the boat�s management scheduled a turkey, green beans, and mashed potato dinner for us that Sunday. I enjoyed it with some American colleagues and some of their friends and then went up to the �Top Bar� (the open-air top deck of the ship) to watch the weekly movie showing on the large screen. The screen�s probably about 10 feet high and 15 feet wide, giving the feeling of being at a drive-in. There�s no popcorn, but hot dogs are available hot from the grill, and cold drinks are available at the bar. It�s a very popular social activity, and not just for the residents of the boat. I�ve been here for nearly three months now and have begun to explore Dili on foot. While the level of destruction still gets to me sometimes, I�m happy to report that I am finding more and more shops opening or about to open. (Go to www.gov.east-timor.org/english.html and select �Photo Tour� for some good pictures of Dili and other parts of East Timor.) When I found Cadbury chocolates, Twinings teas, gourmet breads, Christmas trees, and a selection of cell phones at one store and an equally wide variety of things at the store next door, I concluded that you probably can find (or have an obliging shopowner order) just about anything. I�m also able to buy small items online from Australia and have them shipped to the P.O. box in Darwin. A pair of boots to get me through rainy season just arrived, as did some Christmas CDs I ordered in late November. I even remarked to a colleague recently that Dili needed a DimSum restaurant, and two days later we found ourselves eating at one that had just opened. Finding these places is a matter of word of mouth or luck, since there aren�t any yellow pages or other effective advertising media. Another excellent sign of progress is that another bank (ANZ - Australia New Zealand) is about to open a branch here, and it will have an ATM! (There were ATMs here before the violence last year, but the banks were ransacked along with everything else....) The new bank is in the middle of the old downtown area that was pretty well destroyed in last year�s violence but which is showing encouraging signs of coming back. Another grocery store just opened there this week. This renaissance I discovered one Sunday while walking to the office to check my e-mail. It�s about a 2km/1mile walk and took me between 20 and 25 minutes at a slow pace. (I�m realizing that I can�t walk at my normal fast pace due to the heat.) The question on people's minds her is how much of the economic activity will ever be affordable to the Timorese. I have to say that anyone interested in working in the construction industry will probably have all the work they want for years to come. Even though I�ll probably go ahead and try to get my UN drivers license, I�m also going to look into buying a bicycle or scooter for getting around. I�m still nervous about driving on the left side of the road - not to mention the absence of any consistent driving rules! On top of that, since there were never many cars before, there aren�t parking lots or even real parking spaces on the streets; people just park in the traffic lane in front of their favorite store and tie up traffic. If someone�s looking for a way to help this place, traffic lights would be a nice addition! Replacements for all the missing or damaged storm drain covers would also be helpful and keep me from breaking a leg at some point.... By way of exploring, I�ve also had the chance in recent weeks to visit the homes of a number of other UN staff. These houses are in many cases the former homes of Indonesian civil servants or military leaders. Even though many were trashed and gutted in last year�s indiscriminate violence, some have been repaired and are quite livable -- if you�re willing to put up with the frequent power outages that mean no air conditioning, no fans, and in some cases no water. (If you�re ever interested in knowing what the weather in Dili is like, you can check CNN's weather page for Dili or take my word that highs are in the low 90s and lows right around 80 day after day after day after day....) In one case when I was invited to dinner only to find no power, we ended up carrying the table outside and eating on the front porch where there was a light breeze. Speaking of which, one of the best restaurants in Dili is Burned House - a real burnt house, replete with gutted walls, shattered windows, and collapsing roof. The atmosphere is a bit eerie, but the food and hospitality are wonderful. Another great experience was eating under a thatched shelter at Restaurante Vitoria on the beach during a downpour. We selected our fresh fish out of a cooler and then watched the waves and the clouds while waiting for the fish to be cooked on the grill. One guy went by rollerblading in the rain as we waited. We�re now getting reports of more and more areas of the country being cut off due to the onset of rainy season. Dili actually is lucky in that we�re on the north coast, while the mountain range that divides most of the island keeps much of the rain down on the south coast. The flipside is that the south coast is much more lush as a result, as I saw during my trip to Suai last month. After a period when we were getting rain more and more frequently and for longer periods here in Dili, we�ve now hit another dry spell. Not to worry, though -- I�ve heard that once it does start raining it may rain for days or even weeks on end. The kids seem to enjoy it, though - as we drove back from eating on the beach, dozens of kids were running through the streets enjoying the free shower. Fortunately, I�m able to rely on the shower in my room, but one of the questions I had when I got here was where to get a haircut; I made sure to get one in Darwin before arriving in Dili, but then what? As it turned out, our driver�s son is cutting hair while waiting to return to his university studies in electrical engineering. (Like many Timorese students, he was studying in Jakarta before last year�s independence vote.) A month ago, we invited him to the office on a Friday afternoon, and he gave three haircuts. Best of all, he�ll return anytime we need him! Another unexpected convenience in Dili is the guy who pushes a cart around town selling potted plants -- a number of which have now taken the stark edge off our office. The biggest problem at the office these days is the constant roar of the generators outside my window, though they�re preferable to the alternative; we learned recently how quickly the office becomes unbearable when there�s no power! The other problem I�ve discovered is computer bugs - literally! Ants seem to really enjoy crawling all over the keyboard, the monitor, the mouse, .... On the other hand, I get a kick out of seeing the geckos, large and small, occasionally scurrying up and down the walls. We LIKE geckos, too -- they eat mosquitos!!! The colleagues I started here with have completed their work and returned home, and I�m now working with a new group. Our boss is the Colombian who was here as Deputy Chief Electoral Officer last year; our admin assistant and her husband were also here last year, so I�m hearing all sorts of stories of last year - what Dili was like last year before there was a huge international community, how they were trapped in their hotel by the militia, what life was like in the UN compound with babies being tossed over the barbed wire by desperate parents in the schoolyard next door trying to escape from the roaming bands of militia who were wrecking havoc all over the country, how UN staff lost all their belongings when they were evacuated, etc. Even so, a lot of the UN people who were here last year wanted to return to finish what they had started. It�s very moving to witness the tearful reunions when UN staff who were here last year run into the Timorese who was their driver or interpreter last year. I recently enjoyed my first UN staff party, this one presented by the contingents from the South Pacific - Fijians, Samoans, etc. sharing native dances and songs. It was an incredible experience and really showed the beauty of the United Nations as a group of people from the most diverse backgrounds who work together towards a common goal. No one will try to convince you that the UN is perfect, but it does deserve our support. After weeks of anxious anticipation, we�ve just learned that our boat will be leaving Dili at the end of the year. (This after just negotiating a $44/day rate on the Olympia INCLUDING breakfast, as opposed to the $50/day PLUS breakfast that I had been paying.) The new boat seems to be fairly full and has raised its prices accordingly; I'm not even sure I could cover lodging and food from my allowance if I moved there. There are also land-based hotel options, which I will be checking on. I�ve also started looking into finding a house or apartment, and we actually found an apartment building that�s being completely renovated and will be quite nice. Our driver�s keeping an eye on it so I don�t miss out. While the house/apartment option could have its advantages (being able to have a pet would be very nice), unless I find somewhere with its own generator, etc., I will likely be joining the ranks of those who are routinely without power or water for extended periods. We received a memo the other day alerting us to the dramatic increase in power consumption in recent months, emphasizing that it was largely the international community that was consuming all this power, asking everyone to cut their consumption as much as possible, and indicating that they had finally begun charging some commercial users for electricity. (Dili's main power comes from two diesel generators, which are severely overloaded, increasingly costly, and prone to breakdowns and shortages of spare parts; fortunately, the Japanese government is helping modernize the larger generator plant, but that will only come on line a month from now.) I may try to get a small solar power unit that would at least keep a fan running at night if the power went out. For those who might be wondering, the boat receives five TV channels: HBO, MTV, CNN, an Australian channel, and ESPN. I�m able to keep up with the world and have actually lost quite a bit of sleep in the last few weeks trying to watch as much election news as possible. Fortunately for us here, the great excitement of the wee hours of November 8 in the US were in the middle of the afternoon for us, and we were following the news step by step via the Internet. UNTAET apparently has a TV service, but I�ve never seen it. I do listen to Radio UNTAET sometimes in my room; it broadcasts in English, Portuguese, Tetum, and Indonesian in two hour blocks. There�s also a Portuguese radio station carrying the signal of a Lisbon station, so I can actually keep up with the weather and traffic there.... East Timor also has a fledgling postal service, run by both international and Timorese staff, with post offices in Dili and Baucau so far. The stamps are quite beautiful, and service isn�t bad; my father received a package of newspapers in less than two weeks. Speaking of news, that�s enough for now from here. Do keep me posted on how things are going on your end! Very best wishes for a joyous holiday season, Ray |
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