Like with everything, there are always two sides to a story, two sides of a coin...The sense of familiarity I feel being here in Dili has also two sides, one positive and one negative...
The people of Timor, from my very limited two weeks' experience, are kind, warm-hearted people. They smile with you if you're smiling, and it's a beautiful smile, you know, a real smile instead of a 'yellow smile' (that's actually a Portuguese expression) used more to appease than to please. Another thing that the Timorese have is that everyone is family, even a Malay (foreigner in Tetun) like me can be their family. Everyone treats you like your brother or your sister, by the Portuguese diminutive of Mana (sister in Portuguese) or Mão (short for irmão which means brother). And if the person you're addressing is older than you (I mean considerably older because you can't always guess their ages), they become Tio or Tia (uncle/aunt in Portuguese). So this means I spend my entire day addressing Timorese by the kind and familiar Mana and Mão! And they address me as Mana Filipa, I mean, how wonderful is that!? And being an only child myself it's even cooler, I just adopted an entire extended family the size of a country :D
That, of course, is the positive side...
The negative dates from my experience in Luanda, Angola. Luanda is the most expensive capital in the world (!!) but Angola is one of the poorest countries in the world....that doesn't seem right, does it? Angola is corrupt, and indebted to their ears in petro-dollars to foreign companies. Luanda, for example, was built to accommodate 500,000 people, there are currently more than 2 million living there. The infrastructure is poor, the people hardly have access to services but the rich profit, and keep on profiting. Angola's money is reduced to 500 families, the others can suffer for all they care (yes, I'm bitter). The money is there but it's not in the hands of the people, so what good is it!? Timor, fortunately, is still too young and too innocent to have the kind of corruption that exists in Angola. But it reminds me of Angola nonetheless. The money from the offshore oil rigs is coming, but the change isn't coming soon enough for the Timorese people...the conflict in 2006 was partly due to this problem, the people can't see where the money goes, they still don't all have running water or 24/7 electricity and the roads and services are still not reaching the districts. People fear that Dili is becoming a mini-bubble of capital and that the government is forgetting the other parts of the country.Walking around the city, seeing what there is still to be done, you can understand their frustration. Why do you need fancy ministries if people don't have running water, waste disposal, safe roads or electricity?! Can someone answer this for me?
At least their smiles are genuine and they are worth being here, helping this young nation achieve their potential...if only it would stop raining ;p
The people of Timor, from my very limited two weeks' experience, are kind, warm-hearted people. They smile with you if you're smiling, and it's a beautiful smile, you know, a real smile instead of a 'yellow smile' (that's actually a Portuguese expression) used more to appease than to please. Another thing that the Timorese have is that everyone is family, even a Malay (foreigner in Tetun) like me can be their family. Everyone treats you like your brother or your sister, by the Portuguese diminutive of Mana (sister in Portuguese) or Mão (short for irmão which means brother). And if the person you're addressing is older than you (I mean considerably older because you can't always guess their ages), they become Tio or Tia (uncle/aunt in Portuguese). So this means I spend my entire day addressing Timorese by the kind and familiar Mana and Mão! And they address me as Mana Filipa, I mean, how wonderful is that!? And being an only child myself it's even cooler, I just adopted an entire extended family the size of a country :D
That, of course, is the positive side...
The negative dates from my experience in Luanda, Angola. Luanda is the most expensive capital in the world (!!) but Angola is one of the poorest countries in the world....that doesn't seem right, does it? Angola is corrupt, and indebted to their ears in petro-dollars to foreign companies. Luanda, for example, was built to accommodate 500,000 people, there are currently more than 2 million living there. The infrastructure is poor, the people hardly have access to services but the rich profit, and keep on profiting. Angola's money is reduced to 500 families, the others can suffer for all they care (yes, I'm bitter). The money is there but it's not in the hands of the people, so what good is it!? Timor, fortunately, is still too young and too innocent to have the kind of corruption that exists in Angola. But it reminds me of Angola nonetheless. The money from the offshore oil rigs is coming, but the change isn't coming soon enough for the Timorese people...the conflict in 2006 was partly due to this problem, the people can't see where the money goes, they still don't all have running water or 24/7 electricity and the roads and services are still not reaching the districts. People fear that Dili is becoming a mini-bubble of capital and that the government is forgetting the other parts of the country.Walking around the city, seeing what there is still to be done, you can understand their frustration. Why do you need fancy ministries if people don't have running water, waste disposal, safe roads or electricity?! Can someone answer this for me?
At least their smiles are genuine and they are worth being here, helping this young nation achieve their potential...if only it would stop raining ;p
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