Oh geez, these last three weeks have proven to be quite interesting indeed, as
opposed to the mundane banality of daily life in Maliana in the past month or
so...
Three weeks ago, I think a Tuesday, we were lazing about the house in the evening after dinner when our flatmate M starts screaming and calling our names and running from one side of the house to the other...my first thought was, the cats must be killing each other - we have two cats that have taken to wrangling at each other for control of their territory - or she saw a snake in the house, everything but what was really waiting for us outside! We all go out and a mere 30m from our front door, maybe less, a huge fire was blazing in our neighbor’s yard. The guards had set a palm tree on fire!!!! Who does that??? We called out to the guards to see what, why, wtf was going on and they very calmly told us "it was intentional”!!! May I remind you that it is now dry season in Maliana, it hasn't rained in I don't know how long and the earth is as dry as the desert. The guards said that the tree was dead so they were burning it...okay, normally when a tree is dead you cut it and use it for other purposes!! Needless to say the fire went on for a good hour or two, it spread, of course, to nearby palm trees; it was amazing that it didn’t spread further.
So that was Tuesday, three weeks ago...
On that same week, about two days after, as I was just leaving the house to go for my early evening run, our guards come running towards me and to the back of the house. They turn off the electricity, which had just come on. Sensing that something was wrong I followed the guards to the back of the house... The cable that connected our water tank to the mains burst into flames...if they hadn't caught it our house would most likely have caught on fire along with it...An electrician came by later and was able to isolate the cable and cut if off from the rest of the house's electrical wiring - we now need our neighbor's wire to pump water from the ground into our tank!
Also that week, or was it the week after, I'm losing track, our STAE colleagues had a wedding, a funeral and Maliana had the Anniversary of the Diocese - Catholics will know what that is - which meant practically no work that week! Seriously, we had a calendar with voter education activities for the entire week; we managed to get through two! The Diocese's anniversary though was a big hit in town! We had a fair - STAE even had its own stand - and food and music to our hearts content with the kids from the entire district dancing and singing - we even had a really cute boys’rap/breakdancing group - who knew Maliana was so hip ;)
The campaigns have also been in full swing for these past weeks, with each candidate - there are 21 parties vying for parliament seats - coming and promising the world if only the Timorese will vote for them. The campaigns have followed with all-night parties. These parties have led to drunken violence - we've had one guy stabbed in the foot and another one, a military officer, stabbed and killed in another party! Apparently, both incidents have been due to domestic reasons, classic guy sleeping with other guy's wife, but still! This has led to a banning of after-campaign parties...needless to say the ban hasn't work, only the other weekend, our own neighborhood had a campaign party that went from 8 in the evening until 5:45am, and the djs are the worse, when a song finishes the gap is so long until the next song that you are always hoping and wishing that that was it, the last song, until you hear the microphone again and their horrible singing starting again! This was two Saturdays ago, which wouldn’t have been a problem - you can always sleep in once the party is over - but we had been called to Dili for a training and we were to leave at 6am on that Sunday! By the time we arrived in Dili all we could pray for was a bed to crash on and some quiet! The party went on for longer than their work days go for!! I keep saying it and I'll keep repeating it, if only the Timorese worked as hard as they partied, the development of this country would be in a completely different ball game. My flatmate M, on the other hand, likes to think that this is what the Portuguese left behind, the need to party!!
So, we had the training in Dili - almost all of it in tetum so not much use to us unfortunately - the ballot paper ceremony, a quick visit from our Dear Leader - Tomas Cabral, Director General of STAE - to Maliana's STAE office and Big Brother's campaign...with the two fires, the two stabbings, the wedding, funeral, and the Diocese's anniversary, we've seen more action in these last three weeks than in nearly all four months in Maliana! What's going on?!
All I can say is "Thanks Maliana!" for keeping it interesting in these final weeks; at least we'll go out with a bang!
Three weeks ago, I think a Tuesday, we were lazing about the house in the evening after dinner when our flatmate M starts screaming and calling our names and running from one side of the house to the other...my first thought was, the cats must be killing each other - we have two cats that have taken to wrangling at each other for control of their territory - or she saw a snake in the house, everything but what was really waiting for us outside! We all go out and a mere 30m from our front door, maybe less, a huge fire was blazing in our neighbor’s yard. The guards had set a palm tree on fire!!!! Who does that??? We called out to the guards to see what, why, wtf was going on and they very calmly told us "it was intentional”!!! May I remind you that it is now dry season in Maliana, it hasn't rained in I don't know how long and the earth is as dry as the desert. The guards said that the tree was dead so they were burning it...okay, normally when a tree is dead you cut it and use it for other purposes!! Needless to say the fire went on for a good hour or two, it spread, of course, to nearby palm trees; it was amazing that it didn’t spread further.
So that was Tuesday, three weeks ago...
On that same week, about two days after, as I was just leaving the house to go for my early evening run, our guards come running towards me and to the back of the house. They turn off the electricity, which had just come on. Sensing that something was wrong I followed the guards to the back of the house... The cable that connected our water tank to the mains burst into flames...if they hadn't caught it our house would most likely have caught on fire along with it...An electrician came by later and was able to isolate the cable and cut if off from the rest of the house's electrical wiring - we now need our neighbor's wire to pump water from the ground into our tank!
Also that week, or was it the week after, I'm losing track, our STAE colleagues had a wedding, a funeral and Maliana had the Anniversary of the Diocese - Catholics will know what that is - which meant practically no work that week! Seriously, we had a calendar with voter education activities for the entire week; we managed to get through two! The Diocese's anniversary though was a big hit in town! We had a fair - STAE even had its own stand - and food and music to our hearts content with the kids from the entire district dancing and singing - we even had a really cute boys’rap/breakdancing group - who knew Maliana was so hip ;)
The campaigns have also been in full swing for these past weeks, with each candidate - there are 21 parties vying for parliament seats - coming and promising the world if only the Timorese will vote for them. The campaigns have followed with all-night parties. These parties have led to drunken violence - we've had one guy stabbed in the foot and another one, a military officer, stabbed and killed in another party! Apparently, both incidents have been due to domestic reasons, classic guy sleeping with other guy's wife, but still! This has led to a banning of after-campaign parties...needless to say the ban hasn't work, only the other weekend, our own neighborhood had a campaign party that went from 8 in the evening until 5:45am, and the djs are the worse, when a song finishes the gap is so long until the next song that you are always hoping and wishing that that was it, the last song, until you hear the microphone again and their horrible singing starting again! This was two Saturdays ago, which wouldn’t have been a problem - you can always sleep in once the party is over - but we had been called to Dili for a training and we were to leave at 6am on that Sunday! By the time we arrived in Dili all we could pray for was a bed to crash on and some quiet! The party went on for longer than their work days go for!! I keep saying it and I'll keep repeating it, if only the Timorese worked as hard as they partied, the development of this country would be in a completely different ball game. My flatmate M, on the other hand, likes to think that this is what the Portuguese left behind, the need to party!!
So, we had the training in Dili - almost all of it in tetum so not much use to us unfortunately - the ballot paper ceremony, a quick visit from our Dear Leader - Tomas Cabral, Director General of STAE - to Maliana's STAE office and Big Brother's campaign...with the two fires, the two stabbings, the wedding, funeral, and the Diocese's anniversary, we've seen more action in these last three weeks than in nearly all four months in Maliana! What's going on?!
All I can say is "Thanks Maliana!" for keeping it interesting in these final weeks; at least we'll go out with a bang!
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