Earth Spirits
I’m realizing it’s futile to get pissed off about these roosters. When they wake is when I will wake too. Today it’s about six. I get up to find the sun just creeping over the hills behind Dili. I take my laptop and sit out on the balcony, looking over the side at the kids and the dogs as they emerge from their slumber and start kicking about the yard. Breakfast arrives at about seven and I sip on tea and fresh bread. It’s lovely.
Today I walked down to the dive shop. The sea is like a mirror (above). Men are asleep on their fishing boats. Some have hung the catch of the day up from a tree (pictured right) and pour water over them from an old plastic bottle. I pass a wall next to the port with graffiti daubed on it. Touts sell phone cards and newspapers. The refugee camp is all quiet.
Steven is sick and can’t take me out today. My heart sinks, until I meet his replacement – a wonderfully reassuring Aussie called Mark. He’s got a lovely, languid way of explaining everything to me before it actually happens – ‘OK now Graham, what we’re going to do is get you kitted out.’ He talks in a thick Aussie twang – he lived for years on a small island between Victoria and Tasmania – and speaks as if nothing in the world could bother him. With nerves the way they are, this is the kind of guy I need to spend time around.
We drive out to Dili in a green military style jeep. We head past the airport where most of the troubles have occurred, past the bridge. Mark tells me that he once got caught in a fire fight here while with a customer. He just told his passenger to put his head down and carried on driving. We pass a traditional building specially built for Pope John Paul II to sit in when he visited Timor in the 80s under Indonesian rule (pictured). Apparently the whole area swarmed with people that day. These days in dilapidated and deserted. We breeze on past an Australian military camp and several dusty little villages before arriving at a dusty little clearing next to Dili Rock, and the big wide ocean. Nobody is about. It’s parched and hot. Mark tells me that lots of stuff gets nicked from cars but not from him cos he’s mates with the locals. He shouts out a few greetings to a group of young punks loitering beneath a thatched pavilion to prove the point.
The first dive is wonderful. Visibility is great – about 12 metres – and almost I know it I am fully immersed in the underwater world. Great shoals of fish glimmer in the morning light, We spot a lion fish and descend to 18 metres to take a look. I should be petrified but I feel bloody good – aside from an aching jaw. I realize that my teeth are gripping into the mouth guard for dear life. My mouth aches terribly, compounded perhaps by my realization that smiling underwater is a bad idea. However, not smiling when you are experiencing something so amazing, and so new, as this is a really, really difficult thing to do. Diving is a sadly silent sport. Understandable though.
We wade from the ocean into the searing heat. Getting back into the van, we head to a small village to buy water. I learn later that this was one of the problem areas during the troubles in April/May. No wonder people are looking at us strangely, two guys dressed in dripping rubber attempting to make small talk with angry young men.
After a slightly murky second dive, we head home. Half way back, a guy by the side of the road bends down to pick up a rock and feigns a move to hurl it at the car. It takes a while to work out what’s going on but when it does, my stomach sinks. I realize I am about to have to duck. I realize I should have ducked about five seconds ago. Just as the panic begins to set in I spot the guy laughing his head off. I look to Mark. ‘Fucker’, he says. It turns out the guy works at the bloody dive shop. He thought it would be a good idea to amuse himself by pretending to lob a rock. Comedy in context. I could have done without it, frankly.
‘I promise you two things,’ Mark says. You’re gonna have a bloody good feed now, and then you’re going to sleep’. He’s right on both counts. I have a bloody awful reheated lasagna at Castaway which, if nothing else, is at least big. I then take a taxi and head home to sleep. I don’t rise until gone five.
I head downstairs to find my neighbour Nina, sitting on her verandah drinking beer and reading some trashy celebrity magazine. Was this the lady who last night was berating the Timorese for their laziness? ‘Oh, someone called Dan just came by,’ she says. Pause. ‘Actually, he came by earlier too. I told him you weren’t here. I didn’t know you were in.’ It might have been nice if she had bothered to check.
Miraculously, Dan catches up with me as I am in the internet bar sending some pictures home. They’ve been roaming the streets looking for me, apparently. Maria, the manager of Eco Discovery (one of two Dili-based tour companies), is driving. Alfonso is in the back. We head to a restaurant called Sanan Rai. There are lots of earthenware pots hanging up, apparently used by Timorese in traditional cooking. The words Sanan Rai mean ‘Earth Pot’ in the Tetum language.
Over dinner, we talk about East Timor’s myths and legends. There are tales of giant birds emerging coming out of trees and seas swimming with millions of eels. Superstition is strong in this land, it seems. Dan tells me about an amazing sounding festival which occurs once a year in the east. It’s Metchi (Coral Sea Worm) catching night. The exact timing is decided by village elders based on both the lunar calendar and an historic intuition. When the hour arrives, the entire communitv wanders out into the sea, calling out ‘Metchi, Metchi, Metchi’. Sure enough, the sea is swarming with them. They are scooped out by the bucketload and fermented for a few days before being eaten straight from the jar, perhaps with a touch of lemon and chili. Dan, apparently, shot this festival once but the film was lost by his assistant. It’s the only time in his career that an entire shoot was wiped out in such a manner. He says that it’s obviously a festival which wasn’t destined to be recorded to film. The Rai Na’in, or Earth Spirit, obviously took exception.
There are also sobering elements to the evening conversation. Dan talks about finding bodies in abandoned buildings on this very street. People still avoid it, apparently. Dan tells us about leaving Mogadishu in 1992, fleeing on the last aircraft out which had to do a sharp right the second the wheels left the ground because it was being fired on my militants at the perimeter fence. He’s been in some scary places has Dan. This is like a walk in the park for him, I suspect.
It’s pouring with rain when we go to leave the restaurant. It’s the first rain in Dili for months, apparently. As we drive home, Maria points out a black flag next to the road. It suggests means a recent death. The family in question will apparently begin a year of mourning. A white flag, meanwhile, means a child has died. As if the trip wasn’t already somber enough as it was, the mood has just managed to descend another notch.
Back at home, I am invited for a beer my my neighbours below. The power is off and we are on candles again. After twenty minutes of Abo-bashing and Darwin-praising, I retire to my room for another early night.
