Water and food

As in much of the world, water access is an issue in Timor-Leste. The town I was in, Ainaro, has a piped water supply, but it’s often not working. About half the time I was there, there was no running water. At the house where I stayed, the volunteers keep four large trash bins filled with water, so that when the water is off, they don’t need to go out to fetch it. Most people fetch it, though.

This water’s not for drinking without boiling or otherwise purifying. 1.5-liter bottles of drinking water sell for 50 cents. I’m not sure, though, whether the local people really rely on the bottled water and on sterilizing the town water, or whether they drink it straight.

During one of the lessons, students were making sentences using the conditional “could.” One student’s sentence was, “I couldn’t do the laundry because there was no water.”

Sometimes, though, people go down to the river to do the washing.



Cooking

At the house where I stayed, we cooked using propane that is shipped up from Dili—on the bus I rode. Most people, however, gather firewood from the forest and cook with that. There was a contingent from the national army stationed next door to where our classroom was; they cooked over an open fire in the building behind us.

( some photos under here )

Rice is the staple, often eaten with water spinach or mustard greens. Ainaro also has two bakers who travel all through the town pushing wooden wheelbarrows filled with personal-sized (roll-sized) loaves of bread. Each one costs five cents. One of my acquaintances said his mother would give him a loaf like that in the morning, plus five cents to take to school to pay for the school lunch.

The buildings in the background are where one of the town's bakers bakes her bread


( how to eat avocados in Timor-Leste )

Snacks

Who was it who told me about snacking on raw packages of ramen noodles? Maybe it was Little Springtime’s boyfriend. Anyway, the kids in Ainaro like to do that. One boy gave me some to try. Kopiko--Indonesian coffee-flavored candies--and mint candies are also popular.

Coffee

I saw coffee growing all over—it’s a great crop because you can grow it on steep hillsides. Here’s some coffee drying.



And this is the shop it was drying in front of.



(The sign is saying that you can buy minutes for your phone there.)

These are the students outside the shop who let me take their picture. Kids only go to school for half a day in Timor-Leste, either in the morning or the afternoon. I think this is because there are many many children and not many school buildings or teachers.

Mt. Kablaki, heroes, and dogs

Mt. Kablaki is not the tallest mountain in Timor-Leste; I think it's the third-tallest. But it's a sacred mountain, like Mt. Ramelau, the tallest--and it's visible (and hike-able) from Ainaro.

Mt. Kablaki



One of the students asked me when American independence day was, and I told her it was July 4th and asked when Timor-Leste's independence day was. May 20th, she told me. Then I told them the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. It's a myth, but it encapsulates values we'd like to think our first president had. Then I asked them to tell me a story about Xanana Gusmão, their national hero and current prime minister. One of the students told me how, during the resistance, local people hid him on Mt Kablaki.

I've also read that he got a protective amulet there--the sort that lets you move unseen past your enemies.

I've also heard that he could transform himself into a dog. There are many many dogs running around loose in Ainaro, so that would be a good disguise. I asked one girl if she had any dogs, and she said yes, four or five. I asked what she fed them, and she said rice, or rice gruel.

Later, when I was rinsing rice for dinner (and in Timor-Leste there's much more reason to do this than there is in America, because in Timor-Leste the rice contains lots of bits of chaff and hull), I went to pour off the water in the yard, and one of the local dogs came trotting over eagerly. Aha. Rice gruel, I thought.

neighborhood dogs



But back to mountains. All the mountains roundabout Ainaro are beautiful.



Here's dawn over the pre-secondary school, across the street from where I was staying.