A bus ride

[asakiyume]

The day after I arrived in Timor-Leste, I made the six-hour journey up to the mountain town of Ainaro. I rode on some vehicle which was not quite an anguna (term borrowed from Indonesian: an anguna is a pick-up truck with seats in the back, so people can ride in it) and not quite a bus--it was open-air, like an anguna, but with seats facing forward, like a bus, rather than parallel to the side of the vehicle, like an anguna. There were sacks of rice on the floor, for delivery along the way, and other goods loaded on the roof. We started out from the market in Dili, the capital of Timor-Leste, with people filling all the seats and sitting on the floor (on top of the rice) and hanging on the back, and we picked up more people as we went.

Some of the young people who hung on the back



There was music playing--here's a taste of it:

(If the embedding doesn't work for you, you can find the 14-second video here on Flickr)

Here's the sound system:


Early on, we passed the Santa Cruz cemetery, where, in 1991, the Indonesian army killed some 250 people who were demonstrating for independence (more on that here, courtesy of Wikipedia).


Victor, the man I was sitting next to on the bus, asked me if I knew the story of the cemetery. We communicated with my very rudimentary Tetun and his equally limited English. I think with grave face more than with words I was able to convey that I did.

Victor



We bounced along, and eventually had a rest stop. This enterprising twelve-year-old (age is one of the questions people in Timor-Leste like to ask and share, at least with foreigners), engaged me in conversation in English and introduced me to her mother.



I shared round my big 1.5-liter bottle of drinking water (purchased in Dili for fifty cents). Meanwhile, some of the younger boys were eating what looked like puffed pork rinds, dyed green, probably purchased at the little shop where we'd stopped.

Along the way I saw lots of little roadside stands with 1.5-liter water bottles like mine recycled, filled with... tea? Something pale and golden, and sometimes also something dark dark brown. No, not tea. Can you guess? I realized what it was when I saw someone with a cloth-lined funnel, pouring some into his motor bike. Yes: gasoline (petrol), and also diesel. No gas stations along the road, but lots of these little roadside stands.

More tomorrow or the next day... I have tabs open on so many of your entries, and by now you've probably all posted new ones. With time I'll get back in the groove! And in time there'll be more (I hope, I intend) than just-the-facts-ma'am reportage. Maybe I'll alternate? Some posts that are reflective and some that are pictures? Or take things as they come... Anyway, do feel free to ask questions!

Comments

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Oh, how I have been looking forward to this report! Lovely pix and the music, too!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm glad you enjoyed it sartorias. There's much, much more to share--more photos, more thoughts. It'll come out a bit at a time.

Its good to "see" you again--your fan icon, it's like *you*, for me <3

[cucumberseed.livejournal.com]

Good reading company for a panic-visited night. Thank you.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Glad it could soothe! Sorry to hear about the panic tho :-(

Thanks btw for the musics! Haven't listened yet but intend to tomorrow....

[aliseadae]

Welcome back! It is good to hear from you. I look forward to more posts on East Timor!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It was a wonderful trip, and yet good to be home, too.

[88greenthumb.livejournal.com]

Welcome back, Francesca! Love, love, love this post! Hoping for more-whenever you can.

BTW, Nildo (yes, from TL) has already sent me a friend request on FB! ;)

BTW2, I haven't left for my trip-major visa delays! :(

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Nildo is one of the people who helped me most, and a really driven young man. He's hoping to eventually to work in England (he has family working there now), and I believe he will manage it. He's working very hard at his English.

[khiemtran.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a fun trip - although, six hours! That's quite a journey! I especially like the video.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I have a couple more snippets of music--I wish I'd taken more! But I was worried about exhausting the memory on the camera.

Yes, it was quite a journey--maybe one of the best parts of my trip, in some ways :-)

[houseboatonstyx.livejournal.com]

One of my favorite memories of Thailand was a clearing surrounded by banana trees, where the open-air 'buses' gathered to load passengers from the ferry. People were hanging off the back chanting "Lamai, Lamai" to tell strangers where the bus went.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh that's great ^_^ One thing people did on this journey was holler out greetings to other buses and angunas coming in the opposite direction--greetings, cheers, jeers. It was fun. We passed so close that we could reach into the oncoming vehicles and touch people, if we tried.

And banana trees! I loved seeing them. And there was some point when we were driving, and we came to a shady area, great tall trees overshading glossy-leaved shrubby trees, and suddenly I recognized that the lower trees were actually coffee--it was shade grown coffee!

Glad to have you back

[mnfaure.livejournal.com]

I'm so glad you took local transportation and didn't charter something private. Nice way to get right in the groove in a new country. :D

Re: Glad to have you back

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I wouldn't have missed it for the world. It was one of the best parts of the trip, and I'm *so grateful* to have been able to go that way. (I wouldn't have managed it if Alberto, one of the local people who's been in the Teachers 4 Timor program, hadn't put me on the right bus.) The return journey was similar--I'll write about that maybe at the end--but at night. People got on wrapped in blankets and slept in the seats and on the floor (and on the return journey there were chickens and a rooster under two of the seats, the hens quietly clucking to their chicks and the rooster crowing whenever he felt he needed to.

[amaebi.livejournal.com]

Wow, you're taking us along. How remarkable, and how kind of you!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm sure the people around me are glad I have LJ to dump some of this on--otherwise they'd have to run and hide in the bathroom when they got exhausted from sentences that began, "You know, while I was in Timor-Leste...."!

So thank *you*, for being here <3

[coffeesvp.livejournal.com]

Good you are home safe. Hope you made friends, which I am sure you did.

[wuweibaby.livejournal.com]

+1

Tell a tale of Timor

[yamamanama.livejournal.com]

Did you keep a written journal there or is this all from memory and photographs?

Re: Tell a tale of Timor

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I did keep one--maybe I'll post some scans of it. There was so much hitting my mind and eyes and ears and nose and skin all the time, even writing furiously all the time, I couldn't get it all down, and yet I knew that if I didn't write some of it down, I'd lose it.

Oh! Oh! Oh!

[wuweibaby.livejournal.com]

Oh, rapture!

(as the cowardly lion says)

Re: Oh! Oh! Oh!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

gotta love the cowardly lion ^_^

[dudeshoes.livejournal.com]

I'm riveted.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

More to come--a firehose of it!

[cafenowhere.livejournal.com]

I do love the smile on that boy's face in the first pic. And the vid is thrilling! It's like being there with you. <3

What made the 12 yr old girl "enterprising"? (Her mother looks so elegant and stylish.)

*edited to put in correct cat icon*

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I am glad it's like being there! And I have several more little video clips I'll share (or hope to--or if I forget, just email me!)--there was one I didn't manage to get but that made me laugh: it was someone singing Bryan Adams's "Everything I do"--but singing it in Tetun (but exactly in his style--I mean, honestly, it sounded like him, but singing in Tetun... but that seems unlikely, so it must have been someone singing in his style).

I thought the girl was enterprising because it takes a lot of guts to engage a stranger, and a foreigner at that, in conversation. You need some confidence in your language ability and in yourself, and she had it--and she was right to have it; her English was great. She was a lot of fun to talk to! ... And that woman is stylish, but actually (and I know my write-up was misleading on this point) not her mother; her mother was out of view further to the left.

[bogwitch64.livejournal.com]

So cool. Thanks for sharing your adventure with us. I look forward to more! Just post--don't worry about keeping up on LJ. We'll all be here when you get home. :)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh I'm home now! It's just a matter of catching up with bills and work and local stuff and all. But I'll work my way back into things. Thanks for understanding <3

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Hurray, armchair traveling and educational at the same time! So happy you made this trip, so happy you are home to tell us and show us what it was like.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too on both counts! Thanks for being a willing audience <3

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Welcome back.

I'll look forward to reading further instalments as I could badly do with cheering up!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry to hear you're in need of cheering--I hope a turn of the day brings better things. And thanks for the welcome back :-)

[danceswithwaves.livejournal.com]

Sounds exciting!

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

It was definitely that!

[sovay]

More tomorrow or the next day...

Thank you for this beginning report. These are excellent photographs. The one of the cemetery is an especially beautiful composition, and then there's what it means.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

The composition was down to pure chance, as I was shooting from the open window of the moving bus, but I'm happy with how it came out, too!

[vlpolynov.livejournal.com]

And Victor - he was Russian?
Beautiful. Honestly. It's beautiful. Just a pity that the movie is very short

А Виктор - он русский ?
Красиво. Честно. Очень красиво. Только жаль, что ролик очень короткий

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Victor was Timorese!

I'm glad you enjoyed the entry--I will be putting up more on the theme ^_^

[deponti.livejournal.com]

Wonderful...was able to get to my friends' page today after a big gap, and enjoying this post particularly...hope I'm able to see more...

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I hope so too! Very glad you were able to see this one--thanks for stopping by <3

[frigg.livejournal.com]

Welcome back!

And good thing you didn't drink the "tea". ;)

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Eeep. I shudder to think about drinking that "tea."