![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
the night bus to Dili
Every morning, a bus leaves the market in Dili, Timor-Leste's capital, and six hours later it arrives in Ainaro. Ainaro is only 70 miles away, but the road is rough and mountainous.
Then every night, a bus leaves Ainaro to go to Dili. It leaves at 9:30 or so at night, and it gets in around 4:30 in the morning. This was the bus I rode to get back to Dili, the day before my journey home. One of the local assistants of the program I volunteered with gallantly offered to accompany me on the bus journey, so I wouldn't have to sit in Dili market by myself for four-and-a-half hours until the hostel where I was staying in Dili opened.
We waited on the porch of the house where I'd been staying. Everything was quiet out, and dark, and then here comes the bus, its cheerful music blaring. The bus picks up people all through Ainaro. It's cold in the mountains at night, and people wait for the bus wrapped in fleece blankets. Then, when they get on the bus, they're all ready to go to sleep.
We sat in the first seat after you enter the bus. People ended up sitting on the step up into the bus; they leaned against our legs to sleep. In the aisle, two people stretched out full length, wrapped in their blankets. Under the seat across the aisle were some hens and chicks, as well as one rooster, who crowed periodically to let us all know who was king of the bus.
People offered my companion cigarettes, which he smoked to keep warm--he was in only a T-shirt: no hoodie, no blanket, and I only thought to fish out my raincoat for him to borrow late in the trip, during one of the several rest stops.
I hadn't seen the stars during all my stay, as we volunteers were discouraged from walking around at night. Going out to stretch my legs during one rest stop, I looked up and saw a sky crammed full of more stars than I've ever seen before. Low on the horizon was orion, reclining to the left, as if he too were trying to catch a few winks on the night bus.
At 4:30 in the morning, Dili market was still dark, but there was plenty of activity--people arriving on buses like ours, or trucks, or taxis, and unloading vegetables and livestock. I saw a taxi with greens piled on its roof, and another into which a woman was putting chickens. People walked bicycles that had huge woven baskets hanging off their back, or wheeled wooden wheelbarrows past--both the bicycle baskets and wheelbarrows filled with bread. I bought five of the roll-sized loaves, and later in the morning, after being joined by another local friend of the program, we each ate one, along with the leftover fried banana slices that I'd been given the day before.
I carried two loaves all the way back to America with me, so my family could eat bread baked before dawn in Timor-Leste.
Also walking the streets in the early-morning hours were small boys hawking hard-boiled eggs. I remember seeing a little girl in Ainaro, out in front of her house, peeling cassava root with a machete as long as--and thicker than--her arm. Kids work hard here.
Later that morning we walked along the seashore and saw some sights (click on the photos to see them bigger)
boats
a wooden outrigger boat
sailboats
a mural for the Tour de Timor
adramatic, but unexplained, monument monument to the victims of the Santa Cruz massacre ... makes me wish I wasn't smiling like an idiot...
Then every night, a bus leaves Ainaro to go to Dili. It leaves at 9:30 or so at night, and it gets in around 4:30 in the morning. This was the bus I rode to get back to Dili, the day before my journey home. One of the local assistants of the program I volunteered with gallantly offered to accompany me on the bus journey, so I wouldn't have to sit in Dili market by myself for four-and-a-half hours until the hostel where I was staying in Dili opened.
We waited on the porch of the house where I'd been staying. Everything was quiet out, and dark, and then here comes the bus, its cheerful music blaring. The bus picks up people all through Ainaro. It's cold in the mountains at night, and people wait for the bus wrapped in fleece blankets. Then, when they get on the bus, they're all ready to go to sleep.
We sat in the first seat after you enter the bus. People ended up sitting on the step up into the bus; they leaned against our legs to sleep. In the aisle, two people stretched out full length, wrapped in their blankets. Under the seat across the aisle were some hens and chicks, as well as one rooster, who crowed periodically to let us all know who was king of the bus.
People offered my companion cigarettes, which he smoked to keep warm--he was in only a T-shirt: no hoodie, no blanket, and I only thought to fish out my raincoat for him to borrow late in the trip, during one of the several rest stops.
I hadn't seen the stars during all my stay, as we volunteers were discouraged from walking around at night. Going out to stretch my legs during one rest stop, I looked up and saw a sky crammed full of more stars than I've ever seen before. Low on the horizon was orion, reclining to the left, as if he too were trying to catch a few winks on the night bus.
At 4:30 in the morning, Dili market was still dark, but there was plenty of activity--people arriving on buses like ours, or trucks, or taxis, and unloading vegetables and livestock. I saw a taxi with greens piled on its roof, and another into which a woman was putting chickens. People walked bicycles that had huge woven baskets hanging off their back, or wheeled wooden wheelbarrows past--both the bicycle baskets and wheelbarrows filled with bread. I bought five of the roll-sized loaves, and later in the morning, after being joined by another local friend of the program, we each ate one, along with the leftover fried banana slices that I'd been given the day before.
I carried two loaves all the way back to America with me, so my family could eat bread baked before dawn in Timor-Leste.
Also walking the streets in the early-morning hours were small boys hawking hard-boiled eggs. I remember seeing a little girl in Ainaro, out in front of her house, peeling cassava root with a machete as long as--and thicker than--her arm. Kids work hard here.
Later that morning we walked along the seashore and saw some sights (click on the photos to see them bigger)
boats
a wooden outrigger boat
the palace of the government
a