NIGHT TIME MAGIC

Today is Tuesday, though it feels like Monday since yesterday was a Timorese National Holiday.  That first day of the week often sets the mood for the rest of the week.  I just hope for a good Monday to keep me motivated until the week.  Sadly, this hardly ever happens.  Having a Tuesday as a Monday didn’t change the pattern.

I was tired of the day as soon as I got out of bed.  I don’t know if I was lethargic from a long weekend, or whether I hit my limit of bull s**t last week for this week.  All I know, was that I was dreading coming here.  The morning started off with one of the big supply trucks, crashing into one of our small pickups (of course one of the two coming to Passabe).  It didn’t have any brakes. Who would need brakes on a truck going up and down mountains roads?  I guess it was good that we found out the brakes were a problem early on.   A series of other mishaps and bull s**t put me in a foul mood and I chewed out the coordinator of the local NGO who employs the technicians I work with.  I finally got back to the house at 8:00 to eat some supper, do some maintenance on the motorbike and get in some reading.  I needed something to relieve me of my foul mood.

The town of Passabe has a generator that it uses most nights so that homes have light.  But often the community runs out of fuel and the community stays dark.  Tonight, I didn’t mind.  I walked out under the night sky and, Wow!  It looks like someone spilled sugar across a black countertop.  There isn’t a cloud in the sky, though the Milky Way stretching from the Southwest to the Northeast looks like it could be clouds.  The moon won’t rise until well after midnight so the sky is exceptionally black.  Venus, bright when compared with the surrounding stars, is setting in the west with Jupiter (or it could be Mars) rising in the east.  There is no light pollution only starry perfection.  The stars are so numerous that it is almost difficult to make out any constellations, as the brighter stars are lost among the masses.  Since I’m in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Cross makes its way across the southern sky pointing due south as it has for seafarers for eons.  All in all, just a few minutes of star gazing relaxed me, put me in a happy mood, and reminded me why I come to places like Timor-Leste.