WE DEVELOP FOR STABILITY

This morning I didn’t get breakfast. This wasn’t by my choosing, but the result of the baker not receiving any flour. The problem wasn’t just today, but for the whole week. The other days my morning bread was replaced with donuts so I didn’t go hungry. These weren’t any donuts, but possible the worst donuts I have ever bit down upon. They tasted like they were baked a month ago in a cheap bakery in small town USA. When they had become stale they were sent to Indonesia, where a local seller tried to sell them. Once they didn’t sell in Indonesia they were sent to Timor-Leste. During this whole long ordeal, I’m certain that resuscitation of the donut was attempted with a microwave several times. The donut arrived on my plate cold, hard and stale. If this wasn’t the life that the donuts had lived, I couldn’t venture to guess what harder life they could have had to make them so bad.

Back to the baker and having no flour. The subdistrict of Passabe has just one bread baker. Bread is popular for breakfast here. The flour comes from Indonesia; I’ve heard that it is smuggled across as the tariffs are so high. The stability of the community’s breakfasts has been interrupted.

The trauma of not receiving my daily bread has sent me pondering deeply on the meaning of life and what we really strive for. We also discuss how we work hard and develop for wealth. That wealth is important for a high quality of life. I do not disagree, but I think that we strive for predictability and stability of our lives. A life where we have some semblance of control over what we are going to do and when we are going to do it contributes greatly to our quality of life. The more of the basic things that are stable in life the more we can focus are finite worrying on loftier things, like whether the curtains match the furniture or not. When we know are bread will arrive each morning, that the bus will come to take us to work at 7:10 plus or minus a few minutes, that the local copy shop will be open until 10:00 so we can make the important copies that we need, we breathe a little easier, we relax our tight muscles a bit. Sure, we use wealth to buy a lot of the stability we desire, but there are limits to the quantity of stability we can buy, some of it depends on the society we have developed.

WHAT I MISS

When you are away from home, it is surprising what you miss. Of course, I miss my family and friends dearly, but that is expected. It is the degree at which, more or less, that is usually unexpected. What is even more surprising for me are those things that are not people that I miss and what I don’t. The big thing that I miss is Los Angeles. I miss the hustle and bustle. I miss the pretentiousness, humbleness, and kindness that could be found in different areas of the city. I miss the mix of language, culture, restaurants. I miss the urban with the surrounding nature of the mountains. I miss the million things to do. I miss the midnight bike rides, riding down Los Angeles’s famous boulevards with only a few passing cars. I miss the baseball games in Dodger Stadium.

It is not abnormal for me to miss a place, but Los Angeles felt special to me. It is layered heavily. There is a new discovery every time you peel back a layer. It is one of those cities that improves with time spent there. I guess to get me through, I will have to keep listening to Randy Newman’s “I love LA,” Tom Petty’s “Free Falling,” and Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” (from Dodger baseball games) to assuage my missing LA.

TECHNOLOGY, THE WORK IT SAVES US FROM

Everyday I’m in Timor-Leste, the more I appreciate the work that technology has saved us from. In the village of Passabe, where I’m during the week, we have gravel makers next to my house. In the U.S. this would mean a large noisy machine where big rocks are dropped in and come out gravel. Tons of gravel can be made in a short time and only one or two laborers run the operation.

As you might have guessed, the gravel makers next to my house are quite different. Everyday ten or fifteen men, women and children haul rocks from the river and then proceed to hit them with a hammer from 9:00 until 6:00. They produce knowing that our project will buy it from them to make concrete. They community does have a job and some money flow, that is something to be happy about, but I can’t help but feel a little sad knowing that any respectable gravel operation could make all the gravel they make in a day in about ten minutes.

Often we lament how technology has caused us to specialize to the point where many of us sit in offices all day doing tedious tasks on a computer. We glorify the feeling of producing meaningful physical labor. However, there are representations like the gravel makers where our tedious easy office jobs sound a whole lot better than the tedium of breaking rocks into gravel all day.

RED, RED LIPS

The Timorese have such luscious red lips that glow a rosen hue. I’m not just speaking of the women; the men too sport these red, red lips. Interestingly enough, the lips are read not naturally or out of vanity, but the result of a mild stimulant. A chew, much like chewing tobacco in the States, is made from the betel nut and lime. Most of the population older than 35, especially those in rural areas, chews this substance the whole day through. The dark reddish color of the chew covers their lips red and leaves their teeth stained.

SPEAKING IN TONGUES

I always wondered after learning Spanish well enough to get around, if I would be able to learn a 3^rd language well. I doubt that I will learn Tetun well in the three months that I will be in Timor-Leste, but at least I’m seriously trying to learn the language; I’m definitely not doing it for the fun of it. I am noticing that learning that learning this 3^rd language is different in many ways. First, I can’t seem to get it past my head that this is a third language and not Spanish. I keep having the tendency to switch into Spanish if it’s not English being spoken.

Second, I’m much more patient and realistic. I know a lot better what is attainable. I’m not so frustrated that I don’t understand that much after three weeks. I’m really relishing the small improvements and not dwelling on my failure to accomplish the whole learning process at once. I guess I have realized that learning a language is hard, takes time, and can’t be done Matrix style by download through a cord directly to the head; though I do concede that this would be nice.

Third, I can listen and not understand and be all right with it. I guess I did this while learning Spanish, but what I usually did was not focus on anything that I didn’t understand. Now I seem to be able to not understand, and still focus on the sentence. What I mean is that, I don’t quit paying attention or get caught up when I hear a word I don’t understand. As is the case with most languages, they are redundant so understanding every word is not important; it is getting the gist of what is being said that counts. It was a big step for me in Spanish when I was able to let the words that I didn’t know by without my brain getting caught on them, I’m happy to see that I’ve retained that skill.

RAIN

RAIN

The rainy season is supposed to end by early July in Timor-Leste, but this year seems to be an exception. It is raining everyday and it is nearly August. The roads are a mess. They are mountain roads going up and down at grades incomprehensible to someone who grew up in Iowa. Of course, this steepness is only accentuated by a surface that is random rocks and mud. It is making it difficult to get to and from work sites. When we are there, everything is a muddy mess. At least, the communities’ job, digging trenches, foundations, and whatever else we need them to dig, just got a lot easier.

The down part is that the trucks that deliver our sand and supplies use the muddy roads as an excuse so they don’t have to deliver anything to the communities, but just to the sub-warehouse in Passabe. I would agree with them if I didn’t know that the worst section of road was the one they have to traverse to get from the main warehouse in Oecusse to the sub-warehouse in Passabe. Our pick-up trucks don’t have the capacity and have to haul too many other things than supplies that should be dropped off on location.

CHECK YOUR BOOTS BEFORE YOU BUT THEM ON

Yesterday, I got up. I got ready. Then, just as I was walking out the door, I put on my boots. When I got out to the car, I felt a painful stinging coming from my right big toe. I pulled off my boot to check, but found nothing. I figured that it must have been a thorn stuck in my boot. But, when I got back to the house some nine hours later and took off my boots, I noticed a big piece of something on the inside. This didn’t surprise me after all the brush I was walking through that day. I dumped out my boot and much to my surprise, the big piece of something was a two inch long smashed dead scorpion. That explains why my toe hurt so badly. I’m just lucky I killed it so it didn’t keep stinging me.

When I’m camping and need to leave my boots outside I’m in the habit of checking inside them before I put them on. But since I’m staying in a house, I haven’t felt the need to do that. I guess I need to change my habits.