Rama's house
19/7/2004

I need to take you back to East Timor for a while because I haven’t even begun to convey what life there was like.

Let me tell you a bit about Rama’s house in Suai, where I spent most of my time.

It’s a small house with two bedrooms, a lounge area, kitchen and balcony. Altogether it’s about the size of a small townhouse, or medium-range Sydney flat. It’s mostly painted white, inside and out, although outside more than half the house is an aged light blue. The walls inside are whitewashed and the floors are white tile, making it easy to keep clean and (relatively) bug free.

Nature intrudes in East Timor. There’s no keeping it out altogether. We learned to live with the ants that track tirelessly across the balcony, through the living room and kitchen, into the bedrooms and back outside again. The spiders weren’t harmful and together with the geckos, they did a good job of eating the bugs. The only problem with the geckos was their loud, guttural mating call that would ricochet off the tiles and walls at odd hours of the night.

(Incidentally, East Timor is the first place I’ve ever heard a chorus of geckos. It’s a little like you’d imagine giant cicadas crossed with frogs might sound, and quite a lot like listening - in surround sound - to your neighbour trying to pull-start a reluctant old lawnmower early on a Sunday morning. Despite this, it’s not an unpleasant sound. It’s raw and instinctual and would probably work quite well on one of those nature tapes.)

But back to the house. The best thing about Rama’s house was the white tile front patio, where we spent most of our time. I loved to eat a breakfast of poun (the local bread), cream cheese and marmalade and drink my cup of strong black tea while watching life on the street unfold.

The street is quite busy with microlets (small buses) driving by, music blaring, and motos whizzing up and down with two, sometimes three people aboard. Motos are an increasingly popular form of transport in East Timor and you’ll see locals using them for all their transport needs - fathers carrying babies or small children; people riding with boxes, bottles or building materials strapped to the back; young women going to and from the market. Most riders don’t wear helmets and others can be seen with full-face helmets, but tipped back so the chin-piece rests on the tops of their heads.

People also move about on pushbikes or on foot, carting water from the well or carrying firewood or palm fronds, or bamboo. There’s an intermitent stream of school children of all ages, in neat uniforms, going to and from their classes and pigs, dogs and chickens move about fairly freely.

Beyond the patio, Rama’s front yard has several potted plants on the concrete paving, which gives way to a dirt driveway and sparse lawn. Twin coconut palms bend upwards on either side of the house. At night their magnificent fronds frame a stunning cut-out of star-speckled sky. It was this aspect we would enjoy while cleaning our teeth outside, hoping that no coconuts would fall on our heads.

The bathroom is out the back, beyond the concrete work area, in a type of outhouse with corrugated iron roof. The building has two rooms - a toilet and a shower. There is no running water. The toilet is a conventional bowl and seat, plumbed so that waste can be properly drained away. To flush, you scoop water from a tile and concrete mandy and pour it directly into the bowl. You may need to repeat the procedure several times.

The “shower” is a well-drained room complete with a large mandy that holds the clean water. To wash, you use a scoop to pour the cold water over yourself. No matter how you do it, there’s always an initial shock, but it’s actually quite a nice experience that leaves you feeling refreshed and alive but also thankful that this is balmy East Timor. It’s not the type of bath I’d like to experience in colder climes.

There is no generator, so like the locals Rama enjoys electricity only every second night, and even then it can be unreliable. Cooking is done on a gas burner, often by candlelight, but there is no fridge so food stocks have to be non-perishable. Fresh fruit and vegetables can be bought at the market and we became adept at using whatever local produce was available to concoct some excellent meals.

There’s no TV but Rama’s portable CD player, hooked up to mini-speakers, provides music. Suprisingly, the nights when there is electricity are little different to the nights without. It’s a chance to charge mobile phones and batteries and to cook with constant light.

Maybe it would change if I were there longer, but I preferred the candlelit evenings, with friendly company (we held almost nightly dinner parties for Rama’s local colleagues and other internationals) and good conversation.

About the only thing lacking was a cold beer, but fortunately the red wine was just fine at room temperature.