December 9, 2003 - Sweet November

The month of November has come and gone. Chasing on the heels of my return from Bali came my birthday - something to look forward to after Oliver's departure. It was… a unique birthday. It began early in the morning with a phone call from Mom and Dad to wake me up. A couple more calls from home before Canada went to bed spiced up an otherwise typical morning. I took myself to Tropical Boutique Bakery for lunch. Now this place is as exotic as it sounds but for one minor detail. It has a second name, Tropical Fashion Café, also exotic in sound, but if you abbreviate this one you get TFC. And yes, you guessed it, their sign out front depicts a remarkably similar, but slightly Asian-looking Colonel Saunders. Anyway, the menu is great, the atmosphere posh in that bamboo and wicker way, the music variable, but the wide variety of fruit and coffee shakes is the real draw. I ordered - get this - smoked salmon on a bagel (this has to be considered unusual for East Timor). The bagel wasn't a real bagel (or anything remotely similar) but the rest, replete with salad and French fries, was the real deal. The woman at the table next to me ordered the same - but she got a real bagel! I must have just missed the fresh batch from the oven. But the most exciting part was my drink. Ever had an 'Avocado Mochaccino'? I didn't think so. It was delicious and thick and chocolatey - had I not known, I never would have guessed there was avocado in there. I was too full after all that so had to takeaway my chocolate brownie in a cardboard box.

The gang at the office offered to take me for dinner - anywhere I wanted! I chose Thai Kitchen. We went to Dili 2001 Hotel for Chinese food. Turned out that there were guests in town who had already made plans to go there, and they won. Oh well! It turned out to be a great meal, even though I never get too excited about Chinese. But I love those lazy susans… After dinner, I had the grand choice of taking myself out for drinks at the bar above the diveshop where I knew friends would be, or heading home to watch a movie on Marlon's laptop. Whaddya know, I chose the latter. But the laptop CD player wouldn't work so I ate my brownie and went to sleep. Ah well. My first birthday without cake and presents in sight, but a pleasant day nonetheless. The big party would be the next day!

CARE staff came and went from the compound all day on Saturday, preparing for a grandiose beach party for Saturday evening to celebrate my birthday and that of three other staff whose big days all fell in the same week. We prepared grilled chicken and rice, punch (much more like a fruit salad soaked in alcohol) and I made my famous Rice Krispie Squares with marshmallows imported from Canada. We played Frisbee and football and swam and ate, endured a quick rain shower, and had a great time. After dark, out came Lopez's huge speakers and stereo system and after a very little bit of impromptu karaoke, we danced the evening away on the sand under the light of a full moon. Or should I say we shuffle stepped the evening away on the sand under the light of a full moon. Such is the style of Timorese dancing. Great fun!

By far my favourite birthday present was the coming of the rainy season. Slated for arrival in November, it arrived on the 8th and has sprinkled (or drenched) us with hour long afternoon showers approximately two days out of every three since. Though still more than warm and humid here, it has taken the edge off of Dili's oppressive heat. The late afternoons get dark and sometimes evil looking, the mountains disappear under cloud and fog, and sometimes we even get thunder and lightning. It is delicious! On days that it doesn't rain, it is remarkably clear. The sky is a sharp blue, the ocean varying shades of turquoise, the trees green and the flowers every shade of the rainbow, and the whole world looks like it's been created by cutting and pasting construction paper. Atauro island can be crisply seen from Dili.

We had a lot of visitors in the month of November. For our project alone, we had CIDA evaluators, CARE's Gender and Education specialist and CARE's Agricultural specialist from Ottawa and our Carbon/Climate Change consultant from the Philippines. There were lots of 'official' one-day whirlwind field trips around these visits, with lots of meetings with government representatives out in the districts and the villagers in our project sites. We also held our 'National Workshop on Climate Change' in consort with UNDP and the government of Timor-Leste. It was a great success, leading to positive outcomes (meaning the government seems to be taking quick action on joining the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change ands signing the Kyoto Protocol - Bush take note.) Anyway, ironically enough, the workshop was held in Dili's poshest hotel, Hotel Timor, in a hall so over air-conditioned that I shivered through all my official note taking and tape recording duties. But I got to meet the Prime Minister! He is very short.

A week later I was back in the same room at the Hotel Timor (incidentally the same room I take my weekly yoga class in) for dinner with the Canadian Ambassador to Indonesia and East Timor. He was pleasant, but could only grace this little country with his presence for one night as he leads a very busy life in Jakarta. As a new ambassador, he had actually come to officially present his credentials to the government of Timor-Leste. The buffet was good and the CANADIAN (!) wine flowing, but the best part was hanging out with a bunch of Canadians! How I miss you guys! Even better, I sat at a table with a handful of UN airline pilots and personnel who have been contracted out from a small Toronto-based airline (I hadn't heard of), and they were all from Toronto! We even got to talk about what street's we lived on and how much we missed Amato pizza. It was great fun.

So the month flew by, as told but also with a few trips to the beach, hikes through the hills around Dili with my Aussie friend Kym, and a single morning of playing victim for some Rescue Diver students (great fun but resulted in a few strange bruises). I spent the last couple of hours of November hurling my guts out, but the bulk of that story belongs in the December edition. If that doesn't keep you coming back, I don't know what will…

> See photos from East Timor.

> See photos from Bali.

> See other East Timor journal entries.



Back to top