Day 72 – Volunteering

ready to go!

ready to go!

Herman hooked us up with Tony for a mikrolet tour through Dili today. Tony is a ‘trailing partner’ of a volunteer and has made it his task to show new people around and tell them a bit about Dili. So that’s what we were in for today.

We got to ride with Herman to the Katuas Hotel where we met Tony. The first point on the list was to have a coffee here. 🙂 Herman then had to leave for work. The tour proper started with Xanana’s Reading room, a complex that holds several buildings. The first public library in Timor-Leste takes up one room with free wifi, a corner with kids’ books and some shelves with books that you can borrow. Next door is a museum to Xanana Gusmão. A room filled with memorabilia from photos to awards to paintings he has made during his time in prison.

There is a UNESCO part that we only passed and a gallery which holds exhibitions. At the moment, an up and coming Timorese artist (Jacinto Batista) is showing his works. The gallery has a small gift shop with the first postcards I could find in Dili.

Smiling shopkeeper

Smiling shopkeeper

From here, we walked to the Portuguese supermarket Pateo. Everything in here is more expensive than in the other supermarkets but it is your only chance to get imported European goods like olive oil and good cheeses. It also seems to be the only place that sells butter if it is in stock. Since the shippings are not very reliable, goods can and will run out. The kiwi volunteers have an email newsletter that can be used to let everyone know when a new shipment has arrived so that people can stock up again on certain items. I was really tempted to buy some chocolate but didn’t. *pat on the head*

Next stop was at Hotel Timor. We walked through the doors and inside, it looks like a normal Western hotel with a café on the ground floor and a gift shop behind it. Another coffee for Flo and Tony while I got orange juice and a piece of chocolate cake. The café is famous for its Portuguese custard tarts but they had run out of them.

Modern dyes ... very bright

Modern dyes … very bright

The gift shop was the most expensive shop I have seen so far but all the things were pretty and authentic as Tony told us. Timor-Leste is famous for the tais fabrics. Lots of them were for sale, as well as jewellery and shoes made out of it. I wish we had more space on the bike or were willing to spend more on shipping as I know a couple of people who would probably like the earrings or bags made out of tais. This is also the only place I’ve seen so far that sells postcards looking like we’re used to…but they are rather expensive.

The tais market was the next attraction on our way. A U-shaped alley filled with everything made out of tais. There is a distinction between traditional and modern patterns as well as a distinction between hand-made cotton thread dyed with natural colours and factory-made artificial threads.

From there, it was just a short walk to the cathedral. Timor-Leste is a mostly Christian country and in an attempt to win the Timorese over, the Indonesian government built this cathedral and the Christ Rei statue. The cathedral was boycotted until the Pope visited and the space was needed.

come hither ...

come hither …

From the cathedral, we took a cab to the Castaway bar. Tony calls it “his office”. For a change, I had a coke here while Flo went for juice. Since it was a hot day (as every day is, really), it is good to stay hydrated.

A mikrolet then took us to Timor Plaza. Tony showed us one of his favorite warung (food stall) for lunch. Unfortunately, they did not have anything vegetarian for me. Flo and Tony had some kind of noodles with chicken and all three of us had an avocado chocolate drink. First, having avocado in a sweet context was weird but then it grew on me. It was just super rich and filling so that I couldn’t finish mine.

Timor Plaza is close to Herman’s place so we said good-bye to Tony. I was already quite full from the avocado juice and only craving something small and salty. Salty is apparently not a common thing and at one point, we ended up in Burger King, looking at the price for small fries. Two dollars!?!?! Are they serious? We turned around and left again, buying some tofu and tempura from a Chinese place in the food court.

Since the plaza has free wifi, we sat down so I could eat and Flo could update his phone aps. After one bite I found out that Chinese pimp their tofu with a piece of beef in the middle. *sigh* It was bound to happen at some point…

A view into a back ally on our tour. Not the finest, not the worst

A view into a back ally on our tour. Not the finest, not the worst

Having not much appetite after that, we went home and I had my lovely ripe pineapple pieces instead.

In the evening, Herman took us along to “Porch Night” (not to be confused with Port Night). Porch Night is a weekly meeting of the kiwi volunteers in Dili where they get together and have a drink. So for us, this was a way of meeting some of the other volunteers. And have nibbles. 😉

We had already met Tony and of course, we knew Herman but there are between 10 and 15 volunteers in the city at the moment. Two are also vegetarian so I got some first-hand advice about good places to eat.

I talked to Geoff who has just self-published a thriller. If you are interested, it’s available as an ebook for US$2.99: The Alo Release by Geoffrey Robert. I, obviously, haven’t read it yet but I intend to check it out.

We also met Alastair briefly who arrived in Dili about a week ago. When we researched how we could fundraise for the VSA, his givealittle page for Timor-Leste popped up. Sending a volunteer over costs a lot of money but it is a good cause. These volunteers are teachers and advisers more than they are actually doing the job and thus educating and transferring skills to locals.

So if you want to support VSA while we’re travelling through Timor-Leste, we put the link up in our “Making a difference” section. Please donate if you have some money to spare.

The little get-together disbanded around 9pm. Flo had talked to Joris for a while this evening and he recommended a place to get food from. Actually, he felt like eating Nasi Goreng himself so he led us three in the car to the place. They had “Nasi Goreng basia” which for them was a basic or vegetarian version of the dish. AND they had pancakes that you could buy with chocolate sauce. We all ended up buying a pancake as dessert. The food was really good, too, just the home-made chili paste, some kind of Sambal Olek, was still too hot for me.