SOCRATES and chickens

So I was coming home from the districts last week where I was running the orientation for our new students who attend a Catholic agricultural school that's run by a bunch of Salation Priests (the Catholic church is a power house here, a giant statue of Jesus stands at one end of the capital and a giant statue of the Pope stands at another. We're trapped.) Anyway, I needed to get back to the capital which was about 7 hours away. One of the Fathers had a meeting part way towards the capital and offered to give me a ride ("So long as Miss Mariesa will write my English lesson plans ha ha ha... seriously.") I gladly accepted and figured that once I got to Baucau (the part way point) I would easily be able to hop on a bus going to Dili (the capital). The Father dropped me and my backpack off at the bus station, wait... rephrase... the bus "traffic jam" is more accurate, and promptly took off. As I walked through the traffic jam I yelled loudly "bis? Dili? bis?" looking for the bus to Dili. When I asked a young girl and her mother about when the next "bis" to Dili was going to arrive, she sadly shook her head no and then happily asked me if I wanted to buy something from her kiosk. Fortunately I wasn't convinced that a bus was never going to come and I ended up running into two Dili University students that were on the same Dili bis hunt.

After waiting about 30 minutes a giant bis with "SOCRATES" written across the front windshield and a seductive picture of Avril Lavine across the back pulled up and my university friends and myself quickly jumped on. I soon learned that the number of seats on the bis was no indication whatsoever of how many people, chickens, goats and other items our bis would be transporting. The bis idled for over an hour as more and more people somehow found room to climb in and a combination of animals and baggage was strapped on the roof. Shortly after seating myself next to a lovely lady, I found myself next to 40 other lovely people and their most prized Dili-worthy poultry. There was a rooster perched next to me, a chicken under my seat, and I was soon handed one to hold in my lap while more luggage, firewood, humans and livestock were loaded onto this bis. At one point I offered my seat to a little old "tia" (auntie) and ended up having to stand on one leg and gripping a rooster for balance as our bis served around the mountain hairpin corners, there just wasn't room for both my feet on the floor.

I've learned that the best way to make friends in situations like these is to start offering gum and candy to my fellow travellers and complementing them on the grandeur of their respective roosters. Roosters are the most well fed animals in TL as they are often raised as pets and then thrown into a cock fighting ring where they either meet a gruesome death or bring home loot for their owner.

As we approached our end destination one of the men in charge wearing an “i'm lovin' it” McDonald's t-shirt, crowd-surfed his way from the back to the front of the bis collecting fair. The people sitting at the time coughed up $4 while the people crouching, standing, balancing, or hanging out the doorway were only expected to pay $2. There's nothing like being squished on a bis with 40 fellow travellers and their wordily possessions for four hours of narrow, cliff hanger roads to make good friendships. It was certainly a highlight of my travels.

On another note, if I were to designe an Olympics where the people of TL would win all gold I would have the following events:
Staring contest
Coconut tree climbing
Basket weaving
Spear fishing (while swimming!)
Midwife-ing

I would NOT have:
Race walk

It's interesting to think about how new problems are delt with in a traditional manner. For example, all the littering problems that come with mass amounts of imported water bottles and snack food. This could in part be because when things were wrapped in palm branches or coconut leafs the wrapping could be simply dropped to the ground and nature would take care of itself. However, people have continued to do the same with plastic wrapping and I wonder if that's because the social sigma around littering hasn't had as much time to develop.

I had a break through moment last week in the districts with some of our agribusiness students. There was some confusion about the price of the program. Some of the students were told that it was $17 per month, some thought it was $12 and some believed that it was only $5. When they approached me I knew they were seriously concerned. They all gathered around me looking very solumn and one of them in the middle put his hands together in a prayer like fashion, bowed slighly and explained to me the problem. Once I heard them out I was able to sort through the confusion and inform them that it was actually only $5. They're excitement at the news was awesome. They were high fiving, pumping their fists and cheering. I imagine I would have lost half the students if the price was $12 or more per month. For me this was a break through experience on three levels. First, that the students felt comfortable enough to approach me with a concern, second that we were able to discuss and resolve the issue all in Tetum and finally, it was just so cool to see how excited they were that they could continue with the program. Man, I love my job.

The other day I was gathering some information on the students such as name, birthdate, place of birth et cetera when I noticed that many of the students that I had gathered the same information from a couple weeks previously had given me different birthdates. Approximately 80 percent of the students that I asked for the second time about their birthdate, gave me a significantly different number (one of them said they were born in 1970). I asked one of my coworkers about this and he said that it happens when the parents are illiterate, and as our program targets agricultural students, most of the children have parents that come from the lowest income farming class and therefore aren't very well educated.

Yesterday as I was biking home from work in the sweltering heat I was shocked to hear "I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas" blaring from one of the street shops. December has arrived and TL has gotten the Christmas bug. Stores have giant Santa Clauses pasted to their windows, Christmas lights are starting to be put up and all the shops are playing their christmas tunes, all the while people are sweating buckets in the humidity and reapplying sunscrean.

My dad is coming on Saturday! Yayayayay!!!!

much love,
mariesa