curefw with no light - coprifuoco senza luce

Monday morning we heard police cars and ambulances all over town, then a text: it looks like the president was shot and injured... and then another message saying that tere were distrubances in Lahane, somewhere near the Prime Minister house... we went to work and it looks like most of our natioanl colleagues didn't know what was going on, but there we were with what in Italy is called a 'funeral-face', realising that maybe we were going through a coup...And because East Timor has only one tv channel which in addition only works part-time, there was no point in turning on the tv because in this side of the world (un)forutnately we wouldn't have been flooded with all the possible information and hypothesis available, comments, images of people desperated or scared, old images from previous happenings, and so on... so everybody on the net! looking at press, foreign press, newspapers that didn't have any idea of what was really happening, or at least no more than we did, but still we were looking for answers, confirmations, someone who came out and said 'I did it and this is why'.... but well things in here don't seem to work like this... so nobody said anything, then te prime minister finally gave a press conference and we were happy with it, but then the locals were not and there you go... the following day completely different theories popped up and amazing stories that had nothing to do with the original version started to be told around.

Result of all tehse speculations? Not much, for the moment the president is still in a hospital outside the country, the rebel commander has been buried, and the whole country is undergoing a 12 days curfew that could be extended or shortened... and in all this we obviously didn't have power for the past three nights, which is basically making our lives particularly interesting and imaginative... but we are fine.

Doubts... it's quite weird how the feeling of starting a new year can get someone trapped in the other feeling of having to change something this year. What difference is tehre between december and january exactely? Not sure... it's like arriving up the hill, on the top after a long walk and ten you can suddenly start to go downhill for a while, and then from september uphill again, yes this is what the year feels like.
So well, now downhill... I went to the districts... meaning outside of the capital... and well sometimes it's incredible how much one can become aware of a tiny little bit of what happens around, and how much instead gets lost and remains faded, in the distance. Every month I assist to people receving food in the capital... in theory they lost their homes in practice nobody really knows... and then this time I met people who lost their food and sometimes their home, or their animals or their clothes, or maybe just their food, but still this is more than enough to get them to eat palm tree roots untill the next food will come, depending on the rain, and on the sun and on the wind for the next 3 months or 6 months... for sure not on the availability on the shelf of the supermarket. This time, to these people, maybe nobody will give anything.

Laos and the new year...

I have disappeared for a while, I mean not that I usuallly write this blog very often, but well I was on holiday! Soooo nice. I finally got to visit somewhere in Asia... Lao PDR that I didn't know but it's a nice monoparty country... although I didn't quite realise it tilll I got to that chpater on the tourist guide... and till we arrived in the capital city, which well, looks a bit more like that kind of city with big white buildings and interesting flags sticking on every wall. Anyway, Laos is really beautiful and the food, gosh the food is so incredibly good! And the weaving, there are some incredible artifacts... so well, i really enjoyed it! And then Laotian are pretty laid back, not stressed and with a very interesting perception of time, imagine a place that has written on the door somehting like 'close at 11' and it's let's say 9... 'can we still enter? are you still open, because the door it's close...' oh yes, we normally close at 11, but we can open especially for you'...