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'...

Il mio primo natale ai tropici

Ebbene si, questa volta non sono tornata e me ne sono stata al caldo... certo sono riuscita a mangiare il panettone che la mamma mi aveva mandato, e pure il torrone, i fichi secchi e i datteri... ma al caldo, guardando il mare e passando il 25 ad abbrustolirmi in spiaggia.

Strano il Natale al caldo, non sembra neanche natale...ci si salva perche' i timoresi son cattolici, vanno a messa per 4 ore la notte della vigilia, fanno i presepi in giro per la citta' e preparano dei visibilissimi alberi di natale che sono dei gran pugni in un occhio grazie ai chili di pallline e stelle filanti... ma in fondo non e' un bianco natale.
Comunque, a quanto pare sono sopravvissuta, siam tornati al lavoro e qui c'e una foto, tanto epr fare un po' invidia... sempre che ci sia da fare invidia!
Per le eprsone che non sono riuscita a chiamare grazie al temporale che ci ha tolto la linea internet... beh, BUON 26 dicembre... per natale e tardi ormai, e fa troppo caldo comunque!

voglio uscire alla luce!

Not much time today, for once this week I really want to leave when the sun is still in the sky... maybe not really up in hte sky, but at least still in that typical golden colour reflecting on the water and painting the whole sky in bright and warm yellow and orange... so even if it's a long time I don't write, well I guess tehre will still be a bit to wait, but at least I post a picture taken some weeks ago while we were on top o a boat enjoying, almost absorbing every single cell and part of golden light coming from the sun setting....

a small quiet island in front of the island

During a very important day, one of those days that are considered to be written down on your agenda or in a cronology because something special will happen, one of those days that people tell you 2 weeks in advance that you shouldn't go out... I woke up in the morning and while driving in front of the government palace for the first time I paid more attention than usual on all those trucks parked there with all their green brown dressed people around them, or lazily sitting near the sea... wondering what was happening, what was the real reason why they were there... all around town people were taking the longest ways to avoid the city centre, while other people, specific ones, wrapped in party flags were going to the centre instead because they were to be the protagonists of this day. And during our normal trip in the old white big car we talked about democracy... not those general conversations on the general sense of democracy, but what is the practical value and meaning of it here and now... here when the country is having its first theoretically completely independent elections... theoretically... what would it be if they were really independent? when will they be really independent? could they be really? and then what is real independence? but the debate today was rather what is a real democracy? what is real democracy in a young country? is it just having election with 14 parties? or is it not burning down the houses of the people who will win and you don't like? is democracy something that grows slowly? or is it a threshold that either you reach or you don't? do you have to be alone and independent once you are democratic? and do you really need to be democratic?An old man that now works as a driver but speaks perfect portuguese, better than most of the people in this country (and I leave this debate on the language choice of this independent island to another time), was saying that at the end of the day there is few people in this country that are educated enough to be able to govern properly, and that there is a lot of people that are not educated enough to understand this.... so that, at the end of the day, probably a dictatorship, a good one, would be much better to explain people what is democracy and finally give it to them... and this is what a lot of the old people in this country, those who have fought Indonesia and who have experienced colonialism think, especially when they look at their youth... Is democracy really the best step a country can take? I don't know the answer obviously, but in such a special day where this island could potentially go through a mess, or this is what everybody is fearing... I really liked the idea of looking at these pictures I took in another island, a tiny little one just in front of us, a tiny little place that we see everyday while driving near the sea, the same little sland that hose guys in green and brown mymetic shirts were looking at this morning... and probably thought what the word calm and not democracy means.

That's how I will end up staying longer...

There we are, 4 months are gone, or even more since I first arrived here and then on the very same day when my contract expired I was given a new one for another 6 months... unbelievable, really amazing and incredible and mostly unexpected... when I received and signed the contract I kissed Nata, our admin person, who laso happens ot be a lovely woman.
So well, apparently I will stay confined in this beautiful place on the other side of the world for much longer than expected and it's really weird to know what is the plan for hte next 6 months, really weird... Nevertheless, as I am starting to dream of Europe, of Italy and of a nice cold weather with the snow, a hot chocolate and some nice christmas cookies... I really hope and I'll do all I can to come home in August! I know it's not exactely I good time of the year to find the snow, but well, it will most probably be a bit cooler than here.
Oh well, I hope you are all doing fine and take care!