Red dirt homelessness

I have never been before to this particular red desert and yet the spinifex and red sandy earth feels familiar. It feels home-like. I know (or knew) the other side of this desert, over state borders to the north east, where Alice Springs is 1,500km away from here. Now I am in the prosperous mining area known simply as the northern goldfields. Although it is far south for me being as I am coming from Timor, so geography gets as puzzling as my homelessness already is.

My usual where-is-home puzzle has begun. Even when completely expected, this enduring puzzle is occasionally emotionally intense, social awkward when answering supposedly simple questions about where I come from and yet it’s a weirdly comfortable puzzle to me; maybe the perpetual traveling for work is resulting in a gypsy addiction to the puzzle of where is home.

My choices of what I consider ‘home’ to be, include at the moment; returning home to the Australian red dirt desert; home in Dili where I loved working and playing although by the end I was over the environmental and noise pollution as well as the crazy traffic; NSW because its only 3 weeks until I fly east for special time with family and friends; Ratanakiri, Cambodia because the similarities in remoteness and redness and thus my homelessness includes missing Dave, my Rat’ri timber house and the volcanic crater lake.

artist coloured mining 'tailings'

Being as I was convinced I’d be moving to far north Queensland or the Northern Territory there is a sense that home is the Australian ‘top end’ and I am now the intruder visiting the wrong patch of southern red dirt. Yet it’s now 12 years since I lived in central Australia so that link could have been overwhelmed by my more recent love affair with feeling at home in south east Asia.  

The facts are that currently, I am a stranger in a familiar landscape with all the homesickness of Timor, sentimentality for other locations and the odd sense of returning to desert dwelling. A combination which is allowing me to be immensely happy.                               

I am privileged to have my gypsy puzzle of where is home. 

Stuff happens, 2.

If natural spirits, a Christian god or a Buddhist style of karma caused my motorbike accident a year ago, the question and options of causality do not preoccupy me. At the one year anniversary I remain grateful and mystified that my body healed so well. My feelings are very secular, as I focus on the extraordinary capability of the human body. In addition my appreciation of the highly advanced scientific knowledge that came from the orthopedic surgeons, orthopedic registrars and the physiotherapists who contributed so much to my rehabilitation, is my focus.  

Who is to blame for my accident has recently been asked by some Timorese friends. Did I think that the natural spirits (lulik) and I were back in harmony? Or did I think that someone had used their black magic abilities to curse me. If I had been in Cambodia, local colleagues would have asked similar questions. I asked how did they identify black magic versus something happening due to lulik and they disagreed between themselves, revealing strong regional discrepancies about these matters as some were from west Timor and some from the east. One said he would have to confess on Sunday to his priest as the new priest was saying no-one should believe anymore in lulik. One fervently disagreed, saying it was okay to be Catholic but to keep the traditions of lulik and black magic. Another began her usual rant about Catholicism reminding us that she was equally passionately against the colonial religion and that only lulik was significant to modern Timor.

taxi windscreens 2/3 unusable by green

For myself, I was unlucky? Seven years full time in Asia on little 125 motorbikes in atrocious traffic conditions and I had one accident. My first time on a motorbike was about the age of 6 on the wonderful little 50cc bikes made for kids, under the supervision of my parents. Now I was unlucky one Monday afternoon at 5pm, having a bizarre accident of being knocked from my moto by someone on foot!

Years ago a young Ratanakiri, Cambodia, colleagues’ new family timber house had burnt down within months of it being built. He and his village immediately knew that someone in the family had made a mistake when cutting down the trees they used and had evidently disturbed the local spirits. Many animist ceremonies in accordance with their indigenous beliefs were held after the fire, to appease the spirits, to apologise to their village’s spirits and ask the spirits to not do further damage to the family. Our Buddhist majority culture Cambodian colleagues knew that the fire was not from natural spirits but of course was from upsetting their personal karma, possibly in a previous life but maybe more recently. They accepted that such things happen as the cycle of life and one had to go to the temples and pay respects to Buddha, your ancestors and elders in your family. Myself and my expatriate colleagues wondered how the fire was started. Was it a candle falling over, a child playing with matches or could it be deliberately lit by jealous neighbours? We had conversations about if others had heard of houses burning down and there were discussions about the duty of a work place employer to help out (days were given off to the young man and a cash advance on his salary) and the role of the Cambodian Red Cross’s assistance. The common word used by all expatriates, from many diverse developed countries and religious backgrounds, was that the indigenous family were very “unlucky”, especially since it was the family’s first ever timber house after always living in bamboo traditional style housing.

A year after smashing my upper arm with approximately 14 fractures, I celebrate that I am physically capable to do all the things I love to do. I consider myself lucky.

Stuff happens, 1.

From 4 months ago, I wrote this one lunchtime. I still do wonder did that man die immediately or is he suffering severe disabilities or just possibly, even if a remote possibility, did he return to good health;

Another accident. Another statistic. I am shaking and still a little teary as I write this. I have seen so many traffic accidents and often with far more blood and gore and yet this one has impacted on me, strongly. What will stay with me is the frozen moment of all witnesses, for a moment gasping then the spell breaks and crowds yell, push forward and some phone the authorities. Big raucous crowds quickly form, as it’s a big intersection and my initial reaction is to lock my doors and close my window. My own safety first; to my latter shame. Well the crowds mean the dead or dying motorcyclist is not wanting for attention. I have nothing to add to that mob and so stay in my work car. The accident was the car in front of me, the moto now on its side and someone turning off the motor, plastic motorbike pieces strewn across the road and the body, yes the body and blood and no movement.

A few people from the crowd took over. One is stopping people moving the bike or the person hurt, they are in the centre of the 2 lanes, leaving a single car width usable. The other man in the centre of the intersection is clearing a way for one lane of traffic to move through. Way behind us, two intersections away or so, sirens hail the ambulance but it can’t get through due to traffic. Orderly processions of cars move through the narrowed intersection. Its lunchtime and busy but the cars seem orderly. Being so close to the accident I am hemmed in by all the cars around me. I could see the taxi try to maneuver to the left of the bleeding body, close the road’s edge, but others in the crowd are immediately telling the self appointed traffic civilian that the taxi shouldn’t leave the scene. So the taxi driver resignedly turns off the car and waits. Now it’s a very passive crowd along the roadside but diligent. So many people now but its calm and the injured man remains, sensibly, left where he is, about 2 metres from me. The taxi driver clearly decides he can’t make a run for it on foot. For this accident there is no mob attack on the taxi driver but there are other local instances of mob rule taking over, when accidents occur.

People notice me waiting and eventually stop the cars in the one lane that is moving so as to allow me space to reverse and get myself into the moving lane. The ambulance sirens are closer now. The crowd keep the space vacant, where my car had been, presumably ready for the ambulance’s arrival. The person is still prone, the only thing moving is the blood rivulet towards the gutter. I try not to look.

I recall seeing him midair and the noise of his landing. I think the car and moto hit at the furtherest corner of the front right of the car so that the rider was flicked off and returned back over the bonnet and into the front right of the taxi. But we were all stationery on a red light. One of the few traffic lights in Dili that works on a daily basis. So it’s likely the moto had weaved through the traffic to the front? Then went to go in front of the taxi, at an angle and coincidentally the taxi has edged forward a little? A low speed accident in a split second of unlikely events.

typical busy Dili interesection

For me?

Memories of last year. His extensive injuries at the hospital make me shudder. I had a serious  and significant injury but not life threatening and yet I still got to go to Darwin hospital. I hope that this man has died at the scene. I feel guilty about thinking this, but repeat it to myself once more. Horrific injuries will not be worth enduring the ambulance and hospital, I ask myself? Will the x-ray machine at the hospital even be working? No xrays were available for me or the many others all at the national hospital last year when I needed an xray. The xray I had at a local TB clinic barely showed anything due to the poor quality of xray film and materials. 24 hours later the Darwin xrays had showed the multiple fractures and bone splinters everywhere, making the diagnosis and treatment plan easily decided upon.

Ahhh and the ability to access awesome pain control also came with the Darwin visit. What will he get? And once my bones mended after 3 and half weeks, I had two physio and a specialist tending to the injury and a GP making sure my general well being was okay. I had financial independence due to insurances through work.

His family will suffer so much, whether he has died or if he survives. Especially if he was the main income generator for an extended family.

I am humbled. I almost wish I had a spirit or god to thank in regards to my own recovery in the past 8 months. I am secular, so instead I cry, crying for all the injustices that exist.  

Softened by cardboard

Luckily for the security guard I had one of my longer sleeps which means he slept almost to 6am. As I put water into the kettle I could hear him rolling up his cardboard from the cement balcony immediately at the front of my door. I opened the door to ensure it really was one of the security guards and it seemed to be. Glad he got some sleep.

Daily to sleep on hard cement? And even in this tropical build up to wet season the cold would seep into your sleep which in turn would remind you of each bone that ached from the unforgiving surface.

My privacy has been imposed upon, with this newer arrangement of some of the guards using my balcony.

the downstairs makeshift pallet for sleeping

However my security has increased.  The UNPOL (United Nations Police made up from many donor countries) Spanish pair who live downstairs in their separate house but in the same house yard as me, pay for the security guards. Up until the months I was away in Australia, the guards used to always sleep outside the downstairs house. When I got back to Dili I noticed that the guards now use my balcony during the day and also at night.

Part of me wants them gone. I have to start to wear clothes just to go to the toilet in the middle of the night or I need to get heavier curtains. I must put back up the kitchen curtains as that window was safe from street level eyes. But now a great view for someone on the balcony. Yet who am I to complain?

I already have so much. Each time I sleep in my lovely bed in my well decorated and pleasing master bedroom I know people are sleeping on cement. Why does that not bother more people in the world, is more of a bother? Besides there was violence between young men mid morning yesterday which involved one badly bleeding man seeking sanctuary at the house of the police commander who was out at work but it’s well known as his residence. The group violence as young men armed with metal stakes, machetes and short timber posts shouted and ran and chased each other, sent local families scattering and the large metal gates in everyone’s driveways were clanging shut behind those not involved in the manhunt. The rest of the day Timorese and some occasional UN police were patrolling the street long after the sirens from the ambulance had faded.

Part of me still wishes for the return of my privacy where there is no young man sleeping literally at my front door. Part of me is glad that the UNPOL lads downstairs have arranged that our joint house compound has these guards nearby and who am I to quibble over where they choose to sleep.