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.

Community Spear fishing

Three men stand thigh high in water with spears over head. Two more have a net 10 metres away. There is a splash. Large splashing in the water near the men, where a fish is moving on the surface. At least a metre between splashes and the sound carries over 500metres to the beach where I sit with a book unread.  Big enough splash and fin movement, to be a tuna or a small shark? Surely not a dolphin?

One man runs from the shoreline with his spear. The first three gather and then one strikes into the water. And strikes again. And again. There is splashing. One man crouches down into the water. Some children who were playing near me, run the long way around the shoreline watching the space, where now there is no splashing. The two men with their net move a little further away and throw it again. The canoe is used for the large fish caught. I can not see. The canoe sits lower in the water.

The tide continues to go out. There was a huge high tide earlier, followed by one of the lowest lowest low tides. The reef along the beach forms a natural fish trap. More men join the group with their spears. Spread out they form a circle over the shallowest part, the circle having diameter of about 300metres. Children join the circle, with no spear but imitating the men, with their legs lifted high as they step quietly and eyes peering. All peering into the water looking for fish caught in the shallow water.

In parts the mud flats show clearly, in an area usually filled with mild surf. The canoe balances nearby.

The men circle slowly. Sometimes they throw a spear. And throw again. I do not see any big activity. No big fish caught. No little fish. Men circling as the sky turns yellow then pink. More men join with their spears. Some running along the shoreline around to the point, where it is now completely dry and they walk the mud to the circle. Still no fish found.

All that effort. And the community coming together to stand in a rarely dry beach area as this tidal phenomenon takes them back to the days of no clocks, no one going off to work in an office and no tourists on their beach. A time of a community working together, following the patterns of the earth.

Except they catch no fish. Well other than the larger fish caught by the first three men who had been out there since the tide had begun to turn.

It was spellbinding for me. The water, the reef in a horizontal line behind the loosely formed open circle, spears drawing lines into the pink sky. A child scrabbling after a crab nearby as his brother watched as I did, the spears. A toddler in the circle cries and a man picks him up, with his spear in the other hand and indicates to the grandmother nearby not to come out into the mud as he will return the toddler. The toddler stops crying. The sky turns pinker. The man hands the children to the woman but stays near her, watching too.

Still no fish. The spears are black lines held high. The sun sets. 

Romanticizing the ‘simple life’ of living off the land and how ‘local people seem so peaceful’ is all too common and awful a conversation to listen to from tourists and some expats. To view dirt floor kitchens, daily husking of rice and the fetching of water as completely different to an urban lifestyle in a western style city makes sense. To draw conclusions about how the people in the bamboo hut must be peaceful and ‘better off in many ways’ seems over simplified to me.

There was no fish feast that night.