malae bulak

Today was far from perfect, and some of what I have seen is not something to love. It had at least two firsts: and for me they were most notable because they are so strikingly opposite. Today, a small girl said to me passing on the street, “Hello Misus!� for the first time – and then later on the beach a group of young men who I was photographing were yelling, “Photo, Mister!� I’m guessing this haircut of mine isn’t doing me any favors in identifying my gender.

I have been hiking through the mountains with a bunch of Aussies that call themselves Hash House Harriers or something like that [I’ve never been good with names]. They apparently are drinkers with a running problem. I’ve been to a pool in an island oasis of calm in this sometimes chaotic world I now live in, with three Timorese children who could steal even my ice-hard heart. I’ve been running in the early morning sun when the land is still cool and the light shines with glory (and no fear of sunburn).

But in these worlds of fun and pleasure, there are always reminders of the two-tired economy we live in. The ‘Hashers’ are boat-loads of fun, but at the restaurant where the bunch retired to after singing songs children would walk around selling CDs and bracelets. The owner (a nice man as far as I could tell) threw one out by his ear. I guess I understand – he is after all running a business, and restaurants are hard to keep profitable – but I still felt a twang. He was just a kid, skinny, walking among the beer-bellied and jovial (tipsy?) lot of us trying to make a buck or two. I wasn’t sure who should have been thrown out by their ears. In our little pool-ed oasis, kids stood on the barbed wire fence surrounding the place and stared at the malae women parading around with their ample flesh in bikinis, munching on fried shrimp and cocktails. True, at heart it was leering, and rather crude – but it was also a wall with barbed wire that non-malae kids 8 and younger, despite an obvious affinity for pools, would never be allowed to cross. And worst of all – I went running in the early morning sun. I went running because I want to stay in shape, because I want a skinny little butt like everyone around me (because I’m jetlagged and there’s nothing better to do in the morning . . .) – whatever the reason I’m well aware that running is the greatest luxury of all. I’m not running anywhere, I’m not running for any real reason – I’m running because I’m a yuppie and because I have so much food I have to run some of it off or else become a little butterball. A kid in the road who I passed while running started laughing, and then mock-ran with me for a couple of meters before saying something to everyone and laughing hard. I laughed too – because I knew he was dead right. Crazy foreigner indeed. I am welcomed to Timor, and I’m dammed lucky for it.