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January 27, 2006
Photo-Less Entry
On Monday I was driving to Manatuto in heavy rain. The road is the same one to Baucau - a path I am familiar with in the dry season when the shockingly steep mountains that plunge into the ocean are a deep, smooth red that is dotted only by leafless white-barked trees. That day, however, as I slouched in the backseat listening to Franz Ferdinand through headphones to block out the redundant Portuguese music that disagrees fundamentally with my music tastes, the hills had completely transformed to a lush, rolling green as clumps of thick grass now clung to the jutting landscape and the white trees now bloomed with foliage.
The normally brilliant sea had turned a grey reflection of the unending sky of clouds. It wasn't a day of thunderstorms, but a day of straight, dull rain that runs in rivulets through the broken streets. Sometimes the old women we passed carried banana leaves over their tightly wound buns to ward of the rain, or in the less-rural kids walked to school carrying flowered pink umbrellas or plastic bags over their shoulders as ponchos. By one roadside stand selling soaked firewood, a girl no more than ten squatted by the road picking at the grass, an open umbrella tossed carelessly beside her, ignoring the dribble that ran through her hair and launched off her little nose.
Manatuto was a town of a couple long, holed streets, an unusual amount of young chickens, and long days of sun and light wind that pass as if they were not today, but yesterday. Our accommodations were in a fantastic Portuguese-style concrete house. The cockroach-free rooms are accompanied by the amazing amenities of a western toilet and shower-head, both of which are broken but their very existence gives the entire wash room the look of urbanity. I sleep well, waking only once at 4 am to the sound of a pig yodeling to the stars, but quickly am lulled back to slumber as soft post-rain winds flap at the red-flowed green curtains.
The next day, I stroll down to the market in search of paun - the small Portuguese bread that is my staple diet in the districts - and make the acquaintance of the woman who makes the bread too sweet, but seems sweet herself so I eat it and can't complain. In the midday, the silence and the pig squeals are occasionally accompanied by the low hum of a generator churning out power for a motorcycle repair shop or the laundry machine in a wealthy-woman's house. The days roll by with the quiet talk of project proposals and brochures, to the steady beat of thigh and neck-swatting due to the thick cloud of mosquitoes. In the afternoons, when the sun is too hot to even bother trying to nap, I sit on the porch and watch the stilted prancing of the baby chicks as they cross back and forth across the road in search of their mother or food (and that answers that question).
In the local restaurant one evening, where I am having my usual noodle soup to ward of the fear of fish and rice, we (my coworker and I) meet two Peace Corps workers. Over dinner, I can't figure out if I have lost touch with other malae society, or they have. That night the rains return with the heavy tapping on the tin roof, as if to say goodbye, and the next day after lunch we clamber back into the car and make the return trip past the steep red hills, now fleshed with dark green and reflecting the sunlight of their healthy wax-coated leaves, tumbling down to the sea that has now turned the turquoise of tourist photos.
Posted by storbert at January 27, 2006 7:28 PM