This week is about describing my everyday life in Dili and
first I will describe where I live. It
is a basic sort of place, it has a kitchen, lounge room, bedroom and a bathroom
which is a pretty standard setup for a one bedroom unit. It even has electricity which has only in the
recent past been made reliable with a new power plant outside Dili. There are other houses in the compound with
people from other parts of the world - East Timor, Portugal and I think
Indonesia.
There are cooking facilities that allow me make dinner
should I choose to, any two pot recipes would be welcome. I just bought a half kilo bag of chillies so
spicy food is on the menu for the month!
What has been problematic is the water supply, I have been
without water for up to 36 hours this week, but most days, there is enough
water for a shower in the morning and to fill the baldi (20 litre bucket). For the rest of the day I am at work, however
my housekeeper has struggled to complete her duties as there is no water. Needless to say I have been very efficient in
managing water, where I think I have got my daily water use to about 20 litres/day,
not a lot really.
It is funny being a water engineer (“enjenyeiru bee”) and
being powerless to resolve my water supply issue. My neighbour has fiddled with the pump many
times but the source of the problem seems to be about sharing the incoming water
throughout the compound. A large water
tank needs to fill before any water enters the smaller tank that I am connected
to. A small pump then pushes this water
to my house and to this day I cannot work out how this works. May be it is time to find another place to
live owing to this and several problems that are not worth mentioning here.
It was nice to just do nothing much on Saturday, I headed to
Back Beach (see week one/two for photos) in the afternoon for some quiet time
before a big trip on Sunday to Suai. If
only the water was back on back home to wash the salt off…
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