Now that most of the people know I’m leaving soon, I don’t have to buy anything to my fridge any more. I simply have dinner invitations for every night. On Sunday, I was invited by Dona Anita, who for three years has most excellently taken care of my house. It was very nice to meet many of here family members who I hard only heard about before. Here’s a group photo of them.
One thing (among others) I was asked to do was to put more pictures here. I have plenty in my little portable hard disk, but I never seem to get the time and motivation to organise them and pick up the good ones for public display. I think I shall start by recycling the old ones, adding some English notes to them.
However, here is a bit more recent event (January 5). Miwako-san, who is now already safely in Honduras, had to renew the field-security exam (this is something all UN staff on field have to take every three years) for her new assignment, and was reminded that one should never eat from food stalls. Obviously, we had to go and try right away. These photos are from one of the most delicious fish meals I’ve had for long, long time. Right there on the beach under moonlight and stars, freshly served from the food stalls.After careful consideration, I have decided to start a blog that reports interesting and less interesting events, related to my last weeks in Timor-Leste and later to my settling back to Finland. There is a collection of stories and photos, especially from my first two years (2002-04) in Dili, available here, as well as a more recent blog, but these two are written mostly in Finnish. I have been occasionally requested to make something available in a more widely understood language, but as time constraints (and my natural laziness) have limited my ability to update the news even in my mother tongue, the demand has not been met thus far. However, I realise it is now the last chance to start, and after abandoning (for time being) the idea of a blog in Latin, I am pleased to present this ‘service’ – in English.
An other reason to start writing these notes now is that I was reminded by a colleague with background in psychology that the culture shock is likely be much bigger when returning home than when moving overseas. I then remembered we were told in the induction course for development workers (organised by the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs) before I came here that a good way to deal with a culture shock is to keep a diary. I never managed to do that when I came here, even if I had actually purchased a suitable notebook for the purpose. Yet, I survived without suffering from any shocks at all – at least as far as I can remember. Nevertheless, not knowing what terrible shocks might be insidiously on the prowl for me in Finland, I should probably greatly increase my ability to resist them by instituting this diary.
