Pool

In November I wrote briefly about ‘third spaces’ – places that are neither home nor work where one feels comfortable. In Providence, my third spaces (coffee shops, libraries, bookstores) were all supported by the university community, and without that same force here in Dili, I have missed these quiet, public, semi-academic retreats.

Lately, I have been thinking about the impact of security problems on the availability of third spaces. I hear again and again about the loss of street life in Dili. As security fluctuates, the number of men, and especially women, on the street and at the markets rises and falls dramatically.

The costs of security problems are nor just casualties and economic losses. Something important, and salutary, and civic disappears when people only slide between home and work.

I returned from Bali to learn that my problem of third spaces had been solved. A pool had opened: free, very safe, rarely used and open late. It is the largest pool in Dili and it is inside the US Embassy compound.

So now I go out in the evenings after work and exercise, and I do not have to worry about security. At dusk, the huge embassy compound is almost always empty and after handing over my NDI ID tag, I walk around the big mowed lawns to get to the pool.

Swimming, I sometimes think what I would look like from Wikimapia – a person in a pool, inside a gate, inside another gate, next to the sea. It is a sad image. I am so close to the real ocean, yet I am swimming inside a box, inside a box, inside a box.

In Dili, I often think about the mechanics of security in terms of SUVs, gated compounds, generators and security guards, but these factors really describe daily life – movement, peace of mind, comfort and the access to the types of third spaces that disappear for most when times get tough. It is the erosion of daily life that I see in Dili, not the military patrols or the rock fights, that gives me a tiny glimpse into the deadening costs of conflict in Iraq and around the world.