Remixio

I am just back from four days and three nights of observing suco (village) council trainings in Remixio - a small town about an hour up into the hills behind Dili. Remixio was so fresh and cool and green it felt like diving into a river. Upon arriving I learned the word for mist, abuabu, a piece of vocabulary that had been rendered irrelevant by the dust* of Dili.

The pictures are taken from a hill-top shrine overlooking the town. I stayed with Camillo, the NDI trainer, at his house with his wife and four little kids (including a set of 2 y.o twins) and various relations who came in the evening to watch an Indonesian soap opera set in a beauty salon. The partially visible roof in the foreground of the below photo is his. The building under construction is a dorm for Catholic nuns.



* "Dust" in Tetun is rai-suar, literally ground-smoke. Tetun has lots of great compound words, ranging from isin-rua (lit. two-bodied) for pregnant to a whole group with been (juice), e.g. inus-been (lit. nose-juice, snot) and bani-been (lit. bee-juice, honey). A final risqué example: lasan-fuan (lit. penis-fruit, testicle.)