Our new neighbours

Our new next door neighbours appear to have five children all of whom are under the age of 10. However, they still insist of greeting us with “malae, malae” but I’m hoping that familiarity will soon ween them off it!

Our neighbours also have a pet dog that actually looks like a pet! It’s fat and fluffy and sits on their front porch instead of roaming the streets scavenging for whatever food it can get while terrorising passers-by. I’m so enamoured by it that I want to go up to it and rub its tummy and stroke its ears. Maybe I’ll get the chance.

Our neighbours also have an enormous satellite dish which no other members of our community have (not even us!) It picks up TV from most of Asia, particularly Indonesia, as well as some European channels. Unfortunately it’s not the ginormous and every expensive dish needed to pick up Australian TV (which although Australia is only 500km away the short wave nature of our television station signals precludes them from being picked up cheaply) so there’s no need (other than their puppy dog and cute children) to ingratiate myself with the new neighbours just yet!

Unfortunately, our new neighbours have also brought with them a bloody rooster! He has joined the other four in our immediate vicinity and revels in waking us up at 2am. (I have begun to have secret fantasies of becoming the phantom rooster murderer of Rai Kotu.)

Category: Timor-Leste (East Timor)