I awoke from my first mosquito-free night. I finally got the Doom Mosquito Killer to work. I needed a South African adapter which they don't have here in Timor Leste. Macgyver to the rescue and I have a working mosquito killer. There seem to be more mosquitoes this time round in the dry hot season than there were in the wet-to-damp hot season on my earlier trip!
Anyway, I discovered today that much of the communication in Tetum consists of playing your cards close to your chest... For instance: if i meet you along the road, weighed down with grocery bags on your way home, and I ask you "Where are you going?", you are more than likely to answer "To the market" - the place from whence you are coming!!! Theoretically, if you were to tell me that you are heading home, you might put yourself in some sort of danger. Better to tell you something you already know - that I have been to the supermarket.
That would explain why it was so hard to get some of the participants to envision a future. The future is uncertain, unknown, unpredictable and dangerous. Better to spend time on what we know - the past.
There is also no word for "thank you" in Tetum. Timorese use the words "obrigado barak" borrowed in part from Portuguese and Bahasa to denote a very modern notion to them - thanking someone. That doesn't mean that they are an unappreciative people, just that the culture of reciprocity expects one to help out a fellow human being in need - so there is no need to thank someone for their assistance.
And still the phrase "loron diak" is not commonly used, indicating that the need for greeting is still viewed a little as a Western construct.
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