Dili's new monorail??

Had a little “girs’ night in” dinner the other night, a quasi housewarming slash reason to fully unpack and decorate party. Some one noted that the city has been rather bustling the past few days, which is a good change from recent weeks of an eerie silence during the days. Now, with more people and cars on the roads, the streets are back to the usual mess of crazy traffic. You see, driving here is absolutely unbelievable…

Motorbikes with full families of four (often with no helmets!) and mikrolets (mini buses) with people hanging out the doors, get stuck driving 20 kilometers an hour behind a taxi. And I’m serious. I’ve clocked that speed. Taxis in Timor are notoriously slow! Then all the white 4x4 international organization vehicles get impatient and pass on two-lane streets into the slow moving, though still oncoming, traffic. And every two blocks or so, all traffic grinds to a halt so drivers can attempt to navigate the crater-sized potholes.

Thus, we arrived somehow at the topic of envisioning a monorail system in Dili. And it was so funny, I felt like a schoolgirl with wine that nearly made it up my nose and not a glass of milk.

So, firstly, you must remember that this country is incredibly poor and the government is incredibly stressed. The idea of any infrastructure project being completed – and completed well – is laughable in itself. Now, consider that everywhere you go in Dili, you see remnants of destruction: some buildings are simply old and crumbling, others show burn marks from the recent conflict, and even more have been left trashed from the Indonesian occupation. A monorail traveling through the city’s neighbourhoods, looking all shiny and new and high-tech, would be so unimaginably out of place…

…except, it would never be shiny, because Dili is either dry and dusty in the aptly named dry season, or muddy in the rainy season. There definitely couldn’t be any windows because of the inevitable problems stemming from the big sticks that people use to transport their goods. Some poor boy would turn around to offer his tangerines, lettuce, or fish to a fellow passenger and smash, there goes another window! There would also have to be rule forbidding animals aboard, even though it will be very difficult to enforce. But trust me, pigs, goats, and chickens in close quarters with people can be messy.

To make it better, the little voice that provides instructions and announces all upcoming stops would have to be multilingual… in at least four languages! It’s actually a highly political problem in Timor. Tetum is the most widely known and spoken national language, but Indonesian is apparently still used. However, Portugal managed to ensure that Portuguese be declared the country’s official language, even though only the old elite (like the president and his colleagues) and elementary school children have been educated in Portuguese. Portugal would definitely throw a fit if the new monorail system did not cater to Dili’s lusophone community. And of course, since most of the international development community is English speaking – and remain totally incensed that the government spends a fortune on “necessary” Portuguese translations – the monorail would be considered too pretentious without English.

Our monorail conclusion? It’s a ridiculous idea, overall, and made us all laugh like crazy.

And now in hindsight, I can’t decide whether it’s still funny, or just really sad...