Driving in Dili: Joy, joy, fingers crossed!

I’ve been doing a lot of driving as it’s half an hour to Ginger’s school from our house up on the hill right through the centre of town which I do twice a day plus all the other trips. While the traffic here seems haphazard I’ve had a lot of time to think about it and lately have been thinking about perspective and assumptions: my own, people from other counties and your average Timorese driver or motorcycle rider. I assume things like—you drive in defined lanes and that someone has right of way, that you respect the flow of traffic on a bigger road and wait for a space to move into but none of those things are the case here. The expectation is that people are not in a hurry, drive slowly, and go with the flow and people don’t wait for a space but slowly edge their way in to traffic and they are mostly accommodated. The flow of traffic is more organic and there are less hard and fast rules-in fact who knows what the rules really are? I realised I was assuming my own rules were in place but of course they are not.

As a general rule bigger vehicles get the right of way and lanes are very porous especially for bikes. Usually a sort of third lane opens up in the middle of the road into which you can overtake but if you find yourself heading into a lane of on-coming traffic there is an expectation it will slow down to let you back in your lane (as opposed to having a head on). When I’ve honked people heading for me on my side of the road there is lack of comprehension about my attitude. Although now there is some impatience and growing road rage (mostly among younger men against foreigners) due to increasingly heavy traffic, arrogant driving by UN vehicles (especially the UN police who come from various countries with different rules and drive really, really badly mostly with no indication and above any kind of safe speed limit), government or military vehicles (who speed around in convoys with their hazard lights on expecting all the little people to get out of their way--a delightful Indonesian custom) and by some really young and reckless boys on motorcycles with a life is cheap kind of attitude (Really, I think, have you had enough sex, drugs and rock and roll already? Are you really ready to lose your life at 17? But then maybe their lives are totally shit and they are). However if you hit them you’d probably get a rock through your window so you are extremely careful of them and don’t dare honk or complain about their hazardous driving. Anyway many of the bikes don’t have rear vision mirrors so they can’t see what’s happening behind them and you can easily shock them by passing them, in fact the assumption is that if you want to pass someone you beep to let them know you are coming past as people are not in the habit of checking the traffic around them.

The other complication is the awful road conditions so if you see someone ahead swerving into the middle of road you cannot assume they are drunk because they are probably just swerving to miss a huge pothole (or even a kid or a dog or a chicken which seem to have the same attitude as the foolish young men). Another complication are the adhoc safety installations made by local communities dedicated to marking potholes: bits of old furniture or tree branches or rocks get piled in or around new potholes to alert you to their existence, these installations are renewed in creative ways and disappear over time as people come to know about the hazards. The other major problems are the increasing number of one way streets and traffic lights that don’t work so the conditions are always changing! Time to get back out there.