Archive for the ‘travel’ Category
Toka Boot
This event took place in Lospalos on day 101 of my residency, but I am writing this blog post in Dili Airport, day 106, as I prepare to depart.
How do you find a way to gracefully and joyously exit a community where you have played some small part for just a small amount of time? ‘Toka Boot’ means ‘big play’ – it was the closest thing we could find in Tetun to describe the idea of a Big Jam, an event where people of all ages could come together to play music. Toka Boot (btw, the second word is pronounced more like bot than boot) was to be an extension of all the weeks of Verandah Jams (and other informal music-making) we’d been doing in Lospalos, but involving many more people, and in a large public space. It was a way of celebrating my residency in the town, and bringing as many people as possible together to do this. It was also a way of sharing the talents of Tony and the ANAM students with the wider Lospalos community. For the last week in particular, we’d been doing creative workshops everyday, in various sites around the town. Toka Boot was a way to bring that all together.
There were two parts to the day. The first part, starting at 3pm, was called the ‘workshop’ and was a way to get people involved in learning guitar parts, getting instruments in tune, and also making instruments to play. We invited Maun M, our instrument-making neighbour, to come along at 3pm to demonstrate how to make both the kokes and the kakalos, and we brought a large coconut palm leaf and several pieces of pre-cut, stubby bamboo along for him to use as his materials. Sadly, Maun M didn’t make it, so that element didn’t happen, but many people commented that they particularly enjoyed the fact that there were traditional instruments being included in the jam, available for people to play if they wanted to. If this Toka Boot ends up being the first of many in the future, I hope the idea of instrument-making becomes incorporated into the event.
The second part of the day was the ‘toka’ – the playing! We were introduced by the local Ministry of Culture representative and Mana Holly. I then took over the microphone and welcomed everyone. “This is an event where everyone is invited to play,” I told them. “We have brought lots of instruments with us, and other people have also brought their own instruments to play. You can choose what you’d like to do.”
I had a tough gig at that moment. Timorese people are notoriously shy, so no-one wanted to be the first to move from the safety of the edges of the space. I kept talking.
“Here we have some plastic buckets, but you can play them like drums. Who wants to play the drum or bucket? Come and sit in these chairs here. This next instrument is a shaker. I don’t know the Tetun word for it but in English we say shaker. People who want to play the shaker can sit in these chairs here.
On and on I went, introducing each other instruments, designating sections where people could sit, and demonstrating ways of playing the instruments we’d brought with us. Gradually people began to take their places. A group of excitable young boys quickly realised the virtues of the kakalos, and suddenly rushed to the mat where we had laid these out. Bottles and bamboo sticks were similarly popular – it’s the whack-able quality of these instruments that particularly appeals, I think!
We also had a sizeable group of young men with guitars who had come along. They sat as a group directly in front of me and did a great job supporting all the music with steady chords. We also had our three sets of chime bars set out along one of the mats, but these were commandeered by some of the Motalori kids (who had been coming to our house every day) and no-one else got a look-in there.
I planned the musical content to reflect three things:
- local music and rhythms I’d learned during my residency
- music that had been composed by the Motalori kids (as a way of acknowledging the time they had spent playing music with me and Tony); and
- Forever Young, as the unofficial anthem of the residency, and with its Fataluku lyrics. So many people had responded with delight to the Fataluku version, and enjoyed jamming on the chords with both the chime bars and guitars, that it seemed an ideal way to end the Toka Boot.
We kicked off with some call-and-response rhythms, getting everyone warmed up, listening and participating. From here we established cues for starting and stopping, and ‘tested’ these, seeing if we could get a strong clean stop from the whole ensemble.
We began the music jam by creating a rhythmic section A with three contrasting rhythms, a melodic section B that utilised the ‘Melodia Motalori’ on the chime bars, and a sung section C that featured a traditional Fataluku song. (When I’d tried the song out on a local crowd the day before in Cacavei, I’d received a spontaneous round of applause. Given applause isn’t a typical TImorese response to music, I felt like that was a particularly strong affirmation of this choice of song).
We switched between sections A, B, and C on a cue from me. We’d hoped that everyone in the space would sing along with the songs, and that they would know the words, but they were pretty quiet. I could see some of the women in crowd singing along, but most of the teenage boys kept their mouths firmly shut! (Afterwards, I asked a friend if perhaps people hadn’t known the words, thinking we should have written them out for everyone. She told me, “No, they know it. They’re just shy!”).
These three sections also gave Tony and the ANAM students opportunities to solo or improvise over the ensemble music. Tony playing the saxophone was best-placed to do this, and he alternated between improvised solos, and playing the melodies of each section.
I also brought different instrumental sections in and out throughout the jam. The shaker-playing group in particular was excellent at stopping and starting on cue. Other groups were less confident, and tended to stop playing if a group near them was asked to stop. Therefore I didn’t get to play around with variations in texture as much as I’d hoped.
We cued a Big Finish from the whole ensemble, and then it was on to Forever Young.
This piece took awhile to get going. The boys on the kakalos and bamboo sticks were getting close to out of control – nothing was broken, but it meant that no-one could hear anything much else. Tony and Doug suggested that kakalos weren’t needed for the next piece.
While they organised that side of the room, I set about making sure everyone could see a copy of the words to the song. That morning, Tony, Sarah and I had written out copies of the words onto large white poster pages. Now I called for volunteers from the crowd to step forwards in order to hold up the words for people to sing from. We also had two lots of the lyrics up on the walls.
So there was a bit of to-ing and fro-ing, trying to start, then stopping because people were still not quite ready. I particularly wanted to establish the idea that the instrumental sections would be different to the singing sections – if everyone played their instruments while we were singing then no-one would be able to hear anything.
Finally, I got my eye contact going with the guitarists and the chime bars at the same time, counted them in and we were away. Two brave young women who’d sung in the community radio gig earlier that week agreed to join me with microphones in the centre of the space to lead the singing (they were very reluctant but fortunately for me acknowledged that me singing Fataluku words on my own wasn’t really appropriate, or as convincing).
Forever Young was a hit. As with our earlier song, no-one really joined in with any kind of audible gusto, but many were singing along quietly – I could see their lips moving! The guitarists held the accompaniment together well, and the boys on the chime bars also kept time remarkably well, given the density of sounds going on for most of the time. The ANAM musicians also played solos during the instrumental breaks, with the two singers holding microphones to their instruments so that the solos could be heard. Even Tony got to sing into a microphone at one stage, one of the girls came and held it beside his mouth during one of the choruses. The rest of the time he kept our drum groove going on the djembe.
The Many Hands staff took part in the event, and reported back that at least 200 people had taken part throughout the event with a further 300 moving in and out of the space. 500 people having some experience of this event is a wonderful outcome!
“Do you like this? Do think it’s good?” Mana Holly asked different people in the crowd as she roamed around with her camera. “It’s great,” they told her emphatically. Mana Kim also spoke to a number of people after the event and reported back that people had been overwhelmingly positive and excited about the event. The only negative comment was that it was the kind of event that should be happening often, not just as a one-off. One person (connected with local police I think) felt that events like this could help to reduce crime, and yet another person suggested that it was a good way to combat racism towards malae (foreigners), explaining that this was something that was on the increase. It was the first time people had seen malae and local Timorese working together in a participatory event like this. People also appreciated the instruments that were in use – they were happy to see their traditional instruments being promoted by outsiders, but also that many of the other instruments were made from things that were easily available locally – buckets, bottles and bamboo.
At the end of the jam we handed the floor over to Plan International, who have been running a music recording project for some time in Lospalos. Several of their bands had come along, and they now performed sets of their songs. They sat in the centre of the room, one of the Motolori boys taking the initiative to sit in the middle of them and be a Microphone Stand (and at the end of each set jumping to his feet to yell “Thank you very much!” into the microphone like a pro), and the audience crowded around to hear these performances too.
I made my way to the edge of the market space and sat down with Sarah (who was looking pretty wiped out from her malaria, but sticking with the gig nonetheless – what a trooper) and Oswalda and two of her friends. They congratulated me and asked how I was feeling. “I’m tired now,” I confessed. The three young girls then grabbed hold of my arms and proceeded to give me an arm massage.
Tony and some of the Motolori boys walked home, carrying all the instruments on the two wheelbarrows we had borrowed from our neighbours. I followed shortly after, and when I got home I was surprised to see a group of other neighbours (none of whom had been at the gig) crowding onto th verandah. They were awaiting our return, it seemed, keen to have their own Toka Boot on the veradah. How could we refuse? We watched with pride as they set up the instruments – with care and respect now, unlike the chaotic handling things received in the early days of the verandah jams, and began to play. They were jamming on their own, without guidance from us.
How things had progressed since that first jam, when Kamil, our Indonesian friend, had to go out into the street to persuade some of the local children to join us! Now they were waiting for us when we got home, and the only way to get them to stop playing once they started was to call for a break, explain that we needed a deskansa [rest], and reassure them that they could come back tomorrow to play some more. They would then pack up the instruments with the same care and attention as they gave to the unpacking – putting the chime bars back in their bags in the right order, painstakingly counting out eight mallets per carry bag, gathering all the kakalo sticks into their little red carrier bag and entering the music room at the side of the verandah respectfully and (for the most part) without pushing each other, and placing the instruments down in their correct places (most of the time – some of the bamboo sticks still got dropped on the floor on occasion).
Excursion to Lore
Lospalos, day 93
We did another excursion on Thursday, this time to the coastal town of Lore. We’d been told it would take 3 hours to get there, but it turned out to be a journey of about 1 hour and a quarter only. The dirt road was slow-going but there were no big pot-holes or drops away at the edges, so I would call it a pretty reasonable road for Timor!
We stopped in one of the towns we passed through. All the local school children were on their morning break and as we got out of the car they crowded round us, staring, not talking, but sticking close to us just the same. We wandered around for a while with this entourage, then I asked them if they’d like to sing a song with us. “We’d like to”, they answered, so we taught a short song with nonsense syllables, and then got some rhythm games started. Then the bell rang for them to go back to class so they went to line up and we got back in the car.
The beach at Lore was rocky, and had some of the biggest waves I’ve seen on this island so far. It’s a wide, long spread of beach, with horses grazing down on the rocks at the water’s edge, and palm trees lining the edge of the furthest-back sand dunes. The children from the nearby village followed our car as we drove up and sat on a log in a row, watching us intently. If any of us got too close, however, they shuffled along, or jumped and ran to the other end of the log. We made this into a game after awhile.
No fish for sale because of the rough seas, so we ate the food we’d brought with us – freshly made rice packages wrapped in banana leaves, bread rolls with vegemite, packets of tuna, bananas and biscuits, and cups of apple tea. We tried swimming but got dashed against the rocks pretty quickly so we settled for beach cricket (with a piece of bamboo as a bat, and a tennis ball) and soccer, and shell hunting instead. The local children never joined in, they just stayed sitting on or near that log.
English classes and local villages
Day 93, Saturday
Saturday is market day, so a good day for a big grocery shop. I also love the energy of the big local market – there are hundreds of people there, buying and selling. It’s right on the outskirts of town, so you can get a mikrolet (if we have a hire car we drive) but most people walk there and back.
This has been a full and eventful week. It’s been shaped quite strongly by our regular attendance at the local English classes. We started this the previous week, thinking it could be a good way for Tony’s daughters to meet some English-speaking people their own age, and continued going all of this week too, as it was bringing us in contact with such a range of people, all keen to share their experiences and ideas with us in the spirit of an exchange.
On Monday afternoon, we asked the class to talk about what interesting and special things there were to do, see and experience in Lospalos. We discussed the idea of ‘special and interesting things’ all together first, to gather ideas and put the question in the context of visitors coming to Lospalos. Then the class gathered into pairs and presented one idea to the rest of the class in English.
One boy said, I would show the visitors the Lake Ira-Lalaru, because it is very beautiful. It is the largest lake in Timor, fed by seven springs, and it is close to here. It also has an interesting story and I would tell them the story:
Long ago, there was a village where the lake is now. One day, a snake with seven heads came to that village. This snake bit the daughter of the village chief. In his anger, he called for people to kill the snake in revenge.
However, the snake turned out to be a king of snakes. So nature then took its revenge. Water began to pour from each of the seven heads of the snake. Rain poured down from the sky. The ground cracked open and water came bubbling up. Soon the village was submerged, and the lake is still there today.
That’s one version of the lake story – I’ve heard two other versions since then, but that is unsurprising as it is passed down through an oral tradition. I like the idea of it changing, like a game of Chinese Whispers.
On Tuesday, Tony led what sounded like a superb conversation lesson. He wrote a list of questions on the white board, asking the students to imagine that they had met him, a visitor, by chance in the street, and were having a conversation with him.
- Which village or town do you come from?
- What is interesting to see or do in your village?
- Is it far from here?
- How do I get there on local transport?
- How much does it cost?
- Can I there and back in one day?
He arranged the group into two concentric circles, facing each other in pairs, and they each had to ask these questions to their partner and give the answers in English. The inner circle then moved one place to the left and had the same conversation with the next person.
Tony explained that he wanted them all to have the conversations at the same time – “Like at a party!” Everyone laughed and the energy lifted, and it sounded like they had a very dynamic, engaged lesson together.
The lesson revealed information that we had been looking for – where could w get to in a day using the local mikrolet and truck transport options. Tony’s daughters were particularly keen to go somewhere in a truck.
The conversation class led to invitations being issued by different students to come with them to their village, and the following day (Wednesday) Tony and the girls travelled with two of the students to the village of Kakavei on the back of a truck. Kakavei is high in the mountains. The student showed them around – they met local children and did some music games with them, they met a local song-women who performed for them, they visited their host’s house, and his wife had prepared local food for them – sweet potatoes mashed and wrapped in banana leaves, and a drink made from crushed corn – watched tais being woven and got to try some on.
They got home around 5pm, very happy with their adventure. I was envious – I had opted to spend the day working, but Wednesday had turned out to one of the ‘backwards steps’ of the Lospalos shuffle and I hadn’t had the productive, energised day I’d hoped for. Never mind. It all balances out.
Exploring the kakalo’uta
Lospalos, day 87
I’ve been doing some transcriptions this week, revisiting the footage I shot in Dili at the Cultural Festival of different traditional instruments. I realised I had some footage of the Kakalo’uta being played, so spent some time reviewing that and transcribing the piece they performed.
Tony and I have gathered up quite a bit of bamboo over the last few weeks, and yesterday we lined up three pieces of resonant bamboo each, and started to transfer the kakalo’uta rhythms to these three pitches. It sounded pretty good. Then this afternoon, Tony got talking to our neighbours, a family of many young boys who often come to our verandah jams. They offered him a coconut and he ended up sitting with them to eat it. Somehow this led to him describing our bamboo instruments, and from there, to the father of all the boys making a new instrument for us from one of our pieces of bamboo.
What he made was very like a Papua New Guinean log drum, planed flat on one side with a long slit down its middle that you hit on either side. “This piece of bamboo is too narrow, though,” he told us. “If you can get a very wide piece” – showing us the ideal size with his hands – “then that will be even better. It will have a much bigger sound.”
Now our heads are buzzing. A traditional instrument craftsman right next door to us! We have two more weeks. If we can get enough bamboo, could we commission him to make us some more of these instruments so that we could create a piece for an ensemble? What about our experiments with three differently toned pieces of bamboo – our makeshift version of the kakalo’uta I saw in Dili? Perhaps we could modify this design to make a variation of the kakalo’uta that could be played on the ground, rather than having this three pieces of wood hung suspended from a frame. I asked what it is called. It’s called kakalo – from the Fataluku word meaning “to hit”.
The cacophony that is Christmas in Timor
Christmas seemed to start here on December 6th. I was in Dili that day, and noticed for the first time that all the shops had put their Christmas decorations up, there were reggae versions of Christmas carols being pumped out of every shop stall, Christmas trees were for sale all over the place, and there were lots of additional temporary stalls out on the streets, selling new items of clothing, toys, and so on. It was a completely different vibe.
In Lospalos, it is not unusual to be awoken around 5.45am (before the electricity goes off for the day – we only have electricity overnight here) by someone playing music very, very loudly. This may be a poor country, but it doesn’t seem to stop the people who can investing in very powerful sound systems. Once we got into Christmas season, the music of choice was things like revved-up Jingle Bells, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas in 4/4. Brahms Lullaby is also apparently a Christmas song in Timor.
One morning in the week before Christmas, we woke up to a mix of three different sound systems, each playing completely different Christmas songs. Add to that the usual soundscape of roosters crowing, pigs squealing and dogs barking, and you have, as Tony commented that morning at 6am, “A real mess out there this morning.”
The cacophony continues even in the church. At mass on Christmas Eve, the automatic rhythm section on the electric organ thumped out its duple time beats, even in songs in 3/4 or compound time, so that O Holy Night ended up as one big hemiola. The choir persevered, as did we, and the effect was actually thoroughly intriguing and engaging.
Minister Januario (who is apparently the minister in charge of electricity and power blackouts – his name is often groaned in irritation when the power goes off suddenly) gave Lospalos a Christmas treat this year – we had electricity almost non-stop from December 24th until December 26th. This was a mixed blessing as far as Tony and I were concerned, because electricity means everyone keeps their music going throughout the whole day. Very bland, white, sexless, nameless pop versions of Christmas carols. We were pretty happy to head to Dili for a break on the 27th. But then we got to Atauro for New Year and the 24-hour music started up again.
New Year’s Day celebrations
On the afternoon of New Year’s Day on Atauro, a group of us were invited to go to a special mass. They told us, “We will take you there at 5pm, there will be lots of singing, and after, you will eat there!”
Tony, a couple of other guests and I had already been to the local church during the week, to listen to the choir rehearse. We loved their open, unforced, powerful way of singing. Also, when we’d first arrived, I’d described my earlier Atauro experiences of songs and singing (by the Singing Boatman on the early morning boat back to Dili) to the manager of the place we were staying, so he was on the look-out for other musical experiences we could have.
That New Year’s Day mass was one of the most welcoming experiences I felt I’d had in Timor. When we arrived it seemed like proceedings had already started, but there were 5 blue plastic armchairs lined up at the front of the space that we were ushered into.
“Would rather be up the back,” muttered a couple of our group self-consciously, but there was no chance of that. We were clearly Honoured and Welcome guests.
Everyone in the congregation knew all the songs, and sang in full voice. Some songs were fairly easy to join in with, as they had repetitive choruses with only a few words. One was even in English:
Singing glory, praise the lord, hallelujah
Singing glory, praise the lord, hallelujah
Singing glory praise the lord, hallelujah
Singing glory, hallelujah, praise the lord!
This was not a Catholic Church, but kultu [Protestant Church]. The pastor beamed at us as we joined in with the singing. He then asked a member of the congregation to come to the front and translate the Gospel and his Sermon into English, one sentence at a time. The less godly among our group might have preferred them not to do this, as it was quite an intense sermon, filled with constant reminders of God’s love for us and the need for us to accept him as our personal saviour… But at the same time, the effort that was made to include us and make us – a group of foreigners and strangers to this close-knit community – feel a part of the event was truly generous.
When mass concluded, people began to shuffle around and change places. Some large tables were brought in. Row upon row of people lined up to shake hands with each of us, and with the pastor. The women gave each of the women in our group a gentle two-sided cheek press. Men just a got a handshake. “Boas festas” we all wished each other.
I went outside to wash my hands and was directed towards the large kitchen at the back of the building. (Timorese kitchens are built separately to the main building, and this one was spread under a rooftop with no walls). Twenty or more women were busy cooking, chopping vegetables, washing dishes, pouring drinks into glasses and cups, slicing large cakes. It was a hub of activity and incredibly detailed in its organisation of labour.
The evening meal began with a snack – a slice of sweet cake, flavoured with nuts, and a cup of hot, sweet tea or coffee. When that was finished, the team of women cleared all the dishes and began to re-set the tables for dinner. While we were waiting we took photos of ourselves with all the children who had by now overcome their shyness and were clamouring around us. Digital cameras are wonderful in this context, with the possibility of showing people the photos you have just taken.
Dinner was amazing in its range and abundance. After all, this is not a wealthy community. We had clearly been invited to a significant event in their year for which all stops had been pulled out. There were several different meat dishes, and several vegetable dishes, two kinds of rice, and even some vegetables cooked without salt. We were invited to eat from the “head table” – the pastor’s table. There was another, larger table for the rest of the congregation to eat from. Everyone helped themselves and sat on long benches to eat their meal.
Meanwhile, the music continued. We learned over that weekend of the Timorese (or maybe just Ataurean) tradition of committing to performing live music 24 hours a day across the festival period. They had a roster of singers ready to roll out the songs, and a sound system with speakers attached to even the tops of the palm trees outside, so as to share their music with the rest of the community. It was impressive in its devotion, if not somewhat exhausting and relentless in its execution.
Once everyone had finished eating, they announced that the pastor and his wife would now be going home to have a rest before the next service the following morning. We took this opportunity to thank everyone for making us so welcome. I made a speech in Tetun on behalf of our group, and then Tony, Alison and I sang Amazing Grace, as a way of offering a contribution of our own to the celebrations. The guy on the organ picked up our key, and accompanied us from the second or third phrase.
We walked home as a group, quite humbled by the experience and the welcome we had been given. The music continued well into the night, all the way through to the following morning.
Udan Boot [Big rain]
I’ve been collecting photos of rainy days for a while now. The images below are from the Cultural Festival in Dili back at the end of November. It got rained out big time – apparently it took a week for the flood waters around the President’s Palace to subside. The drains get clogged up with rubbish so the water has nowhere to go.
And this photo was taken in Lospalos, or just outside Lospalos, on the road to the lake in the National Park. We were in a 4wd but no-one was sure how flooded the road was. Maleve walked on ahead of the car, to see how far up his legs the water went. In the end, it was too deep (too much rainfall had flooded over the causeway) so our intrepid driver did a u-turn on the narrow causeway and took us back out again. I took this photo from the back window.
Chikungunya, anyone?
Wednesday, day 62
The last few days have passed by in a bit of a blur, partly because of the workshop whirl one gets into in the middle of a project, and partly because by Sunday I was struck down by a mosquito-borne tropical illness known as Chikungunya. I think it started on Saturday with an ache in my knee that I assumed was due to over-exerting myself in the warm-up games that morning, but in hindsight I now suspect otherwise.
Chikungunya Virus is one of the more exotic diseases I’ve ever had (and I’ve been hospitalised for quinsy, which I’ve always considered exotic for its Victorian quaintness even though it is a horrible thing to be sick with…). But it’s no fun. It starts with a gradually growing stiffness in your joints. For me, this started in my right knee, moved across to my left middle finger, my right index finger, my right 2nd and 3rd toes, my left heel and Achilles, and so on and so on in a strange, random pinball kind of pattern up, down and across my body until it was in my wrists, elbows, shoulders, back, neck and jaw. Sunday afternoon while eating my lunch I noticed a rash on my arms. A couple of hours later this was spreading to my legs. By the time I got the hospital Sunday evening (requesting a blood test that they didn’t have the equipment to do, it turned out) it was all over me. We wish we’d taken a photo of it as it was quite impressively comprehensive, and it disappeared just as quickly by the following morning.
I then developed a burning fever and lost most of my mobility. I could barely walk. It felt like I had the legs of a newborn foal that wouldn’t possibly bear my weight if I were to try to stand on my own. Tony or Mana Er tended to rush to my side whenever I needed to move somewhere. To sit down or stand up, I needed to use my arms, but given that my fingers and wrists were also causing me a lot of pain, I tended to have lean all my weight into my elbows. It was ungraceful, to say the least!
At that stage it looked like it could be dengue, but the only way to diagnose dengue is with a blood test, and I learned that Monday in Baucau that in all the hospitals across Timor, the equipment necessary to test blood for dengue was out of action. The only way to get a blood test was in Dili at a private pathology clinic.
We found a way to get Tony and me in a car to Dili that evening (Baucau is 3-4 hours from Dili by car). Tony packed up all our things, while I sweated it out on the bed, groaning away everytime I tried to shift my weight a little. Oh I was not a happy camper!
Tuesday we made our way to the private pathology clinic in Santa Cruz area. Does ‘private pathology clinic’ conjure images of white lab coats to you? It did for me, but this little clinic, in what seemed like a the front room of a standard private residence, off an unsealed road with wide concrete drains to step over on either side, wasn’t quite what I’d imagined, but it had everything a private pathology clinic needed to take a blood sample and test it. Lots of new sterile syringes in their packets, lots of little tubes waiting to receive blood for analysis, sticky labels for noting name of patients and the tests to be done (in my case a full blood count and a dengue fever test), and a pathologist (dressed not a white lab coat but in a blue t-shirt and a pair of jeans). He knew to expect me, and spoke to me with the low quiet voice that TImorese people tend to use when they want to speak very respectfully to someone, but that is very difficult for a newcomer like me to understand. Still, we both knew enough about what this encounter was expected to yield to get through any misunderstandings generated by language, and in just over an hour I was on my way to the Australian Embassy Medical Clinic, brandishing an envelope with my test results in it, ready for the doctor’s assessment.
Around this time Tony and I realised that my fever had almost completely subsided. I was also walking a lot better – still lurching and staggering around and losing my balance as a result of my stiff ankles and tender Achilles, but at least I was doing so without any assistance from Tony now.
And so we came to the likely diagnosis of Chikungunya Virus (or Disease, as some websites like to call it), carried around and spread stealthily by annoying little creatures called mosquitos. I’ve been steadily improving since Tuesday and hope to get back to Lospalos on Friday. This descriptive post is a bit of a departure from music education and collaborative practice, but how many people do you know, or read about, who have been struck down by Chikungunya? Here’s hoping I stay on track for a full and fast recovery!
Leave a Comment














