Los Palos
Los Palos itself is not much of a metropolis. Size-wise, the town is smaller than most parking lots in the states. Greater Los Palos takes about 5 minutes to drive across, and that is only because one must dodge the dogs, chickens, children, nuns, carts, bikes, and people who aren't used to moving for cars, and aren't about to change their ways now. There is a central market that doesn't really have much in it except on weekends, and even then it still doesn't really have all that much. Goods are slowly returning to Los Palos but it's taking some time. There is a row of shops on the main drag, however most have the typical scorch marks and missing roofs from the fires.
Only one shop has managed to reopen since September and it only has washing powder, soap, warm soda, and warm beer along with a few other items coming in from Dili. Next to the market is the village's traditional house, and next to that is the hospital (with only an untrained part-time staff). Across from the hospital is the church and its school, which doubles as the civic offices because the civic offices have all been burnt to the ground. It is also the warehouse for the first wave of emergency goods that the ICRC (Red Cross) is distributing with IRC, (us) and Concern, (another NGO.) The town hall has been converted into a grain warehouse by the WFP and is guarded by the Korean troops (part of INTERFET, International Force of East Timor). Our house is down the street from the town hall, across the street from the burnt building that used to be the police station, and just around the corner from UNTAET (United Nations Transitional Authority for East Timor). To summarize: Los Palos is small, the people are very nice, and there are more foreigners here than anyone can ever remember.
In Los Palos I met up with Jennifer, the shelter coordinator, also from the USA. She had just found a house for us in Los Palos, and was working on reaching an agreement with the owner about leasing it. The house is wired for electricity, but we had no power, because no one was able to get enough diesel to run the single functioning generator in town. With the UN's help we now have diesel and power (from 7:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m.) in Los Palos, but it shorts out when it rains. The electric people are also unwilling to share their diesel with the water people.
The house is standard third world concrete block construction, with tin sheeting and timbers for roofing. We have a concrete squat loo out back that doubles as a wash room for my nightly bucket bath. I just hooked up one of those camping solar showers today and look forward to trying it out this evening. My bedroom looks more like a cell - I have one window about 1 ½ ft. x 1 ft., which is about 9 ft. off the ground. I've got a dome tent like mosquito net set on the floor to sleep in, and a therma-rest with a sheet over it to sleep on. There is a foot long gecko that lives in the hall and makes the most horrendous noise about 8:00 p.m. each evening. However, we forgive him for that because he really is the next best thing to a bug zapper.