I gave a guy holding a turtle he just killed a lift home on the back of my motorbike.
Killing turtles isn't too cool but when people are living in such poverty you really don't feel like preaching, especially when his kids are going hungry.
We went down a rutted road to Makaleb, a small village that was composed of those neat little round grass houses you find in the outback in East Timor.
Everyone really got entertained looking at the photos I took with my cheap digital camera.
It's a Nikon 3200 coolpix that I used to take photos for my auctions on ebay and it's coming apart in the middle after having been dropped several times but it still gets the job done.
After a while we rested in the communal house where he showed me 2 animals that he was getting ready to cook.
These 2 kus kus were cute little rascals and they really didn't have that much meat on them.
It seemed like a good idea to buy them and bring them over to a friends house who lives on the beach in town.
We didn't come to a price but I told them I would return to talk about it.
He wanted to earn enough to pay the boat trip back to Dili (7 dollars) where he had worked as a taxi driver.
My friend Cris thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and get them so I went back the following day to pick them up.
After a little bargaining we agreed on 20 dollars for the two. The price was a little high but I wanted to help him out so he could get back to his job in Dili.
The rains had started so the rivers were getting full and becoming challenging to drive through.
I was using Henry's ag-bike (of the Backpackers Guest House in Dili) that has the spark plug way on top so it is less likely to short out.
The exhaust pipe is raised up so water doesn't run in and ruin the valves if your bike stalls in the river.
That bike could chug right through the river but one of the local guys lost his half way across. It is one of the risks driving in Oecussi.
When the water gets too high people just don't travel. Communities are just cut off until it recedes.
It did look ridiculous riding that bike with 2 kus kus but we made it back ok.
They munched on mangos, watermellon, cabbage and jambulan when we got to the house.
We tried to see if they would stay in the yard surrounded by a fence but they are very active at night and didn't want to stick around.
Dogs and kids with slingshots would be a big danger if they started walking around the neighborhood.
These kids will kill any wild animal they come across and these little guys would land up in the cook pot for sure.
If they do get released it will have to be way out west near the isolated village of Citrana where there are more trees and less people.
If not, they have a big new bamboo cage in the works where they will be relatively protected. We'll see what happens.
update: The male has made a dash for freedom and was not to be found. Hopefully he made it.
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