During the week, I was doing the “walk up to Jesus” and on the way down, a young girl handed me a small leaflet which amongst other things, suggested I would burn in hell (with suitable diagram attached) if I remained a sinner. I quote : “Yes! The wicked shall be turned into hell … Hell is a terrible place where fire is. … Sinners will burn in hell forever.” I guess I had better start marinating some kebabs in preparation.

There has already been a bit of pestilence out west with locust problems and the Liquica area has copped a bit in the flooding department recently but I am still trying to get my head around recent warnings (originating from the UN I think) of extreme weather conditions to be expected over the next few weeks.

Apart from the general warning of extreme weather conditions, the water cooler chatter suggested things like extreme heavy rain, high winds and king tides which could result in large scale flooding of Dili with encroachment of the sea into the city itself.

Even now, some of the seawalls protecting the roads along the seashore are breaking up and are regularly overtopped by waves so I would expect more of that.  Maybe I wouldn’t like to be a restaurant in the Metiaut area.  These are the ones pretty much on the beach itself and I could see some of them in trouble in a king tide and a storm.

Most of us already know that the city drainage system performs poorly in heavy rain and while the ground has an enormous capacity to soak up water, there is a point where incoming rain exceeds that capacity and I would expect to see large areas of town in swamp-like conditions.  Last year’s extremely dry wet season meant none of this sort of stuff but I recall a few heavy downpours from the previous year which caused a few problems.  And there sure aint nothing quite like the Comorro River in full flood.

Now listen hear you’all sinners out there. Stop now – I don’t want my suntan to fade.