What is Happening When It is Valentine Day in Dili.

It was a bright Tuesday in Dili on February 14 this year. That Tuesday has been one of the year’s special days because of the Valentine Day name entitled to it and in Dili this day of celebration has been a familiar celebrated day but it has more meaning to the young people as ‘Loron Domin’ in Tetum Language* or ‘The Day of Love’. 

To the world, Valentine Day is identical with love gifts, chocolate and flowers as well as in Dili though the celebration is identical with young Timorese dating and hanging around the parks around Dili. There are some social events organized to celebrate the day through artificial or fresh flowers sharing to people at the street, catholic schools celebrating the day with a collective mass prayers while the telecommunications providers in Dili providing free calls, the internet, and SMS promo for Valentines to attract consumers. At some part of the city, there may be some social organizations held charity events.

Despite being celebrated as ‘Loron Domin’, the meaning of Valentine as the day of love somehow becomes a cliché in Dili since generally people continue to run their daily life as usual; Wake up, going to work, and in the afternoon return home to rest and prepare for tomorrow.

Nevertheless, Valentine may not a cliché to the young people and some other people in Dili as they may treat this day with a special appointment with their dates or loved ones. The restaurants and cafes receiving their customers with Valentines ornament decorating the places to add some passionate touch of Valentines. Popular hang around places in Dili such as Largo Lecidere beach, Jardim 5 de Maio park in Colmera, Jardim Santo Antonio in Palapaso Street, Timor-Plaza and the beaches in Dili becomes the favorite places for the young people to meet and celebrate their Valentines there, either with their loved one or with friends. In these places, people can catch some young couples embracing each other and fondling one another at some corners of the park. To local people this is seen as a nasty behavior of expressing love in public despite some may consider how enjoying being in love as young people and laugh at it as light jokes. 

On another hand, some of our Timorese friends will retell the familiar Timorese Valentine funny jokes story as following:

During a Valentine celebration party organized by local young leaders in a village, a well-known old veteran was invited to give an opening discourse. On the stage, the old veteran looked to the young people in front of him and started to shed tears and cried as he told them how suffering he and his friends were when they were still young due to the difficult situation enforced them to join the army in order to contribute to the independence of the country. The young people were surprised to hear his speech and almost burst out to laugh but because the old veteran is a very well respected man in their village, they could only keep calm and stared at him silently until he finished his speech which was responded with a big applause around the tent.

When the old man returned to his place, he indeed noticed that the young people were holding their laugh towards him while he was speaking. He got curious and asked a local young boy about the nature of celebration as when he came hi did not manage to ask about the event and just went straight giving his speech. The boy told him that it is Valentine party, a party for young people to celebrate love and friendship.

The old man suddenly felt angry to the people of the party. Yet he also felt embarrassed as he actually has misunderstood the celebration as a tribute to the FALINTIL day, the Timorese army forces (today transformed to F-FDTL- the Timorese defense forces) which he has joint during resistance period since 1975. But the most annoying thing for him is because the word Valentine and FALINTIL sounds almost similar in Tetum.

*Tetum = Tetum is one of the national languages along with Portuguese as official languages in Timor-Leste. Most Timorese people speak Tetum.

VZ. Dili, 17 February 2017. 

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