Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Of course I was fucking crazy when I lived in Dili, in East Timor. But anyone who has been a volunteer aid worker in the country will tell you, everyone goes crazy in Timor. I’ve heard about volunteer groups in other developing countries who organised party weekends and slept around like mad with locals and got right into the cheap, cheap drugs. Not me. I just had a fuckload of time on my own to find out I was shit at harmonica, get ring worm from patting the house puppy and struggle with my PTSD from being abandoned in a developing country by my boyfriend and getting chucked out of my house by my arsehole neighbour-landlords.
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Kate Olivieri writes about shit she can’t believe happens in real life, except it happens to her, so she faithfully records it so you can be equally dumbfounded. She can be found retweeting like a fiend on Twitter @kateolivieri, sporadically writing about life in Lismore, NSW at www.kateolivieri.com and writing about aforementioned shit she can’t believe happens at http://practicalempath.tumblr.com. The above snippet of writing is about her year working as an Australian Volunteers International volunteer in the Government of East Timor.