Life is Fragile

By Hanne

At the beginning of August, three years have gone by from the most significant turning point in my life. An event that so evidently divides my life and me into a time of before and after. Hanne I was in early 2018 no longer exists, and that is why that turning point is still relevant to me. This post takes you back to the time and events that made me realize that life is fragile. I originally wrote the post fresh in August 2018, and you can read it now. I have edited the original text a bit.

Life is fragile

I started writing this blog post a little over two weeks ago, but for some reason, I couldn’t finish it then. Now I can. The rest of my writing turned out to be a little different than I had imagined, though. 😢 The beginning of this writing is written when I had lived in Indonesia for two weeks. And it only came to an end when I had already returned to Finland.

I have lived on the small Indonesian island called Gili Air for about two weeks now. While sitting on the beach last week, I realized that my biggest dream has now come true. I have dreamed of working under the Asian sun, teaching yoga while enjoying the seascape and the warm weather.

I teach yoga six days a week (about 7-10 hours) at the H2O Yoga and Meditation Center. In addition to this, my job description includes two hours of karma yoga daily, which covers my living in the center.

While I have been here, I have paused, thinking the same thing over and over. That thought took over me like a tsunami after being on the island for a couple of days. I sat by the sea and realized that everything I had ever dreamed of has now come true. And with that thought, I felt immense happiness. But… What happens when all the biggest dreams come true? Do I have to think about new (a) goals? I threw this concern at my friend, and she said that now all I need to do is live my dream; no new dreams are required. ❤

Every day on this island is like a dream to me. My gaze lingers in the ocean, and I almost have to pinch myself to realize this is true. All the events and how I ended up here have been so unreal, and it all happened so very suddenly.

The Decision to Stay in Indonesia

After a two-week stay, I started to feel at home on the island. Yet restless and uncertain about whether I want to spend the next seven months of my life there. I was sure it was about finding routines and thereby also settling on the island in a certain way. To me, it was about going to the gym, doing my own yoga practice, and studying more about yoga. Still, I felt strangely restless.

On Sunday, August 5, 2018, after exactly one month on the island, I discussed my own continuation at the center with my boss, and we agreed to continue as a teacher with them for the next seven months. It meant I would have more responsibility for teaching on retreats and workshops. I admit that even after this discussion, I was not entirely sure of my decision. However, I thought it is only about seven months. And it would be a truly unique opportunity for me to teach yoga, as I got to do what I had dreamed of the most; teach daily.

I had presumably caught on heatstroke the day before, and on that Sunday night, I was wondering that I should eat something after a day of nausea, even though I was still feeling a little odd. At half-past seven in the evening, I went cycling to one of my favorite restaurants. When I arrived at the restaurant yard, I realized it was closed.

Annoyed, I headed to the seaside, where the staff at my favorite coffee shop shouted a greeting to me and wondered where I had been since I hadn’t visited them for a couple of days. I continued my journey along the beach to the other end of the island cause I had an urge for French fries. And with a solid month of experience, I knew where to find the best French fries on the island. I sat on the beach to eat, even though the wind on the beach felt strangely strong and cold. I ate my fries thinking that they didn’t taste delicious after all.

The Connection to the Outside world Disappears

When I left the beach, I realized I had to go to the grocery store. I was still feeling bad, and I hoped Sprite would help. I drove past the island’s “supermarket” Siti Shop and noticed it was closed. Damn, why every place has to be closed today? I wondered. The next store, just a hundred meters away, was open, and there I ended up eyeing through the selection of drinks, not being able to decide on what I eventually wanted.

After a while, the building started to shake, I immediately realized what was happening, and I ran to the door, thinking that it must be safe there. Fortunately, the clerk tore me out of the building. The earthquake seemed to last a long time and intensify all the time. Later someone said it lasted a minute. I don’t know about it, but it was tough. It shook a little at first and then insidiously hardened. My bike flew to the ground. And after a while, the whole island went dark due to the power outage. After that, the ground beneath me moved so strongly that I also flew to my knees on the ground. And then suddenly there was nothing.

I crawled up, took my bike, and dug the phone out of my bag to get the light. Fortunately, I had time to send one message to Finland, saying that we had a severe earthquake and I am ok. After a while, the phones no longer worked at all.

Where are we safe?

The distance home was about 200 meters, and there was minor chaos on the way. The concrete fence of a building had fallen onto the street. The buildings were damaged. Outside of a store, the clerk cried inconsolably. I stopped to ask if everything was ok? She replied that she is ok, but she is worried about her mother. I tried to comfort her by saying that his mother was probably fine and not to worry.

I wanted to take the bike home. Yon from our Good Earth Cafe was on the street showing me light to see the H2O yard and said it wasn’t safe to go further into the center’s area now. I turner around and came across Jeneva, my colleague, teacher, who arrived at our center just a few days earlier. Jeneva had injured her leg and had no shoes. It turned out she had been inside the H2O main building when the quake began. The roof of her room had collapsed inward so that she had had difficulty getting out of the building.

Holding tightly into each other, we headed to our neighbor’s yard, where there were others, both locals and tourists. Sitting in that yard, we experienced the first of hundreds of aftershocks. With fearful feelings, we wondered if an electric pole on the street would fall on us.

What if there is going to be a Tsunami?

After a while, I heard our boss Jon’s voice from the direction of H2O. We went to chat with him. Jon said there is a small hill about 100m from the road and that he knew some people had gone there to be “safe.” He offered to show us the way.

Our island is almost flat, and this tiny hill was just a small little hillock, yet that open place felt like the right place to stay. That field was full of people; I also found my friend Becci and our yoga teacher Clare from the hill. We quickly decided to spend the night on a hill, which I later heard was a cow’s pasture. 😉

At times, we admired the starry sky and countless shooting stars. Soon we were amazed by the silence that surrounded us on the island. The island is usually never quiet, and at least the roosters roar along at night. Then, horse neigh broke silence on the island, which made us wonder what those animals had sensed. Then it was so quiet again.

After a while, we heard the waves rushing, clearly thinking quietly that hopefully, the water level doesn’t rise and approach us as a tsunami. At times, the silence which surrounded us was broken by the barking of dogs on the island of Lombok. Our concern, among other things, was the temperature of the night, which we feared to drop below 20 degrees, which the shorts and top on top might feel a little cold.

Clare and Becci decided to visit their home to get the blankets for us. After that, we settled on a round sarong about 1.2 m in diameter to sleep, all four of us. There were aftershocks all the time, and between them, you could feel the earth still shaking and moving. It wasn’t stagnant at all. Still, we all managed to sleep that night.

A New Day has come

As the sun rose, everyone made their way up the hill. We headed to Becci and Clare’s apartments. When we got there, it became clear to us that those buildings could collapse at any moment, so we decided with Jeneva to head straight back to H2O to gather our stuff.

The H2O was still standing, but the main building was severely damaged. I gathered my stuff from my room in the yard, and after that, we sat down for morning tea. Becci joined us after a while, chatting with guests and making plans to move in the direction of Lombok. I, on the other hand, wasn’t sure what I would do.

I have to say I was numb. I didn’t say anything because I couldn’t. Fortunately, Becci shook me and forced me to make decisions in the name of my well-being and even to save my own life. I packed my bags, said goodbye to my boss and other friends, and then headed to the harbor. There was chaos along the way; a hotel under construction had some significant cracks on the walls, collapsed buildings, fearful people, and dead bodies.

There was also chaos in the harbor as everyone waited for the boat off the island. We waited for probably about two hours before we finally got ourselves into the boat. Unfortunately, I have to say that under the unusual circumstances, some parties also smelled the opportunity to make money. And our despair and panic were also rampantly exploited. It, among other things, was so super sad to prove. A boat trip, which generally costs 12,000 rupees, now costs 50,000. In Lombok, the situation was no better in terms of getting help. The Foreign Ministry’s instructions were to inquire about the situation from local authorities, but since the local police did not speak any English, we were left to cope on our own. And they also acted in a way that they really didn’t care. We continued our journey, looking for a bus in the direction of the airport.

In Kuta Lombok without towels 😉

Along the way, we were offered private transport for Rs 1.5 million per person (usually this costs Rs 350,000 to Rs 500,000). Finally, however, we found a bus to the airport that we also had the opportunity to fit into. We continued our journey to Kuta Lombok from the airport, where Becci had vacationed a week earlier. At this point in the day, we thought we had earned good coffees.

At the coffee cup, we were thinking about our next move. Or Becci was, as I desperately tried to find a flight out of Lombok to Bali; to anywhere actually. The connection in the cafe was poor, and I had also asked my Balinese friend to search me a flight. She also told me I was welcome to come and stay with them in Bali. Finally, after about an hour of searching, I found a flight to Kuala Lumpur the next night. In the meantime, Becci had found us an accommodation the next night, and we headed to check its condition the next.

The room was on the first floor of a two-story building, which made us a little wary of the situation—the earthquakes and aftershocks in our minds. We investigated the cracks in our room walls carefully, deciding that it was a good enough place for us to sleep.

Towels became an issue for this accommodation. 😉 We asked the staff for towels and were told that all the towels are in the laundry and that we would receive fresh towels the next day. When you haven’t taken a shower in a couple of days and slept on a cow pasture, this may not be the thing you want to hear. When towels could not be promised to us with absolute certainty, we decided to continue our journey to the next place.

Place to Stay and clean towels

The following accommodation was in a bit challenging distance away, in the middle of a local village. When we arrived, it became clear that the place was fully booked and unfortunately, there were no rooms. However, there was one building in the same yard, from which we were able to bargain a room for Rs 150,000. This deal also included clean towels. 😊

We settled into the house, aware of the aftershocks that occasionally trembled under our feet. And, we couldn’t help but laugh when we realized there was a mosque in the same courtyard, which would mean waking up after five in the morning to a call to prayer. However, we were happy that the building was on one floor, and we didn’t find any cracks (I may never look at the buildings again the same way as before).

When we settled to sleep in the evening, we had placed all our belongings next to the door pre-packaged, in case we were in a hurry to leave. A few more powerful aftershocks quickly woke us from our sleep stepping outside to the yard. The locals in the yard district were also out but gradually moved inside, and we did the same. We agreed that maybe we slept in shifts the next night, just in case. After two in the morning, we decided that perhaps we would just sleep. Our experience was so exhausting that Becci didn’t even hear the mosque’s call to prayer, and I also heard just the first few moments of it.

At the dawn of the new day, I was still not quite sure which way to go next, but in the end, I booked a flight to Finland for Friday night. At two in the afternoon, we headed to the airport. Becci was scheduled to fly to Bali, and I was to head to Kuala Lumpur in the evening. We came across a few acquaintances at the airport, siblings who slept on the hill on Gili Air right next to us. And a couple we encountered at some point amid all the chaos. It was evident that we all have only one goal in mind, to get home safely.

Kuala Lumpur

When I finally got safely to the hotel in Kuala Lumpur, I burst into tears. Not just because I was safe from earthquakes (hopefully) but because I didn’t know what the situation was for so many of my acquaintances.

The first thing that came to my mind was a boy serving in our H2O cafe who left in Lombok a couple of days before the quake because he was sick. And I have no information about his condition or the condition of his family. Also, of course, I was worried about the other boys in the cafe, who always got me in such a good mood with their funny jokes and attitude, which I often didn’t even understand because of the language barrier, but their good feelings just grabbed me as well.

I was also thinking about the boys and girls of Orong Village who took care of my daily caffeine needs—always serving me with a smile on their faces. And who always remembered to ask how I was doing, even when I had just passed them riding on my bicycle. Our fruit seller Hati, who came to work on the island from Lombok every day. A family from Warung ZZZ restaurant who prepared my daily curry portion and whose living room was the dining room. The boys from Musa Cookery, whose “Hello Finland, how are you?”, I can still hear in my head. Not to mention hundreds of other beautiful people I didn’t even have time to meet. Virtually everyone working on the island was from Lombok, and I can only hope that all my acquaintances are alive and that they will survive this. ❤

I spent a couple of days in Kuala Lumpur, staying in a hotel room, sleeping most of the time. During those days, I was only able to eat crackers. And with their strength, in time, I also survived the rest of the trip to Finland.

Trust in Life

I also brought this post here to my new blog for a reason. Because these events have shaped me as a person the most, they really made me understand the limitations of life.

As I read the text afterward, I clearly remember how I dealt with death in those moments. I wondered if my time to leave this world is now, then I just have to accept it. I have returned to this realization after the quake as well during moments when fear of death has been present. Always ending up with the same conclusion; if it is my time to leave now, I must accept it.

I also remember afterward that I had strong confidence in life under the starry sky three years ago. I trusted life so strongly back then, and I still do.