Her Effervescence

I breathe in the smell of rain, rust and dried-up disaster. The four-wheel drive lurches back and forth as we make our way up Mount Merapi. I hold on tight, expecting our driver to floor the accelerator for a Javanese bumper car ride – volcano edition. He takes his time, resting his elbow on the windowsill.

“Jogja aman,” he tells me, as we navigate through the muddy grey terrain of solidified lava, riding over buried houses. The plastic sheet overhead keeps the pelts of rain out. He wipes the water off the windscreen with a rag, and assures us that Jogjakarta is safe, peaceful, serene.

I look out at this “mountain of fire”. Located two hours from Jogja city, the active volcano last erupted in 2010. The lava spread out more than 20 kilometers from the source, covering paddy fields, homes and stories. Now, the landscape is barren, save for a thin layer of sand and a few stray boulders.

Our old engine coughs and splutters as we drive from checkpoint to checkpoint, getting off to snap photographs. My camera registers only startling white, scenic remnants of catastrophe shrouded in mist.

Stringing together words in broken Indonesian, I let my questions punctuate the dusty air. Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he recounts the events leading up to the eruptions. After being given the King’s orders to evacuate, the villagers ran to safer sites with only the clothes on their backs.

“We now in new village there,” he says, pointing at some far-off settlement only he could see. He gestures at the skeletons of homes left behind. “Everything here – no more.”

We stand at our final stop, a “museum” that was previously home to two families. The dusty walls, splattered with “MY BELONGINGS, ALL GONE”, house singed clothes, melted coins, half of an electric guitar, and a clock that stopped at 12:05 – the exact time when the lava hit.

The skull of a cow, perched on a Suzuki Spin motorcycle, stares back at me with empty eye sockets.

He recalls how the eruptions stretched on for days, and the heat from the lava lasted for weeks. But six months later, the first patches of green grass emerged from the ground, made fertile by disaster.

The jeep lurches to a halt at base camp. We jump off with trembling knees. The solid ground and geometric architecture seem unreal. We thank him, and he sends us off back to the city with a bow, reminding us to explore everything, because Jogja aman.

The “youngsters” in the new village are making music again, we hear.