Penny for your Travels

I sat on the back of his bike, holding on tight as he squealed around the corners, dodged potholes and intuitively slowed down just enough so I could hold up my camera and capture the reflection of the sun in the rice paddies.

Eventually his twisting and turning and dodging and winding came to a stop, under a lean-to held up by bamboo with a roof of sunburnt palm leaves. Climbing off the bike we’d rented for 50.000 rupiah from a suspicious-looking teen on the main street, my feet sank into the warm, white sand.

The water stretched out for hundreds of miles in front of us, and out from the beach, waves crashed into the reef that protected the private little cove from the might of the Indian Ocean.

Slipping off the sarong I’d purchased earlier from a lady who’d balanced a baby on her hip and the parcel of the bright fabrics on her head, I ran into the empty water, crashing and splashing like a child who’d never seen the sea before.

I relaxed in the shallows, eyes chasing translucent fish, as he sat on the shore, watching the sunset over the hill to the west of the cove. Just as I was about to join him on the sand, seven small Sasak children ran over the hill at full speed, into the ocean.

They giggled and squealed as they splashed around, thinking they were completely alone, until the tallest girl looked up and saw me.

‘Bulai!’ (White person!) She cried, with a gasp of excitement. Her group of tiny companions stopped what they were doing and stared for a moment, as if they’d never seen a white girl swimming on their beach before.

‘Selamat siang,’ (good afternoon) I said to them, and waved.

Ignoring the fact that I was a stranger swimming in their place, they bound over to me, grabbing at my arms, jumping off my shoulders, using broken English to invite me to join in their games.

We played, and as the last rays of light dipped behind the hills, the shadow of a woman appeared on the crest. She called to the children, and as quickly as they had come, they were gone.

I’ll never forget the day I learnt that acceptance can be as easy as a smile or a ‘hello’.

Those children could have ignored me, or screamed and run away. Instead they asked me to play, looking past my pale skin and strange accent.

If only it could be that simple for the rest of us.