Yesterday morning we left the small family village
of Puala Bali, 1 of Puala Banyak's
main islands off the NW coast of Sumatra in the
beautiful mysterious Indian Ocean. I was happy to
have been there-seeing such an ideal example of simple village life (the 2000
people that lived on this small island said they were one big family) and being
able to swim and watch the sun set in the Indian Ocean
for the first time. Yet, I was ready to leave considering the 2004
Tsunami destroyed the island and the people live quite primitively, 95% of them
being uneducated fisherman, the sanitation of the island was quite poor, sewage
lined the streets and our bed in the losmen for $3 was covered in black
mold. I found myself praying often that we would leave this beautiful
place disease free.
We took a wooden long boat back to the mainland, traveling with several
other passengers and 1000s of fish, packed tightly into plastic crates upon
which we sat and slept upon for the duration of the trip (about 4 hours).
Beside me sat a devote Muslim man who twice during the journey took off his
shoes, laid out a piece of blue plastic, folded his sweater up and bent down on
his knees to pray, bowing his forehead frequently to the floor and raising his
hands up beside him in reverence to our God. When he finished his face
glew and the peace inside of me intensified.
The boat ride was long, but I wish it would have been longer. The
water was perfectly still, reflecting the colors of the clouds and sky and
sparkling under the afternoon sun. The sea breeze was perfect and the
smell of fish seemed to fade away.
Most of the passengers fell asleep, leaving me alone with the ocean and my
book. I'm reading The Musicians and the Servants by Carolyn North who
paints a vivid portrait in my mind of what life is like for some of Northern
India’s poorest-the servants. As she poetically writes of
her experience there as a nurse India's
culture becomes alive in my mind.
After finishing the first half of the book I set it down and sat on the edge
of the boat starring out to a sea that connects me to India-Africa-and out into
the wider world and my mind was awakened even more to the diverse world we live
in.
The past few weeks in Indonesia
have stimulated my mind, painting a beautiful collage before me of a world so
different, yet also so much the same. I have felt that my observations
and experiences have shed light onto things I've learned in the past centering
around religion, balance, poverty, justice and injustice and finally
faith. Yet at the same time this light has only revealed more questions
and a mind awakened, hungry to learn and experience more.
