Sensory Overload

I should have come home one week earlier. If I had, my only stories would have been of beautiful, crystal-clear, warm water; flawless turquoise barrels and palm-fringed, white sandy beaches.

Maybe add in a couple of grueling ferry rides, the never-ending search for nutritious food on the islands, a few festering reef cuts here and there, the two weeks of constant rain in August, the rats, the mosquitoes, Californian charger Tyler Rootlieb – without ever asking any money – just giving me one of his nearly brand new boards when I had nothing left to ride; the time we put a crab in my German neighbor’s tent – which unintentionally resulted in him being eaten alive by sand flies all night – that flat and lazy Sunday afternoon when we all got on it, not caring that the Bintangs were about as warm when we drank them as they were when they left our bodies…

But I hadn’t left early. I changed plans and stayed until the bitter end, unwilling to swap this Indonesian island surf fantasy for a new life of university education. Higher education, jobs and a proper career could wait yet another year. Little had I known, that the final week of my prolonged mission would give me a story I won’t forget for as long as I walk this precious, beautiful and sometimes angry, Earth.
At the time things were looking great. One week to go, with a solid south swell forecast for the last few days. After this I’d have to spend two days in Padang before flying out, which I was actually looking forward to after so long enduring the most basic of living conditions.

I had met a distinguished crew of guys, all hardcore solo travelers, who were keen to charter a local dugout and go camping on an uninhabited island in the northern Mentawais for a few days. It was a daring and challenging mission, which would prove to be the icing on the cake for an already memorable journey. Apart from some minor difficulties, the types of things that always seem to go wrong on these kinds of endeavors, it all seemed to be going our way.

First we got a teaser of the prime righthander in the area – some long round barrels over very shallow reef that unfortunately weren’t always makeable that day. Aussie Chad paid the price when the razor sharp coral claimed a good chunk out of the ball of his right hand. The next morning the swell had come up even more and the wind had shifted. One of the lefts was offshore and pumping, and the high tide made the racy tubes reasonably approachable, which meant we had to share the goods with surfers from a couple of charter boats. When we returned from a lengthy lunch-break back at camp, however, only one boat remained in the channel. It was glassy by now, breaking top to bottom and, incredibly, there was nobody out.

We couldn’t believe our luck…until we saw the reason why it was empty – intimidating boils everywhere and parts of the amazingly alive reef sticking out of the water only meters from where chunky lips were impacting in the flats. With waves like this going by unridden though, no one out of our select bunch could justify any further hesitation, so we soon found ourselves trading waves and pushing each other deeper as the session unfolded, hearts in mouths every time a new set showed on the horizon. Pure magic!

Then, perhaps an hour and a half into our surf, I noticed something happening on the ridiculously shallow inside, which we had previously named the Pinball Section. Rod, nicknamed the “big friendly giant” for his towering height and close to 100 kilos, as well as his ever-lasting good mood and the perpetual smirk on his face, was lying on his board at the edge of the impact zone, limp, like a sack of rice. Marco, who had taken to shooting photos after a scary wipeout earlier in the session, had jumped out of the boat and was frantically swimming towards him. The tender from the last charter boat remaining in the channel, was also trying to get to Rod without getting caught by a set.

Clearly Rob had done some damage. He was having serious trouble moving and was unable to get himself out of further harm’s way. We later learned that Rod had pulled into a barrel and eventually got sucked over the falls. The lip had driven him into the reef, where he’d landed on his butt. Apart from numerous cuts to his body’s best cushioned parts and his feet, the impact had done something to his spine about halfway up his back, which left him in excruciating pain, not feeling his legs and barely able to breathe or move his upper body at all.

Now what to do? Here we were with a potentially major spinal injury, stranded in the middle of nowhere in a tiny dugout canoe, probably days from the nearest x-ray machine and professional medical help. At the best of times we were crammed into our trusty hollowed-out tree like sardines in a can. Finding enough room to lay Rod down while getting him back to the ferry port, from where transport back to Padang could be organized, was out of the question. We needed to find an alternative, some way to get him out of there and back to civilization, laying down flat to prevent any further spinal damage.

As luck would have it, a 30ft fishing boat was anchored up in the bay nearby, preparing for a night’s work at sea. When he saw our predicament the boat’s captain, a heavy-set friendly fellow with a weathered face, immediately agreed to sail three hours to the nearest ferry port. Ignoring work commitments, he dropped everything to help us out, and all for a very fair price, barely enough to cover the cost of fuel.
A lot of things, large and small, have gone wrong during my five trips to Indonesia, close to a year spent there altogether. Again and again, though, I have encountered this unconditional readiness to help; in fact it has been a recurring experience. Indonesia is a crazy, far-out country. The ubiquitous chaos, anarchy and public mayhem can be mind-blowing for first-time visitors and even for well-seasoned travelers. Everyday situations can become demanding adventures in the blink of an eye. Often it feels like the next scam or rip-off is waiting just around the corner; someone’s always trying to get a buck out of a wandering surfer, often testing the grey areas between making an honest profit and openly robbing you. Add in fears of extremist Muslims and terrorism fed by the western media, and the largest Muslim country in the world can seem like a daunting place. But as any hardened Indo traveler will tell you: despite all the disorder and negative propaganda, the vast majority of Indonesians are genuinely good and compassionate people.

The mighty 7.6 magnitude earthquake struck West Sumatra at 5.15 in the afternoon, three days later when Rod, Marco and I were sitting in the lounge of Maranatha losmen back in Padang. We were each doing our own thing – reading, writing, playing the guitar – when the earth began to tremble violently. We looked up. Our eyes met, questioning for merely an instant. The next moment the three of us were scrambling over each other, nearly tripping, falling, stumbling, floundering, running out into the street. No more than three seconds later we were in the middle of the road, sidestepping so as not to get knocked off our feet. The noise was deafening. A thunderous roar was drowning out everything else, the shattering of glass, people screaming in fear and panic. The ground shook ferociously, along some invisible axis, it felt, not in random directions. Everything I had believed to be rock solid suddenly proved to be highly elastic. Waves were rolling across the asphalt road we were standing on like it was water, only faster than ocean waves. All I registered was just peripheral vision. My eyes were fixed on a point in the street in front of me, concentrating hard on staying upright.

Rod, who had been diagnosed with a fractured L1 (lumbar) vertebrae the previous day, was struggling and calling for help. Marco and I had to brace him, which gave us all more stability.

Then suddenly it was over. The whole thing had lasted no more than 15-20 seconds – no time at all, but it had felt like an eternity.

I looked up and looked around. People were scrambling to their feet. Most had ended up on all fours. One guy had apparently got knocked off his motorbike and was licking his wounds. Rod was in pain, but said he was alright. Fiona, a Scottish girl staying at our losmen was trembling, sheer terror in her eyes. A cloud of brown dust was hanging in the air at one end of our street. The road was cracked. There was smoke coming out of the house directly opposite.
Someone muttered the word ‘tsunami’. The horrifying memories from the Boxing Day Tsunami flooded in. It made sense, and if there was a tidal wave coming, time was of the essence. Tsunamis travel at great speed and with the tremors being this intense it felt like we must be close to the epicenter. I rushed inside to grab my camera, wallet and passport. The relatively new losmen building was now in a dire state. Windows were shattered, there was glass and debris everywhere, the tiled floor was heavily cracked and uneven. I had to kick in the door to my room where the back wall was now half a foot away from the structural beams and daylight was pouring in. It was cracked diagonally along its entire width. The bathroom ceiling had collapsed and water was gushing down from the first floor.

It had been less than a minute but when I came back outside the building across the street was being consumed by a raging fire, scorching flames angrily devouring what moments ago had been a family’s home, thick black smoke billowing towards the overcast sky. The owners were watching helplessly. We ran. Or at least we tried to since Rod with his broken back was slowing us down considerably, limping along as best as he could. People were rushing everywhere; mothers with their children; a barefooted man with no shirt leading his wrinkled grandmother by the hand, a stern but calm look on her face; a group of girls in school uniform; worried-looking men on motorbikes.

Not everyone was heading for the hill on the other side of the river though, where masses of people were already crowding the steep slopes. Almost as many were rushing into the city center, presumably to find family members. We followed a narrow footpath and steep steps and found ourselves a spot on the patio of a private home hugging the hillside, relieved to be in relative safety. The family there welcomed us, telling us to stay, spend the night if we wanted to. Strikingly there were no men around, only three generations of women and the children. One of them was wailing and inconsolable, it was a heartbreaking sight. Everybody else was shaken up, too, spooked by the ferocity of what just occurred. We watched in silence as the sky over Padang darkened with the smoke of numerous burning buildings. Plenty of other buildings had partially or fully collapsed. How many people were trapped under rubble at this moment? How many had lost wives, husbands, parents, children? The thought was hard to bear…

We decided to head back into the city, to check on our friends and to see what we could do to help. Most of the people we knew had already gathered at the losmen and fortunately nobody had been seriously hurt. A couple of young girls were in shock, but they were being looked after. Marco, TK and I ventured off towards the Ambacang, a large hotel where our friend Stacey had a room on the fourth floor. I wasn’t really too worried about her at that point, assuming that the Ambacang, being one of the best hotels in Padang, would be one of the safer places to be during the quake. That changed quickly though when we walked past Spice Homestay, another hangout popular with surfers, where people told us that the Ambacang had collapsed. Spice, once a three-storey building, had been reduced to a pile of rubble. The only reason nobody had lost their life in there was that it was mid-afternoon and no one had been on the upper floors. What if Stacey had been in her room…? I didn’t even dare to finish the thought.

When we turned the corner and saw the remains of the Ambacang my heart sank. Parts of the building’s façade appeared intact but behind it the floors and ceilings from the upper floors formed a tight sandwich. It didn’t allow for a very high chance of survival for anyone caught in between.
Soldiers were directing the traffic, but no emergency response teams appeared to be anywhere near. No sign of the fire brigade or even a single ambulance – just a crowd of onlookers that mostly stayed well clear of the ruins. No one knew what to do; there was desperation and despair in people’s eyes. Among all this overwhelming helplessness, I then experienced one of the happiest moments of my trip. We found Stacey, well and healthy, trying to help some injured people who’d managed to escape out of the collapsing building. She had been in the lobby at the time of the quake and got outside only seconds before the ceilings caved in. Many of the 200 guests and staff inside the building were buried.

The woman Stacey was looking after had been dragged from the ruins with a mangled leg and was in a dreadful condition, pale and cold from all the blood loss, drifting in and out of consciousness from the pain, throwing up from time to time. Next to her was a beaten-up looking, heavily bruised man with a broken leg which had provisionally been fixed with a crude makeshift splint made from a piece of wood. A couple of dead bodies wrapped in tarp had been laid out on the grass seemingly carelessly only a few paces away. Nobody seemed to be paying them any attention. We stayed for a while trying to help as well as we could, which to be honest wasn’t all that much due to our lack of emergency medical skills.

Then came the rain. It rained all night, pouring buckets at times, then dying off to a drizzle before increasing in intensity again. One can only imagine what some of the people trapped under merciless mountains of rubble, alive and conscious and hurt, must have gone through that night. Inconceivable. At Maranatha Losmen everybody was dealing with their demons in their own ways. Some curled up in a corner, some huddled together in small groups talking with muted voices, others were playing the guitar and singing along, drinking beer, nobody slept much. We all spent the night outside under a canopy that usually shelters the cars, so great was the fear of an aftershock during the night. The house was uninhabitable anyways.

Throughout that night, and at the airport the next day, I was lost in thought. Was it right to run like this, to just flee back to my safe little bubble in the West? Was it not my moral obligation to stay and help after what we all had just been through? Should I not at least try to support the victims of the earthquake somehow, even if my unqualified help might not really be all that useful? I have yet to find an answer to those questions, although perhaps I never will. All I know is that in the end, it sure did feel strange to be in the air, a pretty stewardess offering me a drink, while people in Padang were still fighting for their lives, and slowly starting to rebuild their homes, their shops, their neighborhoods, their city.

This story was first published in The Surfer’s Path magazine Issue 81, December, 2010