Breakfast at Didi's

by Rachael Bentham (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

Making a local connection Indonesia

There were tiny heads floating on the water. There could have been five of them, taking turns to reveal themselves to the midday sunlight. They popped up and back down again like whack-a-moles. Moments earlier, I had been lounging on a golden sanded beach in Gili Trawanga, an island off the coast of Indonesia’s Lombok. My friend and I had dubiously settled on some worn out sunbeds. Every inch of the beachfront seemed to be owned by the adjacent businesses but these had been left abandoned. Only a local lay sunning himself on a nearby lounger, a bandana covering his eyes. It was as quiet as a tropical island should be, with the exception of the twice daily prayers from the two mosques vibrating in the air above us. I should have been relaxed but my thoughts often went to battle against me. I was arguing with them when I heard the high pitched tones of a Balinese man shouting, "Look! Look! Over there!" From my anxious state I jolted up, scanning the water for tsunamis or shark attacks. He gestured urgently then ran away, returning a moment later with something dangling from his hand. "You see?" Small, pin heads of mottled green peeled out of the shallows lapping at the island’s edge. Turtles. He offered his mask out to me. "You want to snorkel? Go on, you can use". My scepticism made me wary but I accepted, telling myself I’d refuse to pay him if he asked. It transpired that Didi would do no such thing. I waded into the water and ducked under, my ears resting on the water. I was scared to fully submerge myself, scarred from childhood. The shelled creatures careened through the blue as I watched on safely from above studying their movements. Handing my snorkel back to Didi, my friend and I sat down beside him stretching out on the beds. "This is my restaurant", he told us, pointing to a shack behind us. "Do you want coffee?" Before we could answer, he ran away to his modest house tucked out of sight behind the rundown business. He returned again producing three mugs of dark liquid. Every morning after, it was breakfast at Didi’s. He told us he had lived in Sweden for a year but found it too cold. He told us of his budding business and how he was born on the island which took half an hour to walk across. "We’re going Scuba Diving tomorrow", I told him. He made a high pitched noise. "Eeehhh, you scuba dive?" The laughter rippled in his face. “No, first time tomorrow, I’m scared. I’m not a very good swimmer." It was one of many things I was scared of. "Where did you learn to dive?" I asked. He let out another squeal. “Ehhhhhh, you go, you be fine. I go scuba diving with my friend. We put on equipment and go, that’s it. All fine." I found myself catching his laughter. The following morning, my scuba dive had arrived. I stood in the shower and a great dread filled me up. My tears rolled out easily thinking of my death in a foreign ocean far away from home. I thought of Didi and his adventurous soul. I thought of the turtles, bobbing their heads into our world with calm and purpose. Later, we fell backwards off the boat into the depths of the Halik dive site. As we swam through the aquamarine water, the sun streaming through, I saw the turtles I’d been looking down upon resting near the ocean bed. This time I was one of them. Schools of fish swam over me, a tuna darted past and a manta ray threatened me as I swam past it’s coral home. My panic from earlier bubbled under the surface but I quietened it. I floated on auto-pilot and my thoughts became the sound of krill in my ears. We met Didi under the night sky for the first time that night. We passed him a letter. It thanked him for making us coffee, for the mid-morning conversation and most of all, for showing me how to break through the surface, as the turtles do.