Limited edition

by Beatriz Huélamo (Germany)

Making a local connection Indonesia

The fear of fear is one of those terrible tricks of our subconscious mind. And I feared being afraid while wandering alone during the 9 months I was going to be somewhere in another meridian of the Earth. What they don’t tell you when you have this intention of traveling alone, is that it includes a magnet that will attract other people to talk to you wherever you go. It is a magic magnet, and you realize about it the more you let it work. I was in Bali. I had spent some days playing music in Amed with some local guys. One of them was Engky, who had recently settled in a wooden hut with his girlfriend and dogs. - In Lombok, look for my friend Ozi. He will take care of you! – he said. Ozi seemed very happy to get to know me. But two days before my arrival in Kuta, he stopped reading my messages. One night, passing by a bar, someone shouted at me from the terrace above: - Hey, you! Look, this is my friend Ozi! I could not believe my ears. - What?? Ozi? Ozi! This is Bea! A long-haired man sitting next to him turned around, laughing, surprised: - Bea? I cannot believe it! Come upstairs! Sorry, I could not see if you had written, my phone got broken! The magnet had worked, once more. How random was that? Surrounded by a group of Indonesians drinking beers and passing a guitar around, I had found a needle in a haystack: Ozi was a cheerful surfer, a man of the sun. When I passed the guitar to the person next to me (Ari, a friend of his), I realized he was not an ordinary guitar player: that thin long-haired man, with a full body nervous twitch, was the best. Ever. - You two will understand each other well – said Ozi. But Ari he did not speak English. We had to communicate through an online translator. Nonetheless, that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship: he offered to take me around, since I could not drive a motorbike, and he brought his friend Uki, who was able to speak English. Holding tight to Ari on the motorbike, wind on my face, through green paddy fields, mysterious mountains and pink sand beaches, made me feel sure that that experience was what I had been looking for when I decided to go traveling alone. The three of us never separated in a week. They also invited me to spend a night at their village, meeting their families and friends, eating fish over a bamboo pallet, protected from the rain. Their humble houses with no proper toilets were no less than a palace to me, and Ari’s mother had one of those smiles that reflect a whole life of struggle, mixed with the strength of the will of carrying on. Ari and me could not really talk, but we could make music. That was our universal language: no translation needed. So, we made up a song, together: “Limited edition”. About us. Two weeks after I left them, Lombok suffered a major earthquake. Ari had to stop playing music in Kuta, since there were almost no tourists. He was going to start selling his guitars for food, so I could not let that happen: I collected donations for him. I also decided to take Ari and Uki out of Lombok, to Amed. For them it was like a short holiday to escape from the trauma of the earthquake. Plus, for me, being together again meant pure happiness! There, I introduced Ari to Engky (Ozi was their common friend), who had lost his house and dogs in a fire. See, situations in Indonesia can change pretty quickly. So, the magic magnet had closed the circle. Ari told me that those days had been the best of his whole year. So were mine. We made another song, on the last day of my trip, just before coming back to Europe. It was called “Sunset blues”. The sarong he gave me as a memory of our time together was as purple and musical as the remaining colors of our last shared rays of sunshine.