When I feel the earth move under my feet

When we’re centred, balanced, sensible and strong in our journeys – in our space – we’re said to be ‘grounded’.

There’s a reason for this. 

The ground. It is meant to be our rock. The earth, solid beneath us. When we jump up and down, or walk forever on its pathways, when we slump to the ground in prayer or surrender, or when we collapse on the floor in pain or fear – we know it in our bones that the earth is there for us.

When we fly we are always a little relieved to touch back down to earth. When we get off a boat, it’s nice to feel solid ground beneath our feet. It’s something that is secure and constant in our lives. It’s our foundation. Our support.

So many disasters befall us during our lives. The loss of our loved ones. Betrayals, accidents and illnesses. Natural disasters like typhoons and floods. Droughts and bushfires. All traumatic. All damaging and destroying.

I write now of the other terrifying experience. When the ground, our support, our solidity, fails us.

When all around you is shaking and roaring, when people are screaming and running, when concrete is falling and glass is shattering.

But you can’t hold onto anything at all to help you balance.

You can’t even fall to your knees for support. Because the ground is shaking so vigorously, the ground is the scary monster this time…

Our evening started so peacefully. It was my cousin Laura’s last night with us so we decided to watch the sunset at one of her favourite warungs on the beach.

The ocean was like glass. The sun set softly and uneventfully in a pastel sky. We sat for a while enjoying the peace and the dying light.

But, as I’ve come to learn in this journey called life, you just never know what’s around the very next corner.

An hour or so later, after Made had beaten us easily at the pool table in a restaurant nearby, we’d just sat down to dinner. The lights went out.

This happens often here and I knew the restaurant had a generator. I clearly remember thinking ‘the generator will kick in, in a moment…’

But it didn’t. Instead the world started shaking really hard. I don’t even remember how I got out. I know I didn’t consciously register anything.

I didn’t think, ‘oh it’s an earthquake’. I didn’t consider my options for crawling under a table or standing in a door frame. I was petrified, but the screams and energy of the staff and other people in the restaurant must have been what made me move. In pitch black darkness we all scrambled out of the restaurant and onto the little pathway outside. The ground was shaking so vigorously, the roof made a roaring noise and beautiful concrete Balinese sculptures fell around us. 

If it wasn’t for the fact that I’d felt the smaller earthquake the week before, when the beach swayed beneath my feet, but this was entirely different. The ground shaking beneath you for 20 seconds or so is a long time to be freaked out. It felt like doomsday, like something even worse was coming to get us.

Out the front of the restaurant I saw Laura, the staff screaming still, and a few tourists holding on to each other. But no Made.

I screamed out to him and he just appeared, walking calmly out to meet us. He told me much later that he’d tried to run but bumped into people so he went out the side instead and tried to climb over the fence; unsuccessfully, as his leg hurt too much and failed him. Then the shaking slowed down and he walked out to join us.

At the time we just held each other for a good while. We could feel the earth still moving under our feet.

I looked down and realised

I still had my can of coke in my hand. My hand was also shaking. I hadn’t let go of it. Strange how the body works.

I guess by then it was starting to really sink in – that it’d been a big one. Everyone was terrified. Was it over? Where we safe to walk on this moving ground? We were about 20 metres from the beach – were we safer to go there? Away from buildings? Or would there be a tsunami, should we move inland….

A few people had already looked on their phones to see it was a 7.0 magnitude, just off the coast of Lombok. So very close to us.

My handbag was inside the restaurant, plus my flip-flops… by the light of my phone torch I rushed carefully inside on my bare-feet and grabbed them, fearing for my life.

We decided we had to go home and check on our staff and guests.

Riding the ten minutes home in the dark was surreal. Already then, the surreality had started (two weeks later that hasn’t yet stopped).

Two metre high, 50cm wide concrete walls lay at our feet across the pathways. There was water everywhere, as five metre high concrete towers had fallen with their water tanks crashed and broken on the ground.

My bike lost its chain so I skateboarded on the pedal the last km home. Adrenalin was driving me. I just remembered thinking shit, oh shit, oh shit, all the way home.

When we reached home our guests and staff were standing out the front. Ryan was beside himself with fear, blurting out “I go to Lombok tomorrow Bu, Lombok tomorrow!!! My grandma hurt…”

We learnt that the wall in our upstairs bathroom had blown out. Completely. My passport was up there. It was suddenly my most important material belonging. Insanely I clambered up the stairs of our house again by the light of my phone torch, stepping over huge concrete slabs. I grabbed my passport and slipped back out the door Made was holding open for me. I didn’t think to grab my iPad and my phone charger in the kitchen downstairs. I only thought to pick up a bag of sarongs to help cover us and keep us warm.

When we came back some people were rushing past telling everyone to gather on the football field; there was a tsunami warning.

My mind was telling me… surely not, probably half an hour had passed, surely a tsunami would’ve hit by now.

The tsunami fear was real, despite me managing to communicate with Gus who’d sussed it all out on google… the tsunami warning was for 17cm ‘only’, and it would’ve hit us within minutes… but I couldn’t convince those around me. Almost all the locals are Muslims. Sur, Made’s sister who worked for us, sat beside me holding her Koran, praying in a dull monotone. She couldn’t stop shaking. Laura was holding onto Ryan, who was still looking like a rabbit in headlights. She wanted us to climb a tree. By now there was maybe a couple of hundred people on the field with us.

The locals sat in groups, singing in prayer.

I saw an expat I know, she was inconsolable. Her house – a brand new, modern home – had collapsed around her and she’d been hit on the head with something as she tried to escape with her two year old daughter. She was screaming and moaning with fear and shock. Later, she started blacking out and vomiting and a man yelled out looking to see if there was a doctor in the crowd. I held her and massaged her temples.

Still later, a man stood up and announced that the tsunami warning had been rescinded. An audible groan and sigh and crying spread across the locals. The man recommended that all people were to stay on the field overnight, as buildings could be unsafe, and aftershocks would continue.

Each time the earth shook that night, and it was often, we cried and held onto each other for dear life, and the people around cried and prayed.

Eventually, knowing I couldn’t sleep on the rough hard grass stalks in the field with all those people still terrified of a tsunami, we opted to go home. We felt it’d be safe there. Our bungalows were ok.

It was all like a movie. The island was almost emptied within a few days, with only 12 expats left behind. The days progressed with the focus being mainly on helping each other and keeping each other company.

On the 9th, we were with a friend cleaning his restaurant kitchen when a big aftershock hit us. 6,2. Big enough to make the ground roar and to hear a massive crumbling of concrete somewhere behind us. Everyone ran out of the building. I was already outside, dumping smelly compost rubbish. Again I couldn’t see Made. Fear gripped my heart. “MADE!” I called out, as I ran back to the others. MADE!!! One of our friends sang out to me that he was ok. And then I saw him behind the group.

For a week I felt the earth below me shaking, often. Not sure if it was in my mind, or if it was real. Apparently that’s a syndrome. Like feeling the ground rocking after you’ve been on a boat. The instability continues in our bodies, in our balance centres, in our energetics, for quite some time after you’ve experienced such a massive earthquake.

I now have fear of loud noises to add to my list of anxieties. Every time someone coughs actually, I jump. Still today, two weeks on. But much moreso with loud noises. Like when bottles rattle inside a fridge door after you close it. Or someone’s footsteps. A boat going in the distance. These are loud. It’s all relative. I haven’t recalibrated yet. My heart races, I sweat, I have to tell myself to breathe through the fear.

The energy expended on subconscious fear during the first week or so was exhausting. We ran on adrenalin. The second week lethargy set in, and sleep was needed. Unfortunately just behind our garden gazebo where we set up our sleeping camp, our local villagers chose to set up their community camp (they have a great view into our open upstairs bathroom where my bikini and towel still hang).

We had no power or water for 6 days, so bed times were early. But the camp behind us had a loud generator running till midnight or later, and before dawn the people woke loudly, children playing and yelling as they do, men talking. I have trouble sleeping at the best of times so this was very hard for me, adding to my exhaustion.

People said I should leave for a couple of days and take a break. But Made wouldn’t leave our cats. And I couldn’t leave him. We stuck it out, the two of us, and soon made firm connections with a handful of other expats and their partners who’d also decided to stay. We didn’t want to leave our home when the island was virtually abandoned.

Each day consisted of charging our phones at a friend’s place who had solar, sharing stories, support and food. Washing and cleaning. Everything done outside between dawn and dusk. Feeding animals. Communicating with family, and with all the cancellations of guests who’d booked to stay throughout August, the absolute busiest month of our year.

Eventually the aftershocks died down (or so I thought). I started walking and breathing normally again, most of the time. Every now and then I felt the earth moving, but learnt to look at a glass of water to check if it was real. We got up the courage to walk into our kitchen to retrieve some food and things. We started to clean. Made cooked for anyone and everyone who came by, or who popped in.

We fed abandoned pigeons and started helping my friends go around the island to feed all the starving cats (with no tourists eating fish in the restaurants the cats miss out on all the scraps and are now getting very hungry).

But it’s two weeks on and just when we were starting to think we could move on and focus on finding some normality, on Saturday night we had another four small aftershocks. The wood around me shook, the roof rustled, the windows rattled. Just a couple of seconds each, but enough to put my heart rate through the roof once again and stop me from sleeping.

Sunday, another tremble, followed four minutes later by a bigger one. 6,3 apparently. It scared us once again. Even after the vigorous shaking stops the ground still sways for a while.

And then that night, again a Sunday, just as I was finishing writing this account, we were shaken out of our beds well and good by another big one. 6,9 or something – I’ve lost track of how much each of them have been, but it went for absolutely ages. Not so vigorous as the 5th August biggie, but strong shuddering swaying. There are no words to describe the strange sensation. To me, it feels like the ground is going to break open and suck us down into it’s depths.

And Made? He just stays calm throughout, tells me not to panic, tells me it’s ok, we are safe.

I can only imagine the fear it puts into those on Lombok, surrounded by pure rubble and total devastation, with the loss of more than 460 of their family and friends. 460 dead people, just kilometres from us.

I’ve wondered a lot these past two weeks why the mere fact of the earth shaking, fills us with such dread. It’s not simply the fear of things falling on top of us and killing us. I think it is also, simply and profoundly, because of the fundamental truth that the earth is meant to hold us. And if you can’t even trust the ground you walk, sit or lie on… it makes you question what, if anything, you can rely on, and makes you even question reality itself. Just like buildings collapse when their concrete walls and foundations break, it isn’t something we question and reason with at the time it’s happening. It just happens within our bodies; when the ground fails us, so do our nervous systems.

I write this story in the memory of Masjuni, our friend in Lombok, one of the kindest, most honourable and lovely men you could ever meet. May he be resting in peace 🙏🏽.