escape to east flores
I spontaneously decide to go to Flores about a week before we actually leave. I know very little about the island except of course that its home to the infamous Komodo dragon. I conduct approximately 18.5 minutes of online research during the baby’s naptime and deduce that it is in fact the place for us. I am craving adventure & solitude and I can hear it calling me onto its remote secluded Indonesian shores.
I remember I’ve always been like this. I’ve always had a deep yearning to explore, ever since I was a child. The good thing about being raised by a single dad was that there was always an element of adventure in my life. We burned across Australia in our dusty Nissan Patrol, played cards late into the night, slept near mozzie infested lakes (where we all had to shovel cow shit from a nearby paddock onto the fire to keep them at bay). We didn’t camp in parks, but in places where dingoes, huge roos and giant ant hills dwelled. We played cricket, we played in creeks, we rode our bikes everywhere and from a young age I learned there was gold to be found in braving new territory. I possessed a thriving imagination that made moving from place to place easier. When I was old enough, I started travelling to places that hijacked my senses, preferring to travel alone, free to do as I pleased and never having any real fixed plans.
So same-same ….but this time with two kids in tow?!
The boys and I board our flight from Denpasar to East Flores. As soon as we land, I feel a familiar excitement in the pit of my gut. Here, we are a stand-out trio: solo mum with crazy white-haired son & loud baby in tow. We attract many stares, smiles and questions (though none in English) about what the hell we are actually doing there.
Our drive from the airport is hairy. The driver belts along the road beeping incessantly at anything in his sight including children playing, oncoming scooters and jeeps, grannies carrying their grass baskets atop their heads, unaware chickens and anything else, just to let everyone know we are coming-the-fuck-through. The seatbelt situation is below average so all I can do is breathe and repeat hati-hati to him, whilst the boys next to me happily enjoy their rocket-ride.
Miraculously unscathed and white-knuckled, we arrive at our destination. A few traditional grass huts overlook a calm bay, water clear as air. Wild jungle and a huge mountain range and volcano loom behind us. The energy is slow, deep, magnetic. Its quiet.
Yes.
This is what I had called in.
No wifi, no phone signal, no tourists, no distractions. In the midst of the New Year hype, I could think of nothing better than a place to slow down, be a hermit, recharge & reconnect.
We get settled into our beachfront digs, a little grass hut where we can see the sand underneath us through a rickety bamboo floor. Our shower is a cold running tap and we flush our toilet by pouring a little pink bucket into the bowl.
The beach before us is beautiful and alive with life. Tiny waves lick the shoreline as ubiquitous hermit crabs give the optical illusion of ground moving beneath our feet. Fishermen cast nets from tiny wooden boats, their lives, days dictated by season and tide. Not a tiny fish or crab fished goes wasted, everything captured is recycled – breathed new life as either bait or fried with lunch.
For the first couple of days I am distracted and unsettled. The cause eludes me at first until the penny drops and I realise I am withdrawing from my phone. Phone signal or wifi is roughly an hour away and although I have no intention of ‘touching base’ I can feel the addiction curiously calling me in. I mentally rationalise that perhaps there may be some dire emergency that needs tending to back home and I really should be reachable.
But as always, time has a funny way of objectively reflecting back to us exactly what we need to see, or realise. And once the withdrawals subside, I start to settle into long days that drip with life, a contentment that I had hungered for. With each sunrise, I can feel my incessant mind chatter simmer to a mere few notions and it subsequently becomes more natural to just be exactly where I am. Here. Now.
Our nicely synchronised circadian rhythms have us up at dawn and sleeping soundly just after the sun sinks. Days are whiled away swimming, exploring rock pools, discovering beautiful shells. I devour books. We take trips out to islands on noisy slow wooden boats, trying to decipher a horizon between a sea of silky glass and a sky of shape-shifter clouds. We jump into bottomless crystal blue waters spotting underwater life under the sea through our goggles. We eat boiled & barbequed jagung (corn) like there is no tomorrow. My son surprises me with his blossoming Indonesian vocab and we stop at almost every local we pass on the beach in order to have a little conversation with them and so they can squeeze the baby’s cheeks or in some cases, snatch him from my arms for a quick cuddle. Most arvos, we watch quick, powerful thunderstorms streak across the bay, darkening the beach and jungle covered mountain behind us.
Of course there is also some risk in travelling to somewhere so untouched. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t win any mother-of-the-year awards for taking my small children to a high-risk malaria zone (in my 18.5 minutes of research this was overlooked). And if I’m honest, there ain’t no ‘boat drivers’ (a fancy name for local fisherman-in-between-jobs) supplying life-vests here. Although in fairness, some did carry deflated blow-up donut rings in the bottom of their boats. Decisions on boat travel are made by a “gut-feel” in collaboration with a brief visual overview of the boat to make sure it has no noticeable gaping holes. There are sea snakes, poisonous jellyfish and probably lots of other dangerous creepy shit lurking in the depths below. In the homes, kitchens and bathrooms are all outdoors and there is no way to keep out the spiders, snakes or anything else that wants to come in (though I always feel a faux-safety when sleeping within the confines of a mosquito net). Oh yeah and it’s a hot spot for rabies.
We travel to another beautiful beach on the other side of the island, where we eat barbequed fish and sip coconuts. The locals are obsessed with the baby and hand him around squeezing his thighs. The water is luminous, translucent blue and within minutes my son is frolicking in the waters with ten other Indonesian boys his same age. They have no common language between them but they play for hours. Bobbing around in the sea, they play with pieces of driftwood and buoyant coconuts and one boy even has a pair of home-made goggles made of coconuts! Talk about innovative. My son teaches them how to dive under with his goggles and fins and they squawk and wrestle and tease eachother until it’s late and I literally have to drag him away.
In this moment I realise how much I truly love Indonesia. Beyond the racket and mayhem of Bali and the cities, it is wild and primitive and rich in culture.
And if I’m honest, I am waiting. Waiting to get hassled out for travelling alone with my two incredibly white children in tow. Or ogled for public breastfeeding. Or groped whilst walking up & down a deserted beach every day. I am waiting to be ripped off or robbed.
But nothing happens. No short-changing, dodgy bum-grabs or even so much as a nasty or pervy sideways glance occurs. Sure, there is a burgeoning curiosity as to why the heck we are there and certainly no shortage of questions being fired at me. But here I realise there is a great intrinsic respect for the mother, of which category I luckily fit into, for nature and for family.
On the side of the road one day, I am awed by the quintessential ‘Ibu’ (Mother).
She stands strong, barefoot with a baby perched upon her hip watching her two other children playing cheekily under a nearby tree while she takes a brief break from cutting corn. Her traditional ikat sarong is dusty around the hem and she wears a head-scarf to catch her sweat in the blistering midday sun. She humbly wields a massive machete as she adjusts the baby on her hip.
She is incredibly strong, capable and I don’t think I’ve ever witnessed such essence of the feminine. She is breathtakingly badass.
I wonder how our western ways have managed to warp our sense of the feminine so much. As a young woman I fumbled with issues around my sexuality, self-image and self-worth that carried on well into my adulthood. I never had a healthy understanding about what it truly meant to be a woman, let alone wisdom around the gifts of maiden, mother and crone. Here, connection to ancestors, spirit, the mother and the earth are strong and palpable.
As I look at Ibu, instantly I can see that every woman on the planet has this power, this ability to resist projections placed upon her and to step into something bigger, something more. Ibu cares nothing for her public image, perky tits or good fashion sense because she knows that she is innately bigger than the bullshit, boundless in strength and ability to nurture & thrive. Her focus is on what truly matters. Her shine, her knowing is from within. Ibu moves mountains and if the mountain is too big - she calls in her sisters.
My son manages to teach me “his version” of chess. I can only deduce his rules are dubious and one-sided to his favour, but he is six and so I accept his ambiguous chess lesson. I wonder why it has taken me 39 years to learn this game. Within the few hours of generated power each night after the baby goes to sleep, we stay up playing questionable chess or uno. At home I honestly can’t wait the kids to go to sleep each night, but here I find myself cherishing time as a family. Under the gentle lights, there is time for shits and giggles. Just us.
Before I know it, I’m packing our bags. Goodbyes to our new friends are slow and meaningful and in a broken double language. Our friends pack us up mie goreng wrapped in brown paper to eat on the plane and we wave to them from the window of the car and I honestly hope I see them again sooner, rather than later.
This time the drive is much more leisurely and the car is even decked out with working seatbelts. We stop on the way to buy our last bag of sweet barbequed jagung, munching away in the back seat, while the world outside speeds by.
At the airport I’m laughing out loud, as I literally watch my baby being treated like a celebrity figure. He walks around loudly babbling as streams of people take selfies with him, attempt to pick him up, desperately asking what his name is as they pinch his cheeks (he is becoming resilient to cheek-pinching at this point). The airport and security staff literally melt in his presence, huge white grins erupting over their faces – we get waved through security checks, the whole bit. Its hilarious. All the while the grannies, the ibus are asking me questions about him, my baby - desperate to know how old he is & what food he loves.
And once again I find myself pondering, what if the rest of the western world were to revere the babies instead of reality TV actors and supermodels? Imagine.
The plane speeds and shakes along the runway and we lift off over the mountains and oceans, taking a sharp dip over the coral reefs of beautiful Flores.
I hope it calls me back again.
