"My First Breath"

Everybody is tired of doing what they think best to do.. The ending of a process is always tiring... Nothing is more compelling than feeling good. That is life. This is reality.

It seems just yesterday when our eyes were glued on TV, terrified to believe that thousands of victims.. Dead ones... were captured on the headline news reporting live from Jogjakarta, not long after close to 200 thousands victims from the catastrophic tsunami in Aceh. Situations where many of us romantically tried to spare some of what we had in order to help them. That was a glorious day. We felt like a part of the world who was in her mourn. We felt like heroes.

But then Mother Nature stroke again. We even felt it. It turned out to be deadly, bringing to deaths hundreds of victims on southern part of West Java. Latest death toll was around 600 people leaving more than 40,000 in refugee camps… scary numbers… must be scary movies..

The death toll is close enough to what was recorded from Nias Earthquake in March 2005. But maybe we were too tired to take notice to see that national and international responses were getting less and lesser. Guess… Everyone sick and tired of being a hero…

But, its so tremendous to hear the spirit of the victims in Batukaras. Seven days after the tsunami, they were back on their feet again, trying to pick up pieces scattered around them. More than 10 fishermen were reported back to sea on that day. You can certainly imagine what were in their minds, touching the ocean again…

Our volunteer team found a small village, called Bulak Benda, a place where the surf was much happening than Batukaras but still surrounded by very natural energy from everything in there including the people, was not on the priority list to be helped. Its distance and bad road made people quite resistant to go. The guys arrived there and were shocked to see refugees immadiately crowding the supplies’ truck.

Life goes on… We might feel sick and tired of reading ticker news from natural disaster… But life goes on.. Who knows.. Maybe one day we were in their shoes, vice versa.