more from the mom in bali, plus some photos she took at the scene of the bombing:

Day 5

Here's a small update on the ongoings here on Bali.

Still at the airport helping people and now mostly media types that are coming through. Some that I recognized from the TV with entire crews and tons of equipment. One of them was the Geraldo guy!!!!! No kidding it took me all day to think who the hell was that as I recognized his face. Too bad it took so long for the penny to drop as i would have loved to talk to him.

I will tell you about an interesting case that today came through:

This guy comes by our desk and he says I am here to meet an expedite officer. I tell him that there is no one there except for us and that most people would meet him outside the immigration and customs. He seemed very distressed about that. So I ask are you perhaps transiting then? No he says I am here to deliver some things. I ask do you have a card and he digs and give me his card. It reads special officer for the crisis response unit of the FBI! So I said why could you not leave the airport (like go outside) he says well because I don't have a return ticket I cannot get pass the immigration but I am here with a special pouch and equipment I have to install. So after the past 5 days of kissing up I have a new immigration officer friend in the airport so I take him over there and it turns out he even has a diplomatic passport on which he travels that has FBI stamped all over it. Anyway no problem my friend stamps his passport and now we are looking for his equipment. It consisted of 12 metal boxes, one could hardly lift with two people, each
about 3 ft long by 2 feet deep by 30 inches wide, plus other pieces each unbelievable heavy and huge. Then he told me that he had been working on the sniper case in Washington and when his shift ended at 4 am he was put on a plane to LA, from there to Sydney, then to Jakarta and poof here he was in Bali. He will stay for however long it takes to set up all this special equipment and no return ticket as he has no idea where he will go next.

Then I had a plane landing with 3000 kilos of bandages and where did I want it? Argh so again a few phone calls here and there and got them on the way
through customs etc.

Then off to lie a wreath at the site with the Canadian Ambassador who is fairly new. Going on the site was a very emotional experience as it looks like what I imagine a war zone. The club where most of the victims fell is flattened and totally levelled to the ground. The buildings on either side of the club and the ones across the street from the club are totally blown apart. I would say about 20 buildings. Cars totally flattened and/or burned. What is left of the car that had the explosives in it now confirmed to have contained Napalm and C-4 was just a few engine bits.



There are 23 Canadians missing, but we don't know if they were there. These are people whose families have called and had Bali on their itinerary. They could very well be somewhere else in Indonesia, as often people do not have very good communications on their whereabouts but we don't know. One young couple we found 4 days after the bomb sitting at the pool never thinking of calling their parents! Well let me tell you they got a piece of my friend's mind that found them. We had to call all the hotels, every single one of them, and find out if they had any Canadians staying and what were their names. Most hotels wouldn't even want to tell us so we said: we are from the Canadian Embassy and b-s our way through it. We found 6 of the original 29 missing list that way. Also there were 5 Canadians injured of which two are now in Singapore, two in Australia and one released.


This 21st at the full moon there is a huge cleansing of Bali in a Hindu-style ceremony. This has only has ever happened twice before because of a volcano having erupted which in their beliefs is also due to angry gods. This disaster for them is similar and the entire island needs cleansing. I am not sure yet where what and how but if I do go to see it I will take pictures again and keep you posted.

mom


  posted by natalie @ 12:38:00 PM

 
i found a nice dentist this week, dr. leith k. shawaf. i have no idea what kind of name that is but its confusing since he's just this big, blonde american dude. really nice guy though, the kind of person who actually says "gosh" without being ironic or coy. he was so funny and chatty when we first started, maybe because i was the first patient of the day but he was so excited and kept asking me questions and was considerate enough to pull the spit-sucking tube out of my yap so i could answer him. we talked a lot about bali since he had just come back from there 2 weeks ago and he loved it so much and was so sad to hear about what had happened there. man, these people really fucked up bali but good. the tourism industry is going to go to hell in a handbag and that in turn will negatively affect almost every single person on that island. and that will spread to the other islands of indonesia when workers who used to have jobs on bali have to go home because there is no more jobs and then their families who depend on them will suffer too. it's one big domino effect. and i don't think it's going to give these terrorists what they wanted in the short or long run. though i can't begin to guess what it is that they REALLY want, i truly can't imagine this is it.

so anyway, back to dr. shawaf. i hate going to the dentist so i go pretty rarely. i was really embarassed to tell him i haven't been for a checkup in about 3 years (EEEK!) so i lied and said 2. and he didn't make me feel guilty! not even a little. we love you dr. shawaf! he also took a lot of x-rays of my mouth since it's been a long time. and we found the last of my extra teeth that my previous dentists left in even after they extracted 5 other extra teeth and my 7 wisdom teeth. yes, i am a shark, even though i can't swim that well. my mom probably put the equivalent of a 4 bedroom house in bel air down on my dental work. too bad she can't live in it. so dr. shawaf was loving that little tooth, he kept pointing at it on the x-ray and saying how "cute" it was. what a doll. oh and he's the first dentist who's not afraid to finally remove my retainer! this is the retainer that my orthodonist bonded onto the back of my bottom teeth SIXTEEN years ago!! and then she refused to take it off, when i asked her about it she just waved her hand casually and said "oh, it'll just fall off one day, don't worry about it". i'm so psyched to finally be orthodontics-free!

my only beef with the whole dentist experience was the crappy ez-listening radio station piped in over the loudspeakers. why must i always hear the righteous brothers croon "you've lost that lovin' feelin'" every single time i have to rinse and spit, rinse and spit, that's a girl here's a tissue?

  posted by natalie @ 2:48:00 PM

 
as a lot of you who read this know, my mom currently lives on what used to be the peaceful island of bali. well now that's pretty much changed forever. i guess forever is a mighty long sentance to hand out, so i should modify that: changed for my lifetime at least, so for me that feels like forever. thanks to everyone who expressed their concern about my mom's well-being - she is just fine. probably shaken up and disturbed by the things she's seen in the past couple days but phyiscally she is okay. i've copied some excerpts from her emails over the past 24 hours below. sorry for the really long post again, but i think some of you are wondering about her and it's also a pretty good idea of what is happening in bali right now that you won't get from the bbc or cnn's coverage.


day one:
Just came home from the hospital where I am volunteering with all kinds of things. My job together with Bram is to take on all the Dutch and Germans and once a body is identified phone the consul and inform them to be available for any help the families might need of the deceased.

There are formalities to get the bodies out, crisis counselling people that are here, funeral arrangements and so on. There are 182 dead, over 200 wounded and still 350 missing!

I am situated next to the emergency so you can imagine what it is like with the burned patients, and often dead bodies going by. Phones ringing off the hook and most of the dead bodies hardly to be identified. They have just now taken pictures of faces that still have some resemblance and hope to further identify peoples. It is a huge chaos of peoples, looking for friends, family, the entire world phoning in and journalists and tv etc etc.

There is every nationality and finding people who are skilled in all languages is another task on hand for me. From Equador to Peru to Japan and all of Europe. just about every language skill is needed here. We have found a few crisis psychologists to help us in the efforts and who happened to be here on a holiday.

Well glad to be able to help a bit. Going to sleep now as I have been up for 24 hours now.

mom



day two:

This morning back to the hospital again to help and then off to the airport where I set up a center for the family/friends of the victims who are starting to all fly in now. What we do is talk to them and explain what they need to do where to get information and whom to contact.

The arriving peoples are taken to the hotel and then the main hospital/morgue where they will be further assisted by volunteers and medical experts and counsellors.



it is heartbreaking to see all these people who are coming from just about every nation in the world.

unfortunately there are some media peoples who find it neccessary to come and film the arriving peoples and stick cameras in their faces as they come off the airplanes. I have managed to get two crews like that thrown out to save the already stressed and grieving peoples from them.

I find it amazing that in the newcasts I have seen, not one president or head of state has mentioned Indonesians when they have sent their condolences. and only one person of all the Indonesian staff in the two clubs lived! peoples on the street, and in cars nearby all perished and amongst them were many Indonesians as well. it is the second largest group of people who make up the lists of victims.



I am meeting amazing people.

For instance the Belgium consul flew in and has not been away from his computer since I first met him 2 1/2 days ago typing and updating the lists of hundreds of peoples that are missed, deceased or wounded. I just received (11 :30 pm) the updated list of missing persons that alone is 20 pages long!

On Bali most consulates with exception of the Dutch, Japanese and Australian are only honorary consulates and hence a one man/women band and not equiped for such a disaster but everybody is helping them manning the phones and getting the right information out there 24 hrs a day.

My two staff are totally desolute. Minar my garden/pool man wrote me a sweet note before he left very early this morning on his day off telling me how sorry he was, warning me to not accept any parcels or opening the gates and to be carefull, and appologizing for being Javanese and Muslim. The way they express themselves is heartwarming. To understand his worries: all Indonesians that are not from this island are very stressed as they worry that the Balinese will send them off the island. This would not be uncommon and has happened in the past for lesser reasons and with the country in already shaky state going home means an even a worse situation as Bali was always doing better than anywhere else in the country. Made the hosuekeeper has cried all day, feeling hopeless and saddened by it all wishing that there was something she could do.

Tomorrow and other busy day and I better get some sleep now so I can face another day and be strong.

mom




  posted by natalie @ 2:32:00 PM