ACTIVITY
SURVIVAL TO REVIVAL Living in Gili: A Reader's Story
I moved to a tiny island and the pandemic started. This is what happened.
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n New Year’s Eve 2019, I arrived in Bali to visit Klems, an ex-flatmate. We spent time in different places, but Bali’s tourist scene was not completely to my taste. A few days later we visited Gili Air, one of the three Gilis (which means “islands” in the local language). It’s a tiny island just off the coast of Lombok – two hours from Bali, by boat. We landed at the harbour and headed to our room on the north side of the island. It was a rainy day and I remember hearing the Imam calling people to prayer as we passed the mosque, and seeing the palm trees and unfamiliar trees with big, green fruits hanging from them. Arriving on the northern beach, I was struck by the size of the place. Yes, I knew it was small, but this was the first time I had experienced smallness. It takes only 15 minutes to walk from south to north – 5 minutes by bike. And there are no cars or motorbikes, no noise or danger, and no pollution. That evening we met one of Klem's friends, and he became the portal to every other person we met. As I listened to their stories and watched my first Gili sunset on the beach, I felt calm and present. Like everything was right. And that was it. Nothing more. “I can’t see how I can go back to Bali in a couple of days, Klems”, I said. “We have another six days ’til I go back to Europe, and I want to spend them all here.” Klems agreed. On grey rainy days, back in Brussels, where I am based, I often thought of “my island.” Now I knew that my idea of paradise existed. So I arranged to spend a year here…. In September, after a business trip to Japan, I arrived in Gili Air for a 12-day stay and, in the following months, I renewed my passport and applied for an annual visa for Indonesia. I spent Christmas with my parents in Greece and it was then I heard about an outbreak of a curious virus in China.
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I remember thinking, “What if this thing gets out of control and it becomes a global pandemic? How will life be in the Gilis?” In January I returned to Brussels, packed up my apartment and I spent the last days before my flight on Valia’s couch. Arriving on Gili on January 29 was a moment of humble triumph. I had wanted to live in a tropical paradise since I was a kid. And now, I was doing exactly that. A feeling of accomplishment and a calling to make meaning in new ways breathed life into every cell. Going to the gym became effortless; journaling was a joy. February came and the virus was already out of control in China, then in Korea and Japan, and then in Italy. By the end of the month, it was clear that it would become a pandemic. Tourists arrived and left, but the virus was still a remote topic with only a hint of worry. Everything was calm. As days passed, the worry became more and more prominent in conversations. Italy was suffering and outbreaks seemed to be everywhere. I was reading about the virus and its mortality rate – thought to be a staggering 3.4% at that time. On March 11, the WHO declared a pandemic. OK, now this was worrying. In one of my voice messages to a friend on March 19, I said: It’s a matter of time until the virus makes a landing and, with a poor healthcare system, we will see deaths on the island. Many deaths. Are we ready for dozens of coffins? The hospitals in Lombok will be full; people will be dying. Food distribution will be disrupted and there'll be panic buying... people will run out of food. We should prepare for a societal collapse and even raids from boatmen. That's what happened here after the big 2018 earthquake. I worried because mortality increases to 8% if patients are not hospitalized. I had read that somewhere and it reveals how little we knew about the virus back then. I messaged my islander friends asking them to come together to discuss it. I sent them a video of a dying patient on a ventilator; today I regret having sent it.
