My grandson is now into volcanoes for some reason. At five years of age the volcano is still romantic and exciting in his mind and he loves the hot lava.
This image above is a scan from a slide that I took back in the early 1980's. The mountain in the far center is Mount Merapi. The photo was taken from an open area at the top of the house where I lived in Jogjakarta, Indonesia. 'We' hung laundry there. (As an aside, laundry was not done by me...it was done by my babu cuci or laundress. All laundry was done by hand and therefore had to be done almost daily.)
There is/was a public park on the side of that volcanic mountain with a children's playground and picnic area that we walked to just off the roadside. We drove up there every once in a while to get out of the noise and dust of the city and to enjoy the slightly cooler mountain air.
As you most certainly know, and can see, this mountain is volcanic, and currently very active. It has erupted several times recently even causing the early departure of our President on his recent fall trip. I imagine the area is filled with chaos and refugee activity these days as people living close to the eruptions flee their villages for safety. My heart is with them and hopefully things will settle soon. We were reminded of the volcano's angry energies when we lived there because we got earthquake reminders which I once wrote about here.
It seemed that we had actually become settled in our new place on the side of the mountain just off of Kaliurang Road in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. After several hectic weeks of looking for hired help to do laundry by hand since we had no washing machine, and hiring a cook since food had to be purchased at the market on a daily basis, water had to be purified, vegetables had to be sanitized, etc., I finally was able to start tutoring my daughter in her second grade lessons. There was a small mission school but it only had classes up to the first grade. I hired a jaga malam (night watchman) who actually babysat my youngest son during the mornings when I was tutoring.
We had gotten used to the crowded dirt roads, the unusual smells, and astonished reactions to our white skin. We were even beginning to sleep through the blare of the Imam’s call to prayer through an electronic loudspeaker just outside our upstairs louvered bedroom window at sunrise each morning. During the daytime, Kaliurang Road was busy with dusty traffic heading up and down the mountain, but at sunset the area suddenly became quieter and all you could hear was the infrequent bicycle bell and the rhythmic call of the street vendors with their wheeled carts.
Our two-story house, while built of concrete, was oddly shaped with stairs of inconsistent height, the occasional rejections of small pieces of cement from the high ceilings above and a small patio in the back with an orchid covered wall which was also another house’s patio wall. It probably would not pass code in the United States, but for Indonesia it was considered a small palace with its extensive terrazzo front porch, terrazzo floors throughout and electrical pump for our well water.
I remember one peaceful morning while my daughter was working on a school project, I headed upstairs above the servants’ side of the house to talk to our babu cuci (laundress) about something. She was in a small sheltered alcove on the roof hanging clothes. I had never been up to this area which also housed our drinking water in a large cement catchment. The view looking over the chest- high wall above the red-tiled rooftops was so freeing in its vastness. In the distance I could see the perfect cone shape of Mt. Merapi with its little cloud of volcanic smoke blowing away in a feathery wisp. (I think I have a photo of this somewhere that maybe I can add here.)
A few nights after this I was shaken roughly awake from a deep sleep by my husband. “Get C. (our son)”, he cried. “I will get Y (our daughter). Hurry! Hurry!” He threw back the covers and jumped out of bed.
My brain was foggy and I moved slower than I should have while trying to absorb the anxious tone of my husband’s voice.
“Wha…What is it?” I sat up in bed.
“Just hurry! We have to get outside. There is an earthquake.”
I got up from the low platform bed and ran to my son’s room and scooped him into my arms. I didn’t feel anything unusual as I moved across the floor, but as we descended the stairs I saw out of the corner of my eye the aquarium water slopping in dramatic waves out of the sides of the aquarium onto the floor.
We rushed to the street. Only a few others were outside standing in the dirt road. We waited in quiet shock anticipating the worst. There was a small tremor that swayed the bamboo fence in the front of the yard and then nothing for a very long time. There was no noise in the neighborhood to indicate anyone else had noticed that the earth had shaken her shoulders.
Our crazy concrete palace was still standing and nothing had fallen from the ceiling as we carefully made our way back inside. We eventually fell asleep and awoke the next day with the memories seeming like a dream.
If you are following the news recently you will understand that we could have been going through much worse with Mt. Merapi eruptions.
