Road to Soul Writing

Lombok is surrounded by many gilies or tiny islands. Some gilies are famous and some are remain secret.   One of the unknown gilis is named Gili Kapal. The word “kapal” is originally taken from Indonesian which means “ship”. When the first time I stepped my feet on this island, I felt so extremely lucky because when I came there, it was low tide. When it is high tide, this island will be covered by water since its area only about 5.000 m square. I could not even see this island properly from the beach. It was like a tiny white sparkling bulge on the sea.  As I came closer, there is no any tree, no one live there, the only habitant who live there are the sea birds. The schools of this white gray bird were landing and walking on the white sand. When they were realized that I was there, they flew away to the blue sky. Then the wave erased their footprints away.   I was overwhelming with excitement when I stood and felt my feet walk in the clear turquoise w...

Ekas bay doesn’t look much different from the first time I went there. The traditional houses where fishermen were working on their nets still stand with its dried paddy leaves roof. The floating path that leads to the abandoned building in the middle of the sea also stands firmly.   On that path, some people are squatting, standing while throwing their fishing line and waiting for some fish hooked. Along the beach, fisherman boats are anchoring, some big baskets held by wooden stick for raising fish adorn this bay. In front of the beach, lie a village and some yellowish rocky hills. The slightly changed only I don’t find my self as the only tourist who came there. I think, this place is getting known better When I was climbing one of the hills, I was amazed when I found a middle age woman on her barley feet. She was wearing sarong under and wore a simple top. She also covered her head with white sarong to protect herself from the sting sunlight. She was up and dawn the ...

About one kilometer away from the beach of Tomia, Traditional village of Bajo tribe lies on the sea, supported by thousands coral under. I was so grateful when I found a fisherman that wanted to take me there. It was just a few minutes trip to get my boat in front of Bajo village gate. As I walked on the wooden path, I saw some kids were swimming like a fish and plowing their little boat “koli-koli” under the floating wooden houses. On the house stairs, there were some girls sitting while powdering their face to make it whiter. I think most Bajo woman loves to do it not only to protect their skin from sunlight but also they think that white means beautiful. In the middle of village, shiny and tanning skin little boys were running after one ball, trying to head it to the opponent of the fish net made goalpost. Then, one of them came to me. “Mau ikut maen?” he said in thick Wakatobi accent, I replied him with my smile and walked to the small field to get the battle done....