When the earthquake started, I was in a shop. I realized immediately, what was happening, as the building began to shake. It was no small gentle quake like the one that woke me up a week earlier in the early hours of Sunday morning. When I was standing on the road outside the shop, it was like being on a surfboard. With the difference that underneath me wasn't the board, nor the water, but hard tarmac. The hardness I could feel a moment later under my knees when the last force of the quake threw me to the ground. Fortunately, I had time to send a message to Finland that I was okay. Fortunately for my loved ones.
Here, on the other side of the world, thoughts are crisscrossing as follows: What if that talk on Sunday was the last one that we ever had? What if this message was the last message from him? What if he's dead? Where and how would I even find out about it? On this side of the world, I color this story to be more horrible than it hopefully really is.
Everything happens for a reason. Did I stay and lay on the ground on that dark Indonesian night after the earthquake ended? No, I continued my journey. That's something that I have to do now also, a year later. It's just more challenging than you would think, but my friend would like me to do so. And, whatever happens; I have to live because I didn't die.