Mabul
July 7th, 2007 by indalusPulau Mabul, Sabah, Malaysia.
For every travel I chronicle, there are just as many that are never put down in words. I keep draft sentences in my mind, leave pages blank in my notebook with the intention of filling them in later, become complacent with pictures until the trip is a shimmery haze of happy memories. Mabul taught me that not recording being in a place like this - even if only for myself - would be criminal. I might as well cut off my hands.
Entonces…
Tuesday, 3rd July 2007
It took more than I expected to get to Mabul. Our flight to Tawau was followed by a comfy one hour drive to Semporna, and at Uncle Chang’s office, the lady quickly arranged a speedboat to get Kanch and I to the island. Not a quick nip. We went past half a dozen would-be Mabuls and a long stretch of open sea. The wind was strong in our faces, pomading our hair with sea salts and filling our ears so that our early attempts at conversation were beaten down, and we had no choice but to surrender to the bump bump bump of the boat over the waves. Lulled into thoughts. Around us, clear water, houses on stilts growing in sea-ward from the mainland. We sped past other boats, kids doing play-chores, and locals who were out fishing - an old man and a younger one amazed me by how confidently they balanced on one side of the boat as they peered into their nets in the water. The width of the ledge was snug beneath the arches of their feet. A few minutes later, a more spectacular sight: a man walking upright in the water! And then another… and then a whole league of them. There seemed to be a shelf of…. I don’t know - rocks? corals? - that enabled them to do so, prospecting slowly with bucket in hand.
Finally, Mabul Backpackers. Friendly peeps, same brand of ‘Seberang’ Malay that I had to employ with Auntie Lalita at Semporna. Lunch was rice, veg, beef, and sup telur! A classic homey Malay fare. Baaaaaaaasic accommodations: Kanch and I were given the keys to a wooden box, in which there were 2 mattresses on the floor and a narrow desk propped near the window. There was a bed put in for good measure, but the top and bottom wooden slats supporting the mattress were broken, which means if either of us tried sleeping on it, our head and feet would be dangling towards the floor. We used it to dump my stuff instead. 
A bald, bespectacled man fresh from a dive came and introduced himself to us as Christopher, our instructor, and lessons were to start today. Sat around with a PADI textbook in hand for show, dangling my feet off the little wooden corridor which dropped down into the clear shallow water - sea-grass and starfish - and chatted with a sweet Aussie teaching student from the room next door.
Prospects of studying again after finals sounded grim, but Chris turned out to be a riot. Filipino buddy release ascent if attacked by sharks. Inda and Kanch dive buddies for life! Thankfully he’s not gonna show us the tedious videos with bad acting, (i) cos the place runs on a generator that’s only on from 4pm - 8am, and (ii) Chris believes they were designed for thick-headed Americans.
Signed a bunch of waiver forms - Kanch and I made the plunge, scribbled ‘Doctor’ under occupation - diving sounds bloody dangerous. But the more we went into the lessons and reviews (3 sections done already, tag team, what else??) the more I felt like this is something I could come to really love. Can’t wait to get in the water.
By about 4.30pm we were released - prayed, grabbed snorkels and headed out to the jetty. Mashallah. This place is captivating. This is well and truly kampung, no sugar coats, nothing made up. Wooden houses on stilts, kampung kids playing games like getah and konda-kondi, tracing their triumphs and falls in the sandy patch near the mosque. There is not a stitch of materialism or superfluosity (is that a word?) here. Kanch approached everything cautiously… this was surely 21 and a half worlds apart from that which we live everyday, but for me there rang a certain deep familiarity. I may do things city but I suspect the rural vibes I’d imbibed being with Mak and Abah as a child will always be there for me to use.
I was in over my head with everything, everyone I saw around me. By the time I saw the dragonflies lined up like sentinels on the wire, I was officially having a meltdown. We hadn’t even gotten to the water yet.
Chris had told us to head to the right, newer jetty - eastwards of which stood the luxurious SWV, gleaming in its manned, air-conditioned, overpriced exuberance, while weathered wooden houses were crammed on the beach nearby. Boats moved around everywhere. On the way in, the stilted houses extended so far into the water that these were surely the only means of transport between neighbors. Most boats were motorized, but young children, stark and as brown in skin and hair as the wooden paddles they held still manouvered sampans for short distances. They couldn’t have been more than 6 years old. These were the sea gypsies, the Bajau Laut. They live out on boats, cooking, washing, sleeping, giving birth while afloat at sea.
Snorkelling was grand. Lots of fish, with promise of more had we ventured further, but the setting sun stopped us from staying out too long. It felt good to be in the water again.
Night time. Dinner was fantastic for me, and we chatted with the Aussie mining engineer/diver and 3 Swedes who sat near our end of the table. Scuba Jeff came to join us and I couldn’t help but recoil. He had introduced himself to us earlier and immediately proved himself as the type of sleazy guy that would exploit a girl’s friendly, innocent response and turn it into an opportunity to come up with lewd comments for days on end. Uncle Chang came, too, and soon the band were setting up and lyrics to the Sipadan Song were handed out.
The drum set were 2 minarets topped with cymbals, towering over an assembly of overturned buckets. The other band members had electric guitars and played them like maestros. Even Chris went up to croon. Though we thought we would head in early, we stayed on the deck floor for aaaaages…. we might have trouble with tomorrow’s planned early dive, but it was worth getting to know the people there a little better. Chris is great - world-weary and kind with a sense of humour that sends me roaring with laughter. He tells me the guy who played lead guitar & vocals neither reads nor writes and is paid but RM200 a month to be a boatman. Food, drink, board is free, and he has the band. A beach bum lifestyle.
There was Richie, the diver from London who’s now based in SEA, and has prophylactic headphones round his neck… this band seems to be pretty notorious. Elisa, the Dutch teacher who speaks Malay sooo beautifully, having started learning in Pahang only 3.5 months ago! This is how I should be practicing my French! I was soon to discover that opportunities were far from scarce and the lodge reeled in Francophones everyday. The ones to get me talking (because I was absolutely forced to, due to their lack of English) were little Vladimir and Aliocha, who were 9 and 11, traveling with their dad. Even Scuba Jeff turned out to be alright and really quite sweet. 
The lights went off, and suddenly everyone was singing Happy Birthday… for me! Something candlelit was making it’s way towards me from the kitchen - a platter, in the middle of which was a carved out pineapple, the flesh arranged in the peripheries with tomatoes while inside was a single wish candle. :) Inda is 25.
Uncle Chang huffs at Chris for not telling him about my birthday earlier so that he could’ve bought a cake. But c’mon… I have a pineapple!!! They are so incredibly sweet. Kanch and I got shark-shaped earrings as presents, plus cds of underwater piccies and a snorkel trip arranged to Sipadan for Saturday.
Right below us the white sand gleamed up through the crystal clear water. Out to sea, all you could see was a friendly, unthreatening kind of darkness because it brought out the stars and planets overhead, but you knew how blue the water could get, how beautiful the mountains ranged afar, and that you’d be able to see them all in the morning.
This birthday is the stuff of dreams.
Wednesday, 4th July 2007 - "Rapture of the deep"
I can’t see as I write this, because there are no lights on the jetty. But I’ve already decided which words to use.
Today has been such an amazing day that I could hardly decide where to start. Perhaps I’ll begin with the stars. They’re here, now, above me, in the millions. I could spend all the life in my bones trying to describe them, but perhaps there is no need. "… a black word on a white page is like the soul laid bare". White stars against a black sky are kind of the same.
I had been walking back and forth to the edge of the deck since a little after sundown, shading my eyes with Ultraman-like hand gestures, trying to cut out the light from the lodge. FInally I decided to run over to the steps that led down to the water behind the dive hut. I was feeling quite triumphant as I felt my way down the darkened steps, til someone called out - "You’re not allowed to take a piss there!" Chris was on the phone at the far end of the jetty. :P Waving to him and checking that I wasn’t interrupting on some private conversation, I sank down onto the next plank up from the water level, and claimed this moment for myself.
The sky shone unselfishly.
After a while, Chris came to join me; though it meant my me-time was stalled, I was thankful for his company, not least cos after checking out the situation, he clambered up to switch off the nearest interfering light, and instantly, the stars’ brilliance doubled. Subhanallah.
No longer than 5 minutes later, - a shooting star*! Chris saw it, too. "Everytime I see a shooting star I wish for a soulmate. I must’ve wished for 75 in my lifetime! Haha! What did you wish for?" Nothing, I said. (Just like my blown-out candles, pennies in fountains, and overturned Turkish coffee, my shooting stars always remain unwished). As a natural progression, he asked me what I thought of soulmates, and something caught me like a deadweight in that funny place in my gut. What a person could be to another, in this star-cross’d way, is not among the topics I cared to discuss right now. I was reluctant, I think, and maybe a little afraid to face the feelings that I’ve been carrying for these last few days, trying not to let them take form.
But then, there will always be scary things, hurtful things. You can hide from them so as not to let them break you. Or you can stare them down. After a moment’s regard, I took a deep breath and told him precisely what I thought. It was simply the beginning of a long, enlightening conversation.
Chris is an amazing character. He’s dabbled in a bit of everything, lost his bearing, found them again, gone through a minefield and lived to talk about them with a fledgling human being like myself on a night so clear we imagined we could see halfway into the universe. His stories…. well, his stories are his to tell. But I could name them tragedy, pain, loss, faith, and forgiveness, and mean the same thing. At the end of all we discussed tonight, he’s a reminder that good can be found in people, no matter the odds, so much so that it inspires one to constantly find good in themselves.
I began with the end of a long, long day - which started with a very sticky Inda waking up at around 6am, heading to the showers. The ’showers’ are actually a big basin which is filled with water from a temperamental tap. The best tactic is to shampoo/cleanse/soap up til you’re standing like a sea monster caked in cleaning ingredients, then splash splash splash from head to toe. Breakfast, coffee, and a demonstration on how to set up out BCD and tank, kitted up with booties, fins and wetsuit, hopped onto the boat and made our way out to SWV.
Our first ‘confined water dive’. Confined water my ass - it’s 3 days after the full moon and the tide was so high we deflated and knelt down for the first exercise at about 12m. It was amazing!! We were scuuuuuubaing!! It was funny using the regulator, trying to equalize and control breathing all at once, but thankfully for most of the day everything went smoothly. Chris signs and we follow - monkey see monkey do. We did reg throws and recovery, alternate air source, mask clearing… and before our air was up, we went for a proper dive, scouring the sandy floor (which was littered with huge starfish). Our first scoop was modest in terms of reef formation, but we still saw a lion fish, the funny porcupine puffer, a cowtail boxfish, and a massive school of barracuda, with a bunch of parrotfish zigzagging their way across the traffic of big round eyes. How had I waited so long to do this?
Despite my worry about being congested (a blocked nose miraculously appeared a couple of days before we left for here - Kanch supervised a Berocca, loratidine, paracetamol cocktail - and rassam!), Kanch was the one who had squeeze troubles while descending. Pow! The feeling lasted the whole day, but she wisely adjusted and ran into no serious problems. She felt bad about me having to wait ahead at the bottom of the sea while Chris brought her down. Little did she know I was having the time of my life pulling juvenile faces at the fishies (twenty-five, schmwenty-five).
We think it might be water in her ears, and those can take ages to clear. The rest of the day I had to deal with a deaf Kanch incredibly suited to the ‘Hear no evil’ part of the monkey band she got me for my birthday. She’d speak under her breath ‘cos her own voice resonated in her head, while my own voice was dulled so that she would quizzically repeat the most ridiculous sort of nonsense whenever I said anything. She was the epitomal Chinese whispers disaster.
We got back at around 10am - it felt like we had achieved so much, and yet the day was so young! We didn’t have to meet again til 2pm so Kanch and I studied a bit, I took pics of the kids across the water to posed like mad, then chatted and swam with Vladimir, whose dad and bro had gone off for another dive.
Some of the villagers had started appearing underneath us, moving between the stilts in search of mussels, and to Chris’ displeasure, thinking I might cut my feet, I climbed down to join them as well.
For lunch, rice and yummy lauk + pineapples for extra yum yum - chatted with the Swedes again. One of them is also a doctor, who wants to specialize in infectious diseases. Still loads of time to chill. People here are so nice, be it visitors or staff and the atmosphere is so relaxed. Uncle Chang has magmanimously changed the acronym SSI (PADI’s counterpart) to mean Saya Suka Inda. Haha.
Second dive. Back on the boat, but this time we assembled the kits ourselves. I am relishing every moment I have in the water. Chris says afterwards that it’s making me high.
We quickly went through a few more complicated techniques, including CESA, and then headed to the reefs. I was lost in wonder ("and joooy… and joyness…"). Maybe I do get a little bit nuts. Chris to Kanch during evening lesson: "Weird girl. Did you see how she just left us behind? She was swimming after some fish." Kanch was chuckling underwater when Chris finally tugged me by the ankle and put me back in rank. 
We saw some funky and rare individuals, like a purple frog fish, camouflaged in some purple coral which I would’ve missed. It was tricky trying to control my buoyancy so close to the corals, especially with weights which Chris admitted was more than we needed, but it was worth coming up close to see the bizarro way he opened his mouth. :) Chris also looked quite smug as he pointed out a school of squid to me, majestically swimming by, since he heard my animated account of the search for the giant squid which I became obsessed with a few years ago.
We dove for an hour, and surfaced with huge smiles, fit to burst. Back at the lodge, Uncle Chang was getting ready to leave for KL, though first alerting me to the freshly prepared pisang goreng. The sun was strong and bearing down on the deck, where I landed unceremoniously with a plateful of pisang, a mug of water, and did nothing but munch and revel in the stark heat of the day, and the haste at which the blood was coursing through my body.
If I had to choose a moment to call my own, I would pick this one.
The tide had gone down, and following Vladimir and Aliocha’s lead, I clambered down the steps and thrashed about in the water while they talked about the turtles and eels they saw. More lessons once I dried up, which were more interesting and funny, even though we were flagging from exertion. Diving dangers, narcosis and Rapture of the Deep, using the dive planning tables and decompression sickness. [When we were 14 we sat in class pouring over the lyrics to 'Hotel California', but Djinn's copy had it as "Her hair is tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends" - Leon raises an eyebrow and says, "Isn't that some disease u get when u dive?"]
Finished quiz 4 at sundown. Tide is up again. I run off the deck and plunge screaming into the water. Vlad and Aliocha didn’t take long to join me. 3 monkeys taking off at a run after un, deux, trois, then pulling ourselves up by the tires. Again, and again, and again. I could do this all night long. But I am starved. Towel off, and now dinner. God, it was good.
Thursday, 5th July 2007 - "There are 2 types of divers; those who pee in their wetsuit, and those who lie about it."
I seem to get disoriented after dives; it feels like I’ve gone to another world and come back again, and what I saw this morning feels like a long time ago. Today we had two dives, which throws me off completely. So even though we’ve only been here for a few days, I’m starting to feel like a fixture, as if I’ve spent the last year walking back and forth on the planks from my room to the sea, sucking the salt from my fingernails.
After breakfast we went out to our usual training ground, Paradise 1. Just a few more drills to do, and we’re off!! There were a bunch of rays playing in the sand below us, smallish and spotted blue, and they rippled delightfully as they flew away.
Soon we came upon where the colorful fishies play… the nemos, bright yellow flute fish, damsels and bannerfish, and my favorites, the rainbow wrasses. :) The best part of the dive was probably the school of barracuda that barged past us, the accompanying parrotfish in tow as usual. I hovered as close to their path as possible, just to… I don’t actually know what I was trying to do, but I couldn’t see them there and not wanna go with.
I was still acid-tripping back on land, and we were raving and giggling about all the things we saw while we restlessly filled in our log book. "Chris," I announced, as I sank into the plastic chairs. "Yes?" - "I’m so happy. :)" Bruno, the new French diving instructor laughs at our foolishness. Kanch has her tongue half-sticking out of her mouth in contentment.
We had lunch on the deck floor, where Bruno came to join us, and Kanch and I would furtively read each others’ minds: he’s such a Tonio! From the tone of his speech, to big white teeth and the smile he flashes when I roll my eyes after he drops a line. Tide is out again, so low I could almost walk out halfway to the horizon. Chris hasn’t called us out for the dive, so I put on the booties and at try to at least make it to the coral shelf. I’m almost to the brink of the reefs when Anuar shouts out from the lodge - "wwwOOOOiiiiiii rrriiiiiAAAAAA…. Ada banyak stonefish di sana!!!"
But there weren’t. Or at least I didn’t see any. There were starfish wherever it was just sand and ticklish sea grass, and in some places sea serpents lurked around the roots. When the corals started, the starfish changed to the spindly blue variety, and matching light blue fish would appear from time to time. A little boy paddles up with pile-of-heap canoe, stopping every few meters to bail out water with a tumbler; he’s heading out to meet his dad, who is the only other person out walking in the heat of the afternoon. He’s at least 70m in front of me, but I’m already at a dead end in my labyrinth; the sandy lanes between the reefs have narrowed out. Besides, it was time to turn back.
Our second dive of the day was at Froggy Lair. Jeff came out with us again, and took control of my crappy underwater camera. We drooled over Bruno’s digital one on the first boat ride out… and Kanch tried to slip him one of my disposables when she held his for him while he put his BCD on. It didn’t work.
Froggy Lair is one of Chris’ faves. It consists of a series of manmade cages that have long since been barnacled and adorned with nudibranchs, and within them, astounding creatures. I caught a flash of a massive yellow grouper swimming in the middle of one of the structures, but try as I might I couldn’t get another view of it among the hordes of other fish milling about in the same place. We saw Mick Jagger sweetlips… by now it’s fun to practice the signs of fish, although thank God the presence of the school of jackfish was soooo obvious that the dreaded sign was not needed:
Just above us, circling like … well, I don’t really know like what, cos I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it with my own eyes. Thousands and thousands, swirling like a tornado that eventually enveloped us. I think I laughed into my reg out of sheer delight. Chris says there was a big squid living here, but we didn’t see it. We did, however, find the other part of his list… a 2m giant grouper, dark blue and spotted mauve, with lips as thick as my arm, doubtlessly mean-toothed. It was right in front of us as we were peering through the wooden cage… it sort of just loomed into view. I hope the piccie of that one turns out well.
I can’t begin to describe how inspired I felt there in the depths. Somewhere in between amazement and awe there is a clarity, and I was arrested by different thoughts all at once. It’s not hard to believe how people can find all sort of things in the deep, even the things they didn’t know they were looking for. Treasures, comprehension, faith in something that is much much bigger than one’s self.
The rest of the day was easy-going. Lazing out in the deck with our storybooks, listening to acoustic guitar. Another tide walk with Kanch - but first, we completed our final exam. Woohooohoooo!!! We are divers! Though after a beautiful dive like that, we were running so high on adrenaline I don’t know how we managed to sit through even the 15 mins it took to do the questions. Chris is giving us a fun dive gratis cos he’s a rockstar. They’re still making fun of the way that he has to tap his slate on his damn tank all the time to call me back when I swim off after some fish, and Jeff is annoyed in a ‘frames can’t catch u when you’re moving like that’ kinda way.
Jeff still runs the stupidest pick-up lines, but now I think he’s just trying to get me to roll my eyes, and most times they’re so cheesy we end up dissolving in laughter and I have to scream for him to please go away. :) He’s hilarious, and besides he’s the only one here with whom I can speak Semenanjung Malay.
Kanch and I had dinner with team Blue from Plymouth, who we would later meet again to board our flight home. Mark a.k.a Grandstand makes me shake my head with his arrogant, British ways. He automatically makes fun of everything and seems to have a love-hate relationship with David Beckham, and Amir is a Persian guy who teaches in Burma and has a juvenile way of calling out to Kanch just so he can call her Dutch.
Right after dinner, I had promised Aliocha and Vladimir we’d have a repeat of the previous evening’s off-deck plunge. Our game is simple (yet satisfying) : Aliocha, so deceptively demure when I first knew him, waves his limbs around like a maniac and yells, "En piste!!!" We take our place facing the three openings made by the wooden shower frames, near the tubs where the divers rinse off their equipment. On un, deux, TROIS!!! we run and throw ourselves off the edge, leaping and screaming into the water down below. Laughing and bubbling we resurface and swim back to the tires, where each person tries to sabotage the rest and gain first footing back on the deck. And then we do it all over again.
If it were up to the boys, we’d be at it for a few more hours. Eventually I extracted myself, throat dry from screaming and constantly spitting out salt water, and went to sit on the jetty with Kanch, looking up at the stars. A million different sparkles for a million different atmospheres. Kanch says she can’t remember the last time she was this happy and this free. We lie back and talk about the next dive we’ll do, when and where and how…. aaahhhh… the possibilities.
Even in the water, things were shining. Green, glowing phosphorescence, contorting in figure-8’s and -9’s, giving off a smoky aura as they drift away underneath us. We could probably have fallen asleep out here…
Friday, 6th July 2007 - I’m a squid, lah.
… but it was a good thing we didn’t. A storm, a monstrous tempest, raged through the island in the middle of the night and slipped away just before sunrise. I woke up to look out the window and the world was gray and struck through and through with thick cords of rain.
When I opened the door this morning, Kanch from her cosy spot on the floor heard me go, "Oh." Our clothes-line was empty. =| I looked down and saw only water. Dammit. Some fish out there was wearing my board shorts.
Glum and hopeless, we gulped down our breakfast til Chris alerted us to the fact that someone had dumped a pile of clothes outside our room. Turned out that team Blue had brought them in during the night, yay! I hope they didn’t try out my swimsuit.
We had 10 minutes to digest before we kitted up and prepared for our fun dive. Chris chose a drop-off point that really tested our mettle, firstly cos there wasn’t a buoy line which Kanch usually needed to descend. Secondly, there was a massive current, which according to PADI we should begin by swimming into. Easier said than done. I tried to swim directly in front of Kanch to create a slipstream without kicking her in the face, although I probably succeeded more in the latter. In the end I caught onto a solid coral, hanging on helplessly like a seahorse until finally we were out of the worst of it and made our way out into open water.
The first things we saw were the spotted garden eels, peeking out like tall, hooked worms from the sandy bottom. We swam over to a wall of corals, starting out at what I guessed was somewhere in the middle, at a depth of about 22m. There were all sorts of formations and colors, anemenomenemones, and plumpish fish sitting regally in front of the fan corals, tempting me to come close enough for a shot. Swimming a foot under my belly was a school of slender navy blue fish with red marking at their napes, criss crossing psychedelically - I still haven’t found out their names.
The current was still quite strong and once it half-kicked the reg out of my mouth when I turned the wrong way too fast. I consciously stayed close to Chris and kept out an eye for Kanch, to show that I can be a good girl but also cos Kanch started out at 30 bars less than me, and Chris’ first stage was actually leaking, and he would run out the first among all of us while I would have the most air. Everytime I look at my SPG I get a little sad, and try to think of ways to conserve my air… but it’s hard when the scene is so literally ‘breath-taking’.
Sometimes I pay so much attention to the reefs below that I forget to look up. At one instance when I did cast a glance, I caught a changing silver shape; first the triangle was upright on it’s base, a second later it had flattened out. It had to be a ray. I signed to Chris but it was too far and was gone … but later, oh my God… 3 grown eagle rays swimming together above us. At first to the right, sailing smoothly, and then a turn to the left, their long steely tails tracing the trajectory. Like the sea mafia on patrol. They were stunning.
Eagle rays on our 5th dive is coolbeans :) Kanch and I looked at each other goggle-eyed under the water. And later, gasp, green turtles!! One of them was swimming out in open water, while the other started off from a cosy nook on the reefs. Turtles are just sooo awesome!!
Soon it was time to inch up… how sad!!! We shimmied past the lizard fish, frog fish and trumpet fish, and all the pretty anemone fishes carelessly playing in the corals.
Now we had the rest of the day in the sun. Chris already has new students lined up. Kanch and I fill in the forms for PADI and stamp away like mad in our log books, half-disbelieving what a treat we’ve had. We stake out the deck, cooking ourselves in the sunlight, chatting or reading, sipping water. When winter hits England, this is the very thought I’ll be concentrating on.
Low tide again! But the water is so inviting. I compromise by going for another reef walk with Aliocha and Vladimir. Vlad is giggly and Aliocha still insane. He’s shouting out WWOOOAAAA, il-y-a-des-etoiles-de-merde! ou?! PARTOUT!! We hurry out giving each other mock commands, creating sea-creature characters for each other, we found a huge piece of timber and pretended it was a walrus, and Vlad got jumped by the crab living on it, haha! The crazy boys towed it back to the lodge as a present for Chris (but it later drifted away).
Up on the deck, I soaked myself in the non-existence of obligations (except prayers of course, which I could quickly do before sunset). I read my book and fell asleep in the sun. When the band started up I moved into the shade and hung out with Ramin, Meg and Michel, and Aliocha painted me a picture. I adore him to bits, even though earlier he displayed for the first time an unexpected temper aimed at Vladimir, having to do with the hermit-fraught coral we excavated from the shallows. They are usually so darling together you would never have guessed they’d be capable of a tussle.
Chris would come and amuse us between his new students’ knowledge reviews and we’d laugh at stupid jokes like "I will use the dragon technique [mouth moving][mouth moving][mouth moving]…..!" which everyone joins in and we speak like retards for a full 15 minutes, or his impersonations of how Japanese girls run, lol. Later he showed us pics of his artwork, which are fantastic… tribalesque patterns on fabric using bleach. And also holiday shots of him and his girlfriend in Japan, with some mean looking calligraphy teacher with a high white coiffure and a thin smile and evil eyes.
Last chance for a sunset walk in the village. This time with our cameras. They were a big hit with the village kids, who at first asked for money, and then settled for just snapshots. There was one girl of about 10 years old who was a little crazy I think. She would shout in her raspy voice and shove away all the other kids so that she’d be in the shot alone. I took pics of her and her friends in turn, and each time they’d ask to see it and whoop in joy at the sight of themselves in my camera display. It reminded me of South Africa exactly. Kids are the same everywhere.
I was absolutely starved by night fall, and I had a huuuuge dinner. No way were the boys getting me to jump off a bridge tonight… from the second I set down my plate, all my energy and time was dedicated to eating as much as I possibly could. I even went for seconds, but Kanch was beginning to look at me in disgust.
Aliocha and Chris ate late cos they went out for a night dive!!! I am SOOOOOO jealous! Chris is working too hard, man. I did try offering him my services in his place and he grinned but said no, of course. He wants me to go ahead with my advanced before I head back to England, and suggested some friends of his that I should call up on one of the Peninsular islands.
We had permits lined up for Sipadan tomorrow, though only to snorkel cos we’re not allowed to dive right before a flight. But it turned out that the boat times would not match, and though I negotiated several different options, there just wasn’t a way for us to get a boat out there (boats need permits too) which would then bring only us back in time to get to the mainland. MAN!!!! We are sooo sad. :( Kanch tried to get me to chat up the police patrol, as if that would work! Oooohhhh… we really wanted to go to Sipadan, especially since everyone there had been raving about it.
Jeff especially tried to ring up some peeps who he thought might be able to help - we explored all possible avenues in rushed, agitated Malay, which made the foreigners at the table burst out in peals of laughter. One of the Swedes tried doing an imitation: "Jab prapp anu tobatoba tu kropp permit jaba gak tiga boat prapu jadi krapu nada dang-lah." Loser =P of course we don’t actually sound like that!! In the end, we had to let the idea go… although we’d been anticipating it so much that every once in a while I’d forget that we’re not going anymore and the disappointment hits me anew. Oh well. If there’s anything we’ve learned in this place, it’s to chill.
The music was mellower tonight. They left the drums by the corner and huddled around a table, singing along to acoustic guitars. It was nice like this. Kanch and I chatted with the Dutch siblings who arrived recently, and Ramin and Meg who live in Paris, but between them have traveled so much of the world cos of their separate jobs. From the first time we saw them, they struck us as such kind people, just by their open smiles. Their stories were pretty exciting, and I hope I get to see as much of the world as they have one day.
Aliocha came back ravished and excited, cos he saw a bamboo shark and loads of phosphorescence among other things on his nite dive with Chris. Then he, Vlad, Kanch and I took turns drawing things in my book, and they chatted animatedly climbing all over us and making us pull faces, then suddenly the generator broke down and everything was dark. The little monkeys played tag with my cap - I lost count at how many times I gasped as Vlad missed the corner of a table by a hair or Alioch skidded close to the edge of the deck.
Everyone eventually settled down on the floor to look up at the stars. It was just perfect. But it would probably have been more perfect without the knowledge that we’d have to leave tomorrow. Life has been so good to us here.
We slowed down gradually, before everyone headed in to sleep. The boys stopped running and the people fell silent and content. I had plonked myself onto a plastic chair with the boys on either side of me, Aliocha trying to reason why I couldn’t stay for at least a couple more days, and Vladimir contributing every few minutes with his non-sequitor, "Casse les couilles" which saved us cos it kept making us giggle hard. Chris sat with us and I heard him smiling in the dark. I am honored to have made a friend like him. "You’re happy," he said, in 3 sing-song syllables that only Filipinos could manage, "You’re not…" - "I am, inside. But these boys don’t deserve that. Or you, or Kanch."
Aliocha gets up and Kanch takes his place. He moves to the edge where he finds Michel lying down facing the sea, and rolling him over, rests his head on Michel’s chest and hugs his papa. We let sweet things rush over us as we watch them. Chris shares with us the trials he had, the things he missed out on with his own father, and how they were reconciled.
Life has been good to a lot of us here, in different ways.
Saturday, 7th July 2007.
There aren’t many opportunities to look into a mirror in this place. The only one available is in a shadowy part of the bathroom, plastered over a sink (the sink itself is fake - it serves more as a structure to lean on while waiting for the shower booths to be free). I looked at myself this morning and was astonished. I think if Mama saw me, she might get an ulcer.
Chris has promised us a song! The water is choppy and the sky looks stormy again. He gets out a gorgeous guitar and while waiting for Kanch, he plays me a song about a brown-eyed girl. The song he’s chosen for us both is "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell. Kanch and I are glowing.
"I’ve looked at clouds from both sides now, from up and down, and still somehow… it’s clouds’ illusions I recall. I really don’t know clouds at all."
Anuar is asked to play "Kau Ilhamku" cos he does it so beautifully, and for once we have a duet. I love teasing Anuar, it’s so funny not as if he doesn’t get teased enough by the other guys. We play a bit more, I am happy and sad and happy and sad.
Vladimir walks up to breakfast already drenched from an early morning dive off the deck. Aliocha waves hello and we draw our lower lips down at each other. "Oui?" -"Tu vas me manquer" -"Moi aussi." I’m actually trying not to cry. I finally get a go on the hammock, and it’s lush. Jeff and I insult each other while the wind rocks my hammock and seasons the pages of my storybook with salt. Kanch lounges on the deck chair, looking snug and sedate.
Soulmates are woven shapes on matching mittens that are separated and paired again, and people call it fate. When they are born, certain people look at certain star charts and plot out certain paths for their lives that lead them to each other. They feel a tug from each other at daybreak, a compulsion that pulls at their heartstrings and make them gaze in each others’ directions even when standing among a thousand different souls. Soulmates are mostly just fairytales. I could wait for one for a million years, and probably still not be as happy as I am with the people who surround me.
People are real. When they are good to you, it’s not because of some star-cross’d obligation to fulfill, but rather because they’ve made the choice to hold your soul in careful regard. They take note of the things that make you happy, and share them with you without keeping count. They sit on the floor and put their thoughts for you into song. They listen to where you’re broken, the way divers watch carefully for bubbles from a leak, and then patch you up with little bits of themselves so that the work you’d have to do on your own is less.
I don’t believe very much in soulmates, but I’ve known some very good people, and some of them were on the jetty waving us off. We feel like a couple of sad, but lucky monkeys.
