I thought I'd close the loop with the final chapter of my revisit of Shards Still Falling, an article I wrote back in '03. (Part One Here and Part Two Here.)  It would be nice if I could spend my time researching in-depth, introspective pieces with gargantuan word-counts, like this one clumsily attempts to be.  But for the most part, editors at the majors pass on anything over 800 words, especially if it doesn't have a feel-good vibe.  Often, if an article doesn't sell trunks, it doesn't sell.

G-Land. Photo: Dave Collyer/Sickshots.com

The Aftermath of the Bali Bombings

As the one year anniversary of the Bali Bombings approached, Kuta Beach seemed to be trying to heal itself.  Most prominently, Kuta Karnival, "A Celebration of Life; A Remembrance of Love," was scheduled to run from September 11 to October 12.  Organized by local Balinese, expatriates, local businesses, and international sponsors, the Kuta Karnival aimed to bring visitors back to Kuta and act as a remembrance of the Bali Bombing.  As the promotional posters stated, "It's surf, skate, sounds, and sun... a fair, a festival, a fanfare of food, a fantasy of fun, and a free-for-all, for you - for the world..."  One morning in early October, after another night of liver abuse, I decided to walk my hangover down the sandy expanse of Kuta Beach. In the distance stood scaffolding and sponsor's tents; the tell-tale signs of a major surf contest.  I sat myself down in the sand, directly next to the judges tower, along with a handful of other quiet spectators.  Out in the water, six competitors half-heartedly slogged it out in boring two foot surf.  They all seemed to be on ancient equipment.  I sat there, perplexed for a moment, until the contest announcer cleared things up over the loudspeaker.  I was watching the Retro Division, in which Bali surfing pioneers squared off against present day local pros, with all competitors riding vintage boards from the 70's and 80's.  It looked like fun - a lighthearted event, bridging the gap between generations.  When surfing first came to Bali, the local people were terrified of it.  They lined the cliffs at Uluwatu, praying for the lives of the crazy foreigners, sure that the evil spirits of the sea would drag them to their deaths.  It took a number of years for the younger, more open-minded Balinese children to get over their cultural fear of the sea.  But it happened, and now Balinese surfers are some of the finest in the world.

Kuta Karnival. Photo: Lewis Samuels

The competitors for the next heat began to mill about, and I watched as they selected boards from a range of collectibles that had been brought out of storage for the event.  The announcer got on the loudspeaker and blared out "We need one more for the next heat.  Anyone want to surf?"  Without much hesitation, I walked over to the official's area and said "Right then.  I'm ready to go."  They asked me my name and I told them.  I dumped my clothes on the sand and sauntered over to the classic boards.  With purpose and confidence I picked out a 5'6" twin fin from the early eighties.  The PA announced the competitors for our heat - I would be surfing against Thornton Fallander, a legendary Australian pro and Indo pioneer, as well as Ketut Menda, one of the first Balinese pro surfers, and a few young Balinese pros.  Surfing can still be a wonderfully unpretentious thing.  There I was, a spectator with a hangover, clutching a collectible vintage board, incomprehensibly waiting for the beginning of my heat.  That kind of thing doesn't happen in many other sports.  They called my name on the PA system and I waved to the crowd (crowd being a loose term, as the beach was nearly empty on this cloudy morning).  The horn blared, and I gave it my all, paddling out like a madman, hooking up a good right almost immediately.  After a few fey top-turns, I decided to throw in a stylistic cheater-five, just to go along with the whole retro theme.  That's when I remembered that my board didn't have a leash.  I fell, the board was pushed straight to the beach, and I was left swimming.  Later, after retrieving my board, I almost ran over Thornton Fallander.  I lost my board and swam twice more.  When the heat ended I staggered to the beach, exhausted.  The officials gave me a pat on the back and told me to help myself to some food in the competitor's area.  I filled a plate with some fried noodles.  A young Balinese girl, clearly mistaking me for someone of importance, kept trying to flirt with me.  The morning was shaping up.  I got third out of six in my heat, but it turned out that only the top two advanced.  I shook my head to the Balinese girl.  "The judges robbed me again."

Surf Culture in Kuta. Photo: Lewis Samuels

I lurked around the contest that day, and found myself drinking beer as the sun lazily swooned low over Kuta.  Surrounding me were a group of Bali surfing pioneers - Kim Bradley, Paul Anderson, Thornton Fallander, Terry Richardson, Mitchell Rae, Bobby Knight, Dick Hoole, and Dave Wiley.  These middle-aged surfers had returned to Bali to take part in the Kuta Karnival, and lend their support to the Balinese surfing community in a time of need.  The old friends talked of drunkenness and challenges, mortgages, divorce, surfing, and tragedy.  Surfing has changed Bali beyond recognition, and these men acknowledge that they played a hand in bringing about these changes.   Thornton Fallander first came to Bali in 1978, later than many of the others in the group.  But Thornton was one of the best surfers of his day, and Dick Hoole's photos and footage of Fallander's Indonesian surfing exploits brought many surfers to Bali.  I asked Thornton if he was sorry to have seen Bali change the way it has.  The question seemed to stump him for a moment.  "Well... it was the best time of my life.  But as you get older you have to think about other people.  Balinese were starving, and they're not starving now."  His message was clear enough - although it's been difficult to see the erosion of Bali's sleepy innocence, the basic fact is Balinese live better now than they did back then.  They have better health care, better sanitation, and better access to education.  For them surfing and tourism have mostly been a blessing.  As foreigners, we might wish that their culture had remained untouched.  But is that what the Balinese would have wanted?  In my experience, they want progress and convenience, just as we do.  I talked a little more to these older surfers about what they hoped to accomplish with the Kuta Karnival.  Many of the local surf community heavyweights, both expat and Balinese, had put months of effort into the Karnival, in the hope of revitalizing Kuta.  This direct activism and political involvement, coming from surfers, seemed a novel thing to me.  For so many years, surfers had seemed content to sit back and watch Bali grow and mutate at its own rate.  Now surfers were taking an active role in trying to redefine a post-bombing Kuta.  Paul Anderson, of Billabong Indonesia, put an enormous amount of energy and care into organizing the Kuta Karnival.  Along with other surfers, Paul felt the time had come to create a new Kuta, a place of sustainable growth, environmental responsibility, and public safety.  "It's better that you become involved with the local community and give back, cause it all comes back to you."  Thornton Fallander added "You can't forget why you're here.  You have to pause for a moment... (The bombing's) a tragedy, and the local people are still victims of it, now."

Joey Buran, 1981, OM Bali Pro.

I returned to watch more Xtreme Week action the next day, and left with a better feeling about the Kuta community.  Local Indonesian skateboarders attacked a skate park that had been erected on the sand.  The contest area and a nearby stage were thronged with spectators, the vast majority of them young Balinese.  They all seemed to be having the time of their lives--animated kids in the latest surfwear, with their hair styled just so.  Over at the surf contest, local Balinese surfers battled it out in the mediocre waves, surfing brilliantly despite the conditions.  As opposed to many surf contests, all the competitors, win or lose, were having a great time.  Bali was their home; they were doing what they could to make it whole again, through smiles and laughter and surfing.  The only thing missing from the scene were throngs of foreign tourists; the fuel that keeps the new Balinese lifestyle alive.  I thought again of what Thornton had said.  These same people were starving, in the early seventies.  Now they were part of the western machine, dressing and surfing and laughing just as kids their age do in Australia, Europe, and America.  It made me consider yet again exactly what the Bali Bombers hoped to destroy when they planned their attacks.  Was it the hedonistic lifestyle we westerners lead while visiting Bali?  Or the fact that many Balinese have adopted this lifestyle themselves, becoming westernized?  Or did they simply want to kill Americans?  Ali Imron, one of the accomplices in the bombing, told prosecutors that Bali was chosen "because it was frequented by Americans and their associates."  Imron quoted bombing mastermind Imam Samudra as saying they hoped to "defend the people of Afghanistan from America".  Prosecutors maintain that the bombers were part of Jemaah Islamiah, an Al Qaeda linked terrorist network whose eventual goal is a pan-South East Asian Muslim super nation.  Yet their choice of a soft target, a tourist destination, seems to say something more about their intentions.

People have been dying in the name of surfing for as long as surfers have been coming to Indonesia.  So the dying is nothing new.  But the 202 deaths caused by the bombing have had a much greater effect on surfers than the deaths that came before.  Thornton Fallander learned of Nias from his neighbor John Giesel.  Giesel spent a season camping in the jungle there, only to return the next year and eventually lose his life to malaria.  The legendary surf photographer Peter Crawford died in Bali after getting bit by a poisonous spider.  Many traveling surfers die each year as a result of motor bike crashes and malaria.  Crime-related homicides are rare but not unheard of in Kuta.  And surfers do die, on occasion, while actually surfing.  None of this used to discourage the surfers who traditionally came to Bali each season.  All these disparate manners of death were deemed things that only happened to other people.  The Bali Bombing left a different feeling.  It was an extremely effective act of terrorism, in that it certainly seemed to terrify travelers, and keep them from visiting Indonesia.  According to the Badung Tourism Authority, the hotel occupancy rate in Kuta dropped from 74.50% to 10.24% in the wake of the bombings. This loss in tourism has certainly had a negative impact on Bali, an island largely reliant on tourist dollars.  A report released by United Nations Development Program (UNDP), the World Bank and the US Agency for International Development, lists the loss of average income for Balinese at 43% between October 2002 and May 2003.  Walking the streets of Kuta, one feels an almost palpable desperation amongst the local business people.  The Kuta Karnival sprung out of this desperation, along with a million discounted prices, and shirts that read "Fuck Terrorists" and "Osama Don't Surf."

Later that same day, I visited the site of the Sari Club bombing.  An empty lot lay where the club had once stood.  Around it a wall and picket fence had been erected.  Only days earlier, a mural had been painted along the wall.  Below it were remembrances and notes left for those who were lost in the bombing.  Directly next to Ground Zero, what was once a surf shop had been converted into the Kuta Urban Management Information Center.  Pamphlets explained the need to create "a paradigm shift from our 'old tourism' where often local community played the part of disenfranchised observers, to a new process where the local community engages and actively interacts with its visitors."  It seemed that from the ashes of old Kuta, new ideas and leaders were coming forth.  Surfers were part of the movement, but the local Balinese were also taking on new responsibilities, caring for their home in ways they did not before the bombing.  The Kuta Urban Management Information Center put forth environmental concerns and proposals for sustainable economic growth that seemed worlds away from the unchecked development that had dominated Kuta for the last 30 years.  I walked back onto the street hoping that these new voices would succeed in both revitalizing Kuta and using the bombing as a wake-up call to change the path of Bali's future.  Before leaving, I slowly walked down the length of the fence that fronted Ground Zero, reading each remembrance.  One struck me in particular.  It was a clear picture of an Australian teenager who had lost his life in the bombing.  In the photo, he was paddling his surfboard, back home, wearing a wetsuit in colder water.  Below the photo was written "Just a kid doing the things kids do."

That afternoon, I ran into Blaine Pecaut, my friend who had experienced the bombing firsthand.  He was sitting in front of a table of empty Bintang Beer bottles, chatting with two friends from San Clemente.  Blaine was back in Kuta, staying at the same hotel he had stayed at a year earlier, along with his friend Bobby, who had also returned.  I sat down and joined them.  We talked about surfing and girls and work, loss and barrels and terrorism.  Both Bobby and Blaine planned to be in Kuta for the anniversary of the bombing.  I wondered what it was like for Blaine, to retrace all these steps that he had taken one year ago, with this giant gap now present in how he viewed Kuta, and the world at large.  We drank the remainder of the afternoon away, as people are wont to do on vacation, and proceeded to dinner with a group of friends.  The Kuta Karnival was still going on, over in the distance, towards the beach.  The schedule called for a food festival and musical performances.  I convinced Blaine and Bobby that we should head down and check it out.  We made our way down another maze alley, past the same sing-song vendors.  Many of the prominent restaurants in Bali had set up food stalls.  They were offering wine tasting at a nearby table; I drank a few glasses.  An older Australian man took the stage.  The band launched into "What a Wonderful World," and this nondescript Australian, neatly dressed in a white shirt and blue jeans, sang in the spirit of Louis Armstrong without mimicking him.  Everyone fell silent, sensing a solemnity to the moment.  But little children are often oblivious to such things.   A boy climbed up onto the stage.  A Balinese child followed him up there, laughing, chasing.  The singer kept singing; took a step or two back to give the kids room.  Someone placed their little blond girl on the edge of the stage, and she began playing and dancing with the other kids.  "I see friends shaking hands, saying how do you do... They're really saying, I love you."  More children from the crowd joined them, dancing and chasing each other.  Blaine and Bobby and I exchanged glances.  We didn't know what to feel, really. It was one of those moments.  A moment that seemed scripted, cathartic, ordained, but it wasn't any of those things.  It was just Bali.

Bombing Memorial. Photo: Shayne Ferber

I left Bali a few days before the first anniversary of the bombing; my visa expired.  Blaine and Bobby stayed on, determined to be present in Kuta on October 12, as they were the year before.  Meanwhile, international newspapers ran stories about the continued threat of terrorist attacks on the eve of the anniversary.  Amidst tight security, October 12 passed with ceremony and tearful remembrances.  At 8am a flower wreath was placed on the newly unveiled monument at Ground Zero.  Meanwhile, in Denpasar, Bali, around 3,000 Hindus held a mass prayer, along with a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks, asking God for a stop to violence across the globe.  A morning mass for survivors and relatives of victims was held at Jimbaran Bay.  This multi-faith service featured Christian scripture readings, as well as Islamic and Hindu prayers.  Later that afternoon, towards sunset, another ceremony was held on Kuta Beach.  Candles were carried by attendees and placed along the tide line.  Local and foreign surfers then paddled out and formed a circle in the Indian Ocean, holding hands; prayers were said for the departed.  Lastly, a candlelight vigil was held at Ground Zero, with 5 minutes of silence being observed as the anniversary of the bombing passed.  Blaine Pecaut mostly steered clear of the crowds.  Speaking to him afterwards, back at his home in San Clemente, it was difficult to tell what effect the remembrances had had on him.  "Yeah.  It was good.  I walked around the site of the bombing during the afternoon.  They had a big banner up with the names of all the people who died.  Marc's name was there.  So I got to see that.  But I didn't go to any of the ceremonies...  We were surfing that day."  Blaine didn't seem very interested in talking about the anniversary of the bombings; he had faced his fears and returned to Bali.  There wasn't much to say about it.  He did become animated when talking about his next surf trip.  "I want to go to El Salvador.  I'm saving up already, just working a lot.  The surf has sucked since I got back.  Nothing good.  Nothing perfect, like those waves we got at G-land.  How was that?  How good were those waves?"