Day: 15
Distance covered: 1,182 km (734 miles)
Subjects found: 6
(Amazing things have happened in the past twenty-four hours; I’ll be writing about them as soon as I can. In the meantime, here’s a piece I didn’t have a chance to post yesterday…)
Marinho and I have now spent almost two weeks in Lombok, and expect to leave by this time tomorrow. It’s been an incredible beginning to the project.
Lombok TV’s most popular program, Sasak Tulen, has been showing my photography each evening for the past week, to aid us in our search for five young men I photographed on a beach five years ago.
Last night I was invited to appear live on the program. My interview was to last only three or four minutes, but I had a lot of fun with the presenters, Rhani and Rody, and they kept me there until the credits rolled an hour later.
A number of locals recognised me today and said they loved the show and my woeful attempts at speaking the Sasak language. I have a recording of the program here, and will upload some short clips when I have a chance.
Surprisingly, the exposure brought us no real clues as to the identities of the five young men we were searching for. I’d like to thank Darma and Yusril at Lombok TV for giving us the opportunity to share our story with a wider audience.
This afternoon Marinho and I returned to the slopes of Mount Rinjani, in the north of the island. It was here four days ago that we interviewed Salni, who was waiting for her husband Nuryadi to come home from Malaysia.
Nuryadi had been working there illegally to pay for his young daughter Junita’s education. Yesterday, for the first time in three years, he returned to his village, where we’ll interview him tomorrow. This one’s going to be something special.
We’ve just passed our first 1,000 kilometres, and our first 1,000 Facebook Likes. To thank you all for your support I’ve arranged a small gift – five new Facebook cover images, and ten of my favourite wallpapers – available for download here.
We like your Likes. We love your Shares. Please share our stories and images around so everyone can see what we’re doing!
(The interview, by the way, was more powerful than we could have ever hoped for… Stay tuned!)