Experience the Eruption

Afrinta Puspandari was lying down in her room; sight over tv, remote in a hand, leapt from a channel to the other and abruptly halted on a news. “The headline was about mount Merapi condition, that at the time has given a sign of nearly erupted,” she said while retrieving her memories of the volcano eruption back to September 2010. “The effect hasn’t shown up to my neighborhood yet anyway, so I could still manage myself to be calm”.  That night, this freshman of English Department of Universitas Gadjah Mada went to bed as the usual. The atmosphere was light until her boardinghouse neighbor shouting at her door “Fintaaa wake uppp!!!”

Heard her name being called, Finta rushed to the door and quickly opened it. It turned out the girl next door was about informing that the Merapi volcano had just erupted. Even from her boardinghouse downtown in Gejayan, the horrendous rumbling could make the neighborhood awaken. Terrified of another following eruption, that night the girls slept side by side, as if they were on a pajamas party. Pajamas party without the general excitement, but fear.

When they woke up the next day, Finta stepped on something dusty, smooth yet slippery. There was ash raining restlessly, from the volcano scattering to every direction, piling up on the ground, floor, and the windowpane. That morning she meant to get some water in a minimarket nearby. However, by such polluted air, with pyroclastic flow in a distance, Finta who wanted to breathe safely found no mask left. Thus, the girl chose to dip her handkerchief in a little amount of water, and wear it as the substantial mask. She then went by her motorbike, under 20 km/hours since the range of her view could only reach within 5 meter.

The next morning, there were a number of inboxes on Finta’s cell phone. The messages were generally inquires her condition during the eruption period. The other texts from her college friends informed that during the eruption, Universitas Gadjah Mada was set on holiday. The next moment occurred was that two of her friends, Maria and Fitri, called Finta, firmly said, “We’re going home tonight”.

Three of them then went to Tugu station that night. Once they arrived in the place though, a shocking sight had just greet them heatedly. The station was crowded with mass in a shapeless queue, long lining up beyond the ticket booth. Just as they tried to gasp for fresh air, a young average-height security told them that the queue had reached over two thousand people. After being in that seemingly airless place, they decided to come back the following day. But by the time they arrived at the station, even before the station staffs operate, the precisely similar sight of the day before appeared to haunt them, again. They looked at a huge monitor displayed the train schedule there, figured out that of the train they were going to go by, there were only five seats remained. “As I was the skinniest one, I stealthily cut the overrated queue,” Finta said vigorously. “Then head over heels I run towards the ticket booth,” she added. “Guess what. I made it. Three tickets to Bekasi”. And she grinned in her feeling of gratefulness.