Behind the scenes during lombok earthquake

Meet a village elder speaking about the earthquake on Sunday morning, the only day children don't go to school. So most of the village was peacefully asleep until we were shaken violently out of our slumber.

I'd had a restless night and was up at the crack of dawn, I was considering to go watch the sunrise but it wasn't for another hour, I decided to go back to sleep where I started having some bad dreams which ended abruptly. I knew straight away what was happening and coincidently I had been talking about the possibility of an earthquake just the day before because I was in the process of designing some structures to build on Adi's land. Adi had assured time and again. No earthquake, no tsunami but never say never I guess when you live on the foothills of a volcano on the Ring of fire.

I waited in the bed until the shaking stopped I was in two minds if I should get up or not, the rocking was quite aggressive and it didn't seem possible to move, I just kept my eyes closed and hoped for it to end.

As soon is it was over I grabbed my clothes and ran straight to the door, I was afraid of what I might see outside and what could happen next. My neighbours were appearing looking in Shock but also relieved but somehow we all knew it was over yet, we were all waiting outside and the aftershocks came.

The villagers shout 'Lindur' a word from their sasak culture to let the gods know that there are still humans alive and to not shake the earth so hard. They would shout it out for every tremor, as you can hear in the video.....

We heard later in the day quite a few locals in neighbouring villages lost there homes and even lives. I'm focusing on setting up a crowd fund to donate money for those who need to rebuild their homes. The minium wage here is 142 euros a month but many people do not have stable and regular work, they simply don't have any savings to rebuild their homes.