Bali villagers mourn for their dead

By KATHY MARKS in Bali

Two-year-old Apriliana is racing around the family compound, a dark-haired little imp in a dirty blue dress. She stops abruptly and clings to her mother, whose strained smile is beginning to crack.

Apriliana wants to know when her father is coming home. She is too young to grasp that he will never be back.

Ketut Nana Wigiya, a taxi driver, was outside the Sari Club in Kuta 10 days ago. It was the best place in town to pick up fares, and for more than a decade the coveted spot had belonged to a group of families from a nearby village, Kepaon. Eight men from the village were waiting in line that night. Not one survived.

Kepaon, 6km east of Bali's tourist enclave of Kuta, is a community in shock. Eight families are gripped by grief, while other villagers - relatives, friends and neighbours - are in mourning. Five bodies have yet to be found. Hindu ceremonies are being performed to summon home the souls of the men.

Wigiya, 30, was not supposed to be at the Sari that night. Usually he drove a taxi around town, but it was being repaired, so he took over his uncle's spot on Legian St. At the fateful moment, he was standing outside his cab, sandwiched between the nightclub and a minivan packed with explosives.

In Kepaon, his wife, Wayan Rasti, had been sleeping fitfully. A family member woke her and told her about the bomb. "I knew my husband was there," she says in a soft voice, rocking back and forth on a blue plastic chair under a mango tree.

Wigiya's elder brother, Made Dugul, spent three days searching for him. He checked five hospitals and inspected every body in the morgue. "We couldn't find him," says Dugul, a dignified man in a black sarong and black udeng, the Balinese headscarf.

"We keep praying and looking. I want to cry, but I have no water in my eyes. I'm sure he must be dead already. He has become like ash."

Wayan Rasti cries when she wakes up in the morning. She cries when she is alone. And she cries when Apriliana and her 7-year-old sister, Linda, ask where their father is.

"I keep worrying about their future because I don't have a job," she says. "I have to find a way to make a living."

Two doors away, at the home of I Nyoman Mawa, a large group of relatives and elders are about to perform a ceremony to call home his spirit. With his body also missing, they believe his soul is trapped between the physical and spiritual worlds.

Mawa, 42, had waited for fares outside the Sari Club every night for 11 years. When he failed to come home, his 17-year-old son, Made Agus Antara, went to look for him.

"There was nothing at all," says his wife, Ni Made Kitik, twisting her hands in her lap. "I know he is dead. These people are so evil. My husband was a good man."

Another Kepaon driver, Ketut Sutajijya, 34, is also presumed dead. His family will cremate him today. Instead of a body, they will burn symbols such as flowers.

"I know nothing about politics or religion," says Made Dugul. "I just wish Bali to be as it was in the beginning. I want the tourists to come here in peace."

Wayan Dugul says: "All the people in the village are very sad and curse the bombers. We can't accept that our families have been attacked."

- INDEPENDENT

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