I guess it was about 2013. I’d been going to Bali for the better part of 25 years, and although in my early years I was one of those Aussie tourists enjoying the alcohol-fueled cheap nights out and $5 Bintang Tshirts, I’d also explored lots of the island and knew there was much more to it than that.
Wait, let me backtrack a fraction. In 2010 I drove across the USA in a 26ft motorhome and finished in New York where I ran the NY Marathon. I’ve never really written about that adventure, but assuming I live long enough, I will one day. I pinky promise. I ran somewhere different every day on that trip from LA to NY, and in the back of my head, I kept thinking, “oh, my mates would love running here”… and I started toying with the idea of doing a running tour over there.
But of course, by the time you pay for flights and hotels and a bus and a bus driver and for me and insurance, the tour would have cost about $400,000,000. Each. And that made me sad. But oh well.
I kept thinking about the idea though, and talking about it a bit, and one day when I was in Bali I realised I could probably do a tour there much cheaper. And without insurance. Because… meh. Insurance schminsurance.
From my own previous trips I already knew lots of the places I wanted to go, but figured I should do some research and find some extra places to run and activities to do, so I randomly emailed a tour company that seemed like they knew what they were talking about. Actually, to be perfectly honest, they were one of the only adventure tour companies I could find at the time.
Seems kinda weird now, but seven years ago Instagram wasn’t as big as it is now, and neither was adventure tourism – even in Bali. You could climb the volcano, go white water rafting, ride a bike or an elephant, but other than that there really wasn’t much. So I arranged for one of their guides to take me to a few extra places.
And that’s how I met Widi.
Truth be told, most of the places Widi and I explored didn’t really work for the tours I wanted to do, but boy did we have fun. More than that though, he proved to be all the things I really admire in a human.
Needless to say, over the years we became very good friends. Actually, that’s not quite true. Widi became like family to me. And if, like me, you don’t have much actual family, you’ll know how much that shit means.
Now let’s fast forward to earlier this year. Widi was in the process of moving to a new house – but one that didn’t have a proper kitchen or bathroom. Or a roof that kept the rain out. March 8 was the day I flew out, and I went to visit his new home where it was all hands on deck trying to fix it up. The day I arrived back in Australia, the first clues that Covid19 might actually be a problem started to appear, and as we all know now, within a few weeks it was a full blown shit storm. But those first few days back, none of us really understood just how bad it would be and I sent some money over so he could finish the most critical renovations and get his family in to his new home safely and comfortably.
About 45 seconds after that, we all worked out the renos were gonna be the least of our problems as tourism pretty much dried up overnight. Widi’s a tour guide, so with no tours to guide, he was gonna be fucked for who knows how long. Hopefully only a month or two. But here we are, five months later, and still zero tourism and still completely fucked. And while we can piss and moan about our shitty government or welfare system, he gets zippity shit.
So whatever was left of the reno money became food money. Although even then, I worked out pretty quickly that wasn’t going to go far enough, so I had this slightly stupid idea to make a Tshirt and donate all the money.
Now, it’s fair to say, when I come up with ideas, which is often, I almost always think they’re pretty fucking amazing. And almost always without fail, they’re really fucking not. So I figured I’d do these Tshirts, we might sell ten or 20 if we were lucky, and we could make enough money to get him and his family through a few more weeks.
And that’s where you guys came in. You guys were fucking awesome. You embraced the idea, and we sold a stack of Tshirts. Honestly, I don’t even know how many. It all went a bit nuts and I was still trying to work enough to pay my own bills, and people waited really patiently for their Tshirts, and did I mention how awesome you guys are yet?
It’s only now that we’ve pretty much sold out of the last batch, that I’m starting to do a full stocktake of how much we made, minus printing and postage yadda yadda yadda, so I know how long we can keep sending money over to help.
For those of you who are wondering, for all sorts of reasons, it makes more sense to send a certain amount of money every month, rather than in one big hit. We’re on about month three or four of sending enough money for Widi and his extended family. He’s since moved away from the city where his new home was and relocated to the village up north where his family lived so he’s surrounded by his mum and dad and extended family, and any support we send, supports that wider family group as well.
I don’t usually break personal confidences, and I’ve thought quite long and hard about doing it now, but if you supported this cause I want to share this one thing with you. I checked in about a week ago to see if he still had enough money and when he replied he said “what should I say to your kindness. My life is in your hands. You have helped many of my family.” And I cried a bit.
And I don’t tell you any of this so I look cool, because all I did was come up with an idea. It was you guys who made it work and made it possible for us to help these people out through a really, really rough time.
I know there are others out there doing some pretty amazing things too, helping more people even, but as that old starfish parable goes, we made a difference to that one. And I say ‘we’, because it’s you guys that truly made it happen, and it’s because of you guys that we can keep supporting Widi and his family for a while longer yet. Hopefully long enough to get them through this patch to a point where maybe they can make their own money again and get back on their feet.
So from me, but also from Widi and his family, thankyou. From the absolute bottom of our hearts.
Be awesome to each other.
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