Semester 20 Chapter VII: Trauma Bond

Okay, so I’ve been on the Pom Pom Island for a week now. It’s Monday which is technically a day off. I’m gonna try to upload this one sometime soon but it’s quite likely that I finish it a bit later or maybe some other day altogether. Let me preface this one by saying that coming here was one of the best decision I’ve made in recent years. Everything about this has been super cool and I vow to do something like this every year until I’m six feet under. Before proceeding, I wanna shout out T.I. for the Trauma Bond song. That shit is totally my soundtrack for this trip. Had it on repeat for a good week now and I can’t seem to get enough of it. Eating good like in Abu Dhabi end of Ramadan!

 

Okay, so the departure here was delayed by a couple of hours due to some issues with supplies and gas but we made it here Monday late evening. We were welcomed by staff and some of volunteers, we had dinner and we were shown our tents. Let me start with food. It’s great, mostly vegetarian and they do cater to vegans. There is a little vegan gang here so sometimes I get some extra treats like mayo or ice latte. They don’t see a male vegan very often and true enough – I’m the only plant-based motherfucker here. Second, tents are actually pretty cool. They are more like tent-like cubicals with an actual bed, fan, light and some small racks and hangers to put your shit onto. It’s basic but you don’t really need much more than that.

 

I volunteer for TRACC (Tropical Research And Conservation Center) which is an organization that responds to damage caused by fish bombing. Now, fish bombing is a wild practice where people throw a fucking bomb into water which easily gives them 40+ kg of fish but also completely annihilates everything in about 15-meter radius. Including coral. It is banned now but it’s still happening. Not around this island anymore but man… So much destruction. Anyway, there’s still some coral left and this center works on restoring and cultivating it. They locate healthy pieces of coral, they attach them to underwater nets, then they attach them to custom-made structures and let them grow again. Throughout my dives, I’ve seen different stages of the process and it’s really cool somebody works on that. Apart from divers, there are researchers and scientists on the team who plan everything and oversee the execution.

 

When it comes to the crowd… I love how diverse it is. You get pretty much everything from the age of 20 to about 65. In my group there is an American married couple who had started diving 5 years ago and they’re both cool as hell. Talk about life goals. You got people from all corners of the world and everybody I’ve had a chance to hang out with turned out to be a nice person. We got uni students, we got some former military, we got people with medical and social work background, it is all very colorful. There’s this dude from Canada who also came on the boat with me I probably hang out with most. It all reminds me of summer camps of my theater group I used to go to as a teenager. You are in the middle of nowhere, completely disconnected from civilization, you have some projects to do and in the meantime you eat, you talk, you read, you listen to music, you play beach volleyball. I haven’t touched work in a week and I’ve grown pretty reluctant towards reading news. I would like to congratulate Hungary for not re-electing Orban. That is something.

 

When it comes to the schedule, it’s all very well organized. First, we got briefed about the organization, about what they do and about some basic camp rules. Apart from being respectful and not acting like an idiot, you also take up couple of cleaning shifts a week. Another similarity to the aforementioned theater camp. It’s nothing crazy tho – you pretty much clean dishes after lunch or dinner twice a week. And you’re always in a group of three. Sometimes you wipe tables or floors but again. No biggie. And then you have the diving. Now, there are probably more beautiful places in the world to dive but after certain amount of dives, you just enjoy being in water. And you particularly enjoy doing things that are a bit out of the ordinary. I enjoyed diving in The Netherlands last year and I’m enjoying this now. And seeing all stages of coral recovery is something you don’t get to witness every day. So yeah… You got two work dives on the daily. You always follow whatever has been assigned to your group and it’s all really fun. It feels cool diving and following a mission. Most people here are really good divers and those who came here to complete a course or two before fully jumping in are getting a 5-star treatment. Since nobody is in a hurry, instructors have plenty of time to extend the course however they please and students can simply ask for an afternoon off or a couple of fun dives in between to unwind. Honestly, the best possible set-up. Apart from volunteers, there is also a group of A-Level marine biology students who sometimes mingle with us. Besides diving, we have also molded some cement structures to be planted at the sea floor later on as a basis for corals to hang onto and prosper. And again, everybody I have met here is a lovely person. Wanna send a shout out to my friend in London who sent me a link for this thinking it might be something for me. You were 100% correct.

 

You can also dive some more if you want to. If you are a Rescue Diver, Divemaster or Instructor, you can team up with another person of one of these ranks and dive the house reef without local staff. I’ve teamed up with different people and I’m averaging at more than 3 dives a day. My secret mission is to dive so much that I’ll be sick of diving by the time I leave. I don’t think that's realistic but I’m under water every chance I get. Oh yeah, the house reef is the only shore dive we do here. Everything else is off a boat.

 

I also love my routine here. I get up around 6am and do some workout. We have a fresh yoga instructor among us and she gave her first class today to about 6 of us. That was fun. You kinda want to use the window between 6 and 7:30am as the sun is still just a bit behind the island and it’s not too strong. Than it’s morning dives, lunch, afternoon dives, sometimes some other activities and then voluntary sunset or night dives. Oh, you can do a 6 or 7am dive too but I haven’t yet. Might do that tomorrow. And they also organize turtle walks. You follow the local turtle team to look for eggs and place them in hatcheries around the island. That’s the fucked up thing. You would think that a place like this would be protected, everybody around would celebrate it and tourism would be heavily limited. Well, you would be wrong. There are 5 resorts on this tinie tiny island and they are building a new one. Which makes many of efforts here quite difficult for obvious reasons. For example, turtles have less and less space to lay eggs. There’s less sand due to all the construction so they often lay them at places which can be washed off by a tide. So people come out there every night to locate some, put them somewhere safe and then let all these little turtle babies back to the ocean. I’ve had a chance to see that happening and it’s the cutest thing. Sometimes you see the big ones swimming around in the ocean along with rays, cuttlefish, angel fish, box fish, crocodile fish, stone fish and dozens of others. Marine life here is colorful. And yes, there are resorts but you kinda forget all about them at our station. The whole island is still a paradise, the views are breathtaking and it all feels like such a treat.

 

So yeah, super happy and super grateful for being here. Got two more weeks to go and today we are getting a new batch of volunteers so my group is kinda moving into the “veteran” category. Oh yeah, and internet connection is quite unstable here which only supports my detox. Loving it. Shout out to everybody out here, shout out to all my people back home and shout out to Hungary. I’m gonna put up some diving videos once I get to some more stable connection. Keep it light, keep it positive, don’t entertain bullshit and don’t let them fuck with your inner light. One!

 

Highlights:

• Diving.
• People.
• Views.