“When hell looks like paradise”
Kawa Ijen, Java Island, Indonesia. May 2022.
5am, we arrived at the summit. I was quite excited to go down, I mean into the crater, and be close to the biggest acid lake in the world.
I’ve been told that I might see the blue flames. Once again I was super happy to experience something new in my life. I’ve been given a mask as protection for my lungs.
The volcano is famous for sulfur extraction.
We arrived down, and, quickly, I discovered a vision of hell, when I understood that all these men were working there. Pieces of tissues as protection, open shoes… They looked like miners stuck at the bottom of a mine. And someone started to explain to me…
The workers have to come up to the top of Ijen Volcano every night, then go down and start their day here. They are paid for extracting the sulfur in extremely rough conditions.The sound down there is the one of the coughing fit. Smokes are powerful and highly nocive for humans.
I thought «These workers are dying ».
Once they can extract around 80 kgs of suffers, they have to carry the suffer on their shoulders on bamboo baskets and climb up to the top, walking through the stones with flip flops… And, hiking through the crow of tourists, which makes the way jammed.
On average they do this return trip 3 times a day. And after that, at the end of the day, they have to walk down the volcano with all these heavy trolleys. Around 300 kgs per trolley.
The tourists often complain once they did the full hiking, especially after the descent. The knees are painful. Can you imagine doing this every day after your work day carrying a 300 kgs trolley? After the blue flames, we went up to the volcano and wait for the sunrise. The smell suffused my mind, I hated it. It get deep into my lungs and clothes, hair, and eyes.
When the sun was rising, I can say that the atmosphere there was mystic. And the view…. This blue acid lake sparkles its edges with yellow glitter.
Everything there is duality.
The beauty of the landscapes and their hazardous nature.
The heat down and the cold up.
The bright white of the clouds and the dark black of the dead trees.
The tourists fooling around hell and the workers dying in paradise.
