Night gathering at Ground Zero in Kuta Bali

The Night time ceremony in Kuta was scheduled for 10 pm and as Jalan Legian was blocked of I took a left turn off of the one way loop and a quick right turn down an alley bringing me out finally at the alley next to paddy’s Bar.

The ‘Ground Zero’ area was cordoned off, but people were allowed to enter after a quick swipe with the metal detector.

The new memorial looked impressive under the bright lights and the names of the victims were now visible. They were sectioned of country by country, Australia first, Indonesia last.

Although Australia lost the greatest number of people 21 other countries including the USA, Brasil and the United Kingdom. I noticed 1 entry for Ecuador, Ana Cecilia Aviles who was a good friend of Miguel here in Bali. She was found fully conscious with a piece of metal driven all the way through her and was told she’d survive.

I took my turn at walking past the memorial to pay my respects along with the other visitors. I’ve never seen Jalan Legian without traffic or so many people standing around here without trying to sell something.

Local people with their kids made up a large part of those in attendance.

I talked to Wayan who was standing next to me watching the whole thing and asked him where he was during the bombing. He said he was a mile away watching tv. The first bomb at Paddy’s he thought was an electrical box exploding, the second bomb made his tv jump. His friend called him and told him not to go out of the house. Next day he came to the site and said he couldn’t believe it, everything was blown up. He then went to Sanglah hospital in Denpasar looking for friends who had been working in the area and saw piles of bodies.

My friend Miguel spent 6 days working at Sanglah helping locals to indentify their relatives. He said in all that time he didn’t get one positive ID as the locals were in total denial.

At around 11pm we were asked to leave the area so that relatives of the deceased could pray or do whatever they had to in privacy.

There actually wasn’t any particular highlight to this event, it was just a year on and a gathering for support. Miguel told me he’s been to enough ceremonies for this bombing and doesn’t know if he can take any more. I think I’ve seen and heard enough too and these last couple of days have been a good way to wrap things up. It will be interesting to see if there is an annual memorial ceremony.

James Cheer took these photos of the ceremonies and offered them for viewing. Thank you James.