Word: suameria
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Dates: during 2002-2002
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Like many who live through a tragedy, 24-year-old Putu Suameria has his own story of survival. A Balinese bartender at one of the numerous bars that line the alleyways near Kuta's nightclub strip, Suameria usually has Saturday nights off and spends them hanging out in front of the Sari Club, drinking beers and watching the foreign clubbers come and go. But on the night of October 12, he took a second shift to cover for a friend. The overtime saved his life. The car bomb that destroyed the Sari Club and killed 191 people was parked...
...Suameria and his fellow Balinese are casualties of the aftermath of the blasts nonetheless. Some 80% of Bali's economy depends on tourism, and foreign visitors have all but vanished. Japan lifted its travel warning for Bali earlier this month, and Australia has downgraded its alert to a region-wide advisory. But the U.S., Germany and France, among other tourist-generating nations, are still telling their citizens to avoid Bali. This angers I Gde Pitana, director of the Bali Tourism Authority, who points out that there were no travel warnings issued for New York after Sept. 11. "Like New York...
...lost a father, a business, how do they eat, how do they send their children to school?" If the tourists don't come back, or another bomb hits the region, Wiranatha knows that as a last resort, he can always return to his family farm to grow rice. Suameria, the bartender, has no such escape plan. After spending three years in Kuta, he shudders at the thought of returning to his home village on Bali's north coast. "The tourists will just have to come back," he shrugs. "There is no other...
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