The past few days have been silent. No messages have been posted on the website, there are no pictures of men looking for their friend in Nepal. There is just silence and every now and then the ticking of the counter on the website, moving up to 105%.
It’s a silence that has been disappointing. After the part posted that they found Christiaans helmet, surely it couldn’t last long anymore? But the pictures we got of the helmet on Whatsapp stayed in the private group. Suddenly we got the thought… what if this was the last thing to be found of Christiaan’s? It felt too painful to share this thought.
An uneasy silence was created for the past few days because of multiple letdowns. At 05:00 a message come in with the next words:”The weather is too bad to fly today.” A hopeful analysis of satellite images which didn’t give any new real information. A new day and again no possibility to fly. The research on the helmet which could last for days. A continuous flow, surprise and frustration in a completely different culture where saying no is not an option. The rain continues to tick, while everybody gets more and more tired.
With the passing of the days and the knowledge that the chance that Christiaan will be found alive is getting smaller and smaller, the first cracks are starting to appear in the ”tacking things” humor everybody is in. No matter how hard you want it, it just isn’t possible to keep running as fast as you can. Slowly we are switching from a sprint to a marathon.
Today Pieter got in the plane and explained it the following way: ”Our goal is clear. We are going there to take Christiaan back with us. But we are realistic as well. The moesson has started and it is getting more dangerous to search. The chance that we will discover during this journey we can’t search any further is also there. In that case we will have to return, get back to our lives and make plans to continue the search in the new season.”
The past few days have been quit. It’s an uneasy quite fed by disappointments, but for everything there is, there is also an hour…. There is a moment to be silent, and a moment to speak.
Today is a moment to say: ”Christiaan, we will continue our search and we will find you!”
