Berastagi, Indonesia---When Indonesian farmer Elfi Dalimunthe fled to safety last week as a volcano hurled hot ash and rocks across the sky, it marked the third time she was forced to abandon her home in recent years.
"I heard a loud booming sound and saw thick ash spewing out," the 30-year-old told AFP, recalling the terrifying eruptions which prompted her family to jump into a bus and onto a motorbike and rush to a temporary shelter.
They are among more than 10,000 people evacuated from their homes this month after an increase in the activity of Mount Sinabung, on Sumatra island, highlighting the precarious existence for many in the country with the largest number of volcanoes in the world.
Indonesia sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire, a belt of seismic activity running around the basin of the Pacific Ocean, and has around 130 active volcanoes.
But millions of poor Indonesians live on or near the slopes of the steaming mountains, where the volcanic soil makes for extremely fertile farmland, and many insist on returning to their villages after even major eruptions.
Dalimunthe fled her small village, just kilometres (miles) from Sinabung, for the first time in 2010 for a few weeks due to an eruption and was then forced from her home in September 2013 for more than a year.
Last year while she was living in a shelter, her wooden house was crushed by falling ash during a deadly eruption.
Despite this disaster, the vegetable farmer returned to the village with her husband and three children and established a new home.
And even after last week's eruption, she insists she will return to her village and not move out immediately, citing the fact her children are at schools in the area.
"I will move when the children are older," she said, sitting on a thin mat in a cramped hall holding about 500 people in the town of Berastagi, where many are sheltering.
AFP
