A Life Built on the Water
From a fishing village to a freediving instructor, this is what it looks like to change a life.
A boat captain. An ocean guide. A father, a husband, a son. Pian has spent his whole life on and under the water around Gili Trawangan, and long before anyone called it a “skill,” it was simply how he moved through the world.
He’s guided divers, run boats, and looked after the reef most people only see for a few minutes with a mask on. What he hasn’t had is the chance, or the money, to turn his natural gift into a qualification that could change his family’s future.
This page is about changing that.
Seventeen Years in the Making
I’ve known Pian for 17 years. Every trip back to Gili T, he’s been there, first as a guide, then as a friend, then as someone I’d trust with almost anything.
Over that time, I’ve watched him support his wife, his kids, and his parents, often quietly, often at his own cost. He’s the kind of person who turns down an easier option because it doesn’t sit right with him, more on that below.
This isn’t a stranger’s fundraiser. It’s a friend asking other people to see in Pian what I’ve seen for nearly two decades.
A Man of His Word
During COVID, when Indonesian tourism shut down overnight, Pian took work overseas in Brunei to keep supporting his family. He spent what little he had on the travel documents to make it happen.
Then tourism reopened, almost as soon as he’d committed. I offered to cover the cost for him to cancel the contract and come home. He said no. He’d given his word, and he wasn’t going to break it just because it had become inconvenient for him.
That’s Pian. Every conversation about this campaign, with companies, with individual donors, comes back to that story, because it says more about him than any pitch could.
A Mask, a Rented Gun, and a Realisation
Last year I was back on Gili T running some training. I brought Pian a new freediving mask, something Freediving Central was well placed to provide. A little while later he sent me a photo of himself with the mask, a speargun, and a fish for his family. It made my day. Then I asked about the gun.
He said he rented it. Every single time he goes spearfishing to feed his family, he rents the gun.
That stayed with me. Pian is the sole provider for a household of five: his wife, their two children, and his mother and father. He has no savings, no assets, and no safety net behind him. Just years of hard work and a rare talent nobody had given him the chance to formalise.
Already a Natural in the Water
Not long after, I brought Pian to work with me at one of our Freediving Central retreats in Amed, Bali, or so I told him. What I hadn’t told him was that there wasn’t much for him actually to do there.
When he arrived, I sat him down and told him the truth: this was his first holiday, ever. The room was his for the week. He was the 17th customer, not staff. He’d never stayed in a hotel before, never slept in a room with air-conditioning, and he’d never made the 40-minute boat trip to Bali despite living so close to it his whole life.
Within a day he was part of the crew, laughing, training, and genuinely connecting with everyone there. By the end of the six-day retreat he’d reached 30 metres and had naturally slipped into helping guide the group, not because he was asked to, but because that’s who he is.
Behind his back, I organised something with the group. We funded a brand-new carbon fibre spearfishing gun, float, and line, worth around AU$700, some people chipping in $10, others $100. At the final dinner I handed it to him. He’d never owned one before, let alone a carbon fibre one. There wasn’t a dry eye at the table.
That same week, Veronica, manager of Freedive Gili on Gili T, walked into the dive shop we were training at. I introduced her to Pian on the spot. She told him to come and see her once training with me was done. It wasn’t planned. It just happened to be exactly the right moment.
Why Susak, Why Freedive Gili
After the retreat I asked Veronica what it would cost for Pian to train with her team. Her answer: Indonesians train free, and she and Mike were more than happy to support him. Pian has since been to Freedive Gili more than ten times and has become a genuine part of their community.
The plan is to fund Pian’s professional freediving instructor certification, run at Freedive Gili, right here on the island.
Two reasons this location matters. First, it means the money stays local and directly supports Freedive Gili as a business, one that’s already supporting Pian free of charge, so it’s only fair that support goes both ways. Second, Veronica and Mike are already running instructor courses for Indonesians, so the infrastructure and experience to train someone like Pian well is already in place.
There’s also a longer-term door this opens: training at Freedive Gili means Pian has a natural path to work from their shop once he’s certified, not just a qualification, but a place to put it to use straight away.
On top of that, the deliberate choice: an instructor trainer who teaches in Susak, Pian’s mother tongue, not English or Bahasa Indonesia. It would be easy to send him through a course taught by an excellent English-speaking trainer. But that’s not the same as making sure he absorbs the training in the language he actually thinks in.
This is the difference between Pian completing a course and Pian fully owning it.
No Angle, Just Us
People ask why we’re doing this. What’s in it for us.
Honestly, nothing. Freediving Central is in a strong position, and we know a lot of people, individuals and companies, who are already active in the giving space. Pian has spent years looking after everyone else in the water. This is a chance for a few of us to look after him.
In Indonesia, the average monthly income is around AUD $220. A qualified freediving instructor can earn around AUD $150 per day. If Pian works just two freediving retreats each year, only two weeks of work, he could earn almost what many people in his community make in an entire year.
That’s it. No angle, no catch, just a group of people who could help, choosing to.
What Pian Says
When I first told Pian that people wanted to help fund this, he was genuinely stunned, kind, humble, and honestly a bit confused about why strangers would do this for him. That reaction is part of why this campaign matters: it’s not something he ever expected or asked for.
Help Pian Become an Instructor
Every dollar goes toward Pian’s instructor course fee, equipment, a week of hands-on training in Bali, travel between Gili and Lombok, accommodation and meals during training, lost wages while studying, and SSI certification and registration fees.
Today Pian is driving a snorkelling boat. With your help, next year he’ll be the instructor introducing new divers to the ocean he loves.
Thanks / Supporters block
A very special thanks to:
- Freedive Gili https://freedivegili.com/
- Freediving Central https://freedivingcentral.com/