When Laurens boarded a flight from Phuket to Bali in April 2011, the only thing on his mind was sleeping. “I’d gone straight from the bar to the airport and I was so hungover,” he says. “It was not my most glorious moment.” He had recently completed his medical training in anaesthesiology in Brussels and was taking a well-deserved break. “I’d been travelling in Fiji and Asia and was making my way to Bali for my cousin’s wedding.” Due to exhaustion, he barely noticed Alona sitting next to him until they were about to land. “I was on a gap year working in Thailand and was taking a trip to Bali,” she says. “We both went to sleep but when we woke up we started talking.” Laurens asked her if she was travelling for business or pleasure, admitting “it was the cheesiest opening line”. They clicked straight away and continued chatting until they had picked up their luggage.
“My uncle came to get me from the airport and suggested we offer Alona a lift,” says Laurens. During the journey, the pair exchanged contact details and he asked her to join him the next day for a party with his cousins. They got on so well that, afterwards, he invited her to the wedding, too. “I ended up ditching my friends,” says Alona. “It was a Muslim wedding and I only had beach clothes, so I made myself an appropriate outfit from a scarf that I turned into a dress,” she says. “My family were definitely gossiping about me because I brought a girl I met on the plane,” laughs Laurens. They spent the next few days in Bali, driving around on scooters and talking about their lives. “He told me his dream was to move to Africa, where he was born,” says Alona. “At the time, it seemed like a holiday romance, so I didn’t take it seriously.”
She soon returned home to Finland, where she was studying tourism. A month later, Laurens visited her and they decided to give things a real go. He was working in Brussels as a doctor but they stayed in touch and visited each other whenever they got the chance. “In 2012, we also spent a few months together in Thailand while I completed an internship at a diving centre,” she says. In 2014 they moved in together in Brussels and, in 2018, they followed Laurens’ dream and moved to Tanzania. “I work as a consultant and Alona works for a safari company,” he says.
The couple got engaged in early 2020, just before the pandemic and, shortly after, Alona became severely unwell. “At first we didn’t know if it was Covid, but it turned out to be cerebral malaria,” says Laurens. “I was scared to take her to the hospital with the virus circulating, so I set up an intensive care unit for her at home and looked after her there.” For 10 days it was “touch and go” but thankfully she made a full recovery. They married in Finland that summer, as soon as they were able to travel to Europe. “I got appendicitis the day before the wedding, so we ended up getting married in the hospital after emergency surgery. We had some cake with the guy I was sharing the room with,” says Laurens.
Alona admires how her partner loves helping people. “Laurens is very generous. I think he gets that from his mum,” she says. “He’s also intelligent and funny. We always laugh together.” Laurens loves that his wife knows exactly what she wants. “She pushes me to do more in my life. She is so open to any adventure and she’s always finding new experiences.”
