Quarter Year

Years ago, Ari’s uncle converted from Hinduism to Christianity in an effort to become a better person. I don’t necessarily think Christianity’s values are any better than those of Hinduism, but Hinduism is the religious norm of Bali. Religious conversion would be a monumental, conspicuous declaration, a tangible reminder to himself that being good is a decision. I’m familiar with the strategy of rejecting cultural norms to feel I’m living intentionally, I noted, as Christmas approached in the US. I even got a tattoo to remind me.

Maybe I’m projecting. Ari’s uncle converted, then he was miraculously cured of some sickness in his leg, then he really let the faith rush in. He never brought up relgion, though, except when I asked.

Uncle swims farther against the tide in practicing organic farming on his clove farm. His pesticide consists of tobacco leaves burned under the tree to smoke out the insects. He uses natural sulfur to fight fungus on the roots. He sources his organic compost from the town’s restaurants & food stalls. Before the shift to organics, the chemical fertilizer stripped the soil of important components, and his clove trees hung sick until he tried the compost. He’s the only organic farmer locally. I asked if his religion and farming practices were related, but Ari said they weren’t. I think it’s too much a coincidence that the only Christian and the only organic farmer we’ve met happen to be the same person. My own conclusion is that this man thinks critically, holds himself to high standards and makes an effort to move in the direction of his principles – that’s how he’s different. I found him to be extremely thoughtful and polite.

Bapak

Bapak, a 71-year-old who looks 85, said his family split from a larger kingdom near Ubud (on Bali, crossed the mountains and established their new home in 1883. His is the seventh generation since the split, Ari’s is the eighth, the kids running around the living area comprise the ninth generation in Munduk. He emphasized that the pioneers’ names – and even those of the second and third generations – were never recorded and are forgotten.

The family has lived on this land – where we ate and talked – since the 1883 exodus. In 1965 Munduk got a road and was officially established. Ari can remember the road being bumpy and unpaved even in his lifetime. The lakeside fisherman’s village we visited, Limpah, still lacks a road. I asked if people live differently in Limpah than do people here in town. Ari didn’t understand the question at first, then he said, “no.” I suppose I asked a strange question in the first place, I’m not sure what answer I expected.

The Dutch ruled Indonesia for 300 years. During WWII a base building (like a communication hub) operated in Munduk, and Bapak remembers a Dutch soldier giving him a piece of bread when he was seven-years-old. Then the Japanese forced the Dutch out, ending the 300-year rule. The Japanese didn’t give Munduk trouble since it was so small and poor, they simply claimed all of Bali and that was it. Apparently they had a presence in Denpasar. Indonesia gained its independence when we bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I asked if Bapak had been frightened after the ruling powers left (would there be civil war?) but he said, “no.” Apparently Bali was pretty well-united.

We asked Bapak if he’s friends with Bapak Dewa from across the street – the coffee farmers’ grandfather. Satisfyingly, he is. They’re about the same age and I imagine they grew up together and share memories of different times. At a little temple in Ubud I met another old Bapak dressed in a nice sarong and headscarf; he asked me for money after I took his picture. Today we ate lunch with a family following a private tour of their farm, and they let us hang out and ask prying questions the entire day. They even bought us snacks. Then this evening another family cooked us dinner, and Ari translated all night while we asked prying questions of Bapak and the uncle. At no point throughout the day would anyone accept money from us, and though we spent almost nothing, it was by far the most valuable day we’ve had.

Ari has a buah-hati, a sweetheart, he knows he wants to marry, but he doesn’t want to propose until his wanderlust has run its course. He says his girlfriend has low self-esteem when it comes to simple things, so he tells her to practice confidence in the mirror. Each nuclear family is called a “kaka” and this family compound includes four kakas. When Ari marries his buah-hati they’ll start the family’s fifth kaka in the unfinished house where we ate. The house, when all is said and done, will cost about $8000 to build from foundation to roof tiles.

While Ari’s sisters cooked, their many young children ran around or stopped to stare at us as, landing in the lap of Ari’s father, a 71-year-old Bapak (the title of all older men here, and the honorific you use when addressing them directly).

Though there are no family names, Ari adopted de Madia (the French, “from,” combined with the Indonesian, “the middle”) to indicate his philosophy – he doesn’t want to be too rich, nor too poor, just hanging out doing his thing in the middle. It’s also a reference to this village being “madia” of Munduk, which refers to the wider collection of villages in the area.

Ari prepared the herbs that flavor the soup: tumeric, a strong red onion, lemongrass, garlic and candlenut (which I’ve never heard of). At one point they ground fresh sambal on a dark mortor, with the setup beforehand being a single chili, a pinch of salt and some shrimp paste reposing right in the middle of the stone platter. Just gorgeous. Then a sister ground the ingredients and added them to the soup.

When dinner was ready we walked the compound’s paths to Ari’s new construction, the shell of a house that was just finished enough to protect us from rain during the outdoor dinner. We sat on the concrete floor at a low table. There was no door, just an opening, and where there would be windows was just a frame looking out on a tree, behind which the valley extended.

Dinner started with vegetable soup that tasted just like the soup from Julia’s on 65th. There was white rice, fried potatoes and sweet chili corn fritters that stuck to our teeth. Dessert was taro cake, a gooey, sweet paste that’s topped with coconut. Ari mixed arak (palm liquor) with lime & honey, which he warned was really strong, but I found it weak compared to the drinks I mix myself at home. He poured the cocktail into shot glasses (his Japanese sake set) and we sipped them after the meal. We drank water from a bottle.

Later in the night there was a lightning storm that, through the unfinished window, lit the sky behind Ari as he spoke. I managed to catch a shot of him lighting a cigarette, face illuminated by the flame. Over thunder, Ari translated our conversation with his uncle and Bapak. It was pretty damn magical, yet another night I couldn’t have imagined had I not experienced it firsthand. It justifies traveling.

More on Ari’s uncle & bapak tomorrow.

I paused, caught off guard. Surabaya’s not that far away, maybe a half-day of travel. I thanked her and left the office. Almost anyone we ask has never left Indonesia, and most people haven’t even made it off of the island of Bali. Not only is it too expensive, but there’s little precedent for travel in the modern culture.

Ari is the only Indonesian we’ve met who has traveled abroad extensively. We met him when, sitting outside a restaurant, he started talking to us about the state of tourism in his ancestral hamlet of Munduk. This, we thought, is a forward thinker. He’s happy Munduk is getting its 15 minutes on the tourist trail, but he’s determined to make sure popularity doesn’t destroy the land that is his home, travel fad or no.

The next week, Ari invited us to his house for dinner. We learned a lot that night.

Ari works around the world on a cruise ship. The unequal pay dramatically favors Western workers, so Ari cleans the pools and does hard work and gets a fraction of what his coworkers make, just because he’s Indonesian. But he sees the world, something that’s otherwise impossible for many with his finances. He’s been to Japan, Vancouver, Amsterdam, more, and he says, “I was in Amsterdam for just two hours, but I can imagine how the people live.” He’s eager to share this understanding with any Dutch person he meets on Bali. He feels connected to them because he’s been to their hometown. We know this feeling, but it’s hard to express because people can’t conceive of their homes as the culmination of a many-thousand-mile journey.

A lot of the night we talked about the trouble of getting a visa for the US. I wasn’t really interested in this topic, except that the price of a visa is a shocking $500 per person, which I can’t imagine them spending to get in temporarily. In Vancouver he stepped off the boat to discover he couldn’t afford more than a cup of coffee. You know what he said? I find this significant: “It’s so expensive there.”

When do I say, “It’s so expensive?” I say it about Japan, England, Scandinavia. This word choice implies that Ari doesn’t think of himself as poor, he thinks of other places as expensive. Food in Indonesia is cheaper, he can go out and enjoy a night playing pool with his friends. His finances, limited in the view of Westerners, are normal to him.

If we had approached him with pity tonight it would have been harmful: pity doesn’t afford a person pride.

Ari stood in his favorite country, Japan, and looked at the streets, peaceful and clean. Nobody buzzes around, it’s calm. Ari was amazed to watch how the Japanese dealt with their trash: people carefully consider the item and put it in one of five or ten proper receptacles, each with its own purpose. On Bali the locals drop trash on the ground where they’re standing, put it in a stream or river or dump it on the road next to their store. Ari had never even known that throwing away trash was a THING until he visited Japan. It had never occurred to him that one should do this. That’s the battle he’s facing among his compatriots.

Ari recognizes trash collection as a symbol for the roadblocks to both tourism and environmental health. As it stands, you can walk into town holding a piece of trash, looking for a trash bin, and leave town holding the same piece of trash.

The problem is too big, he feels – people have to change in the head, and that’s next to impossible. His main idea, so far, is to start by “speaking to the river,” which means, I think, putting up a sign at the river asking people not to dump their trash there. It sounds like a good start.

Az and I are all gung-ho about starting programs to get people to be more responsible: We suggested that, first of all, there needs to be an opportunity to throw things away – something simple as a garbage can next to a recycle bin. So why not start there, start with making trash cans available? (It’s simple to say, but what materials do you use to make them? And who picks up all the garbage?) Apparently there is a company in Seririt (the closest large town) that recycles plastic, but it pays next to nothing for the materials, so people just dump everything in the river.

The second part of our ambitious plan was to educate children about the benefits of consuming less unnatural material and recycling or disposing properly of the rest. We told Ari that some American Wwoofers who work in the schools here might make good allies since they’re looking for projects. He hadn’t known about the Americans, but his brother had.

My brilliant idea is to put up posters that read, in English, “Bali is not beautiful.” with a picture of someone dropping a piece of trash on the ground. It would be controversial and insulting, but it would get the point across. They live on an island that everyone agrees is gorgeous, but I think it’s important to realize it’s limited beauty, and their actions have an effect on it.

Azure asked whether coming to a third-world country and preaching responsible consumption is any different than coming on a religious mission to convert heathens. I don’t know. I don’t know if it’s different, it might not be. The “green” movement could be the current incarnation of ancient earth-worshiping religions. So maybe we’re no better than missionaries, trying to change someone else’s unique values because of stories we were told half a world away, cleansing the world of its diversity.

Uh, the next few posts will have better endings.