Quarter Year

Fast forward six months. Mike and I are sitting in the courtyard of a family-run coffee farm. Mike is sitting with the men and I with the women. The 11 year old daughter is staring at me smiling. She is watching me as she has been all day, at times mimicking my actions. I can’t communicate with her. I didn’t study the language and her English is not great. But, we had bonded earlier when she and her brother had chased me around the terraced fruit farm. You don’t need language for that. At this point we were very familiar and so her staring is fine with me.

Mike on the other hand is chatting with the men. Without those Indonesian tapes we would have never stayed so long (6 hours at their house). He was able to communicate enough to hold a conversation and even though it wasn’t nearly as complex as he would have liked, it was enough to open the door.

The day had started out normally for both parties. The family greeted us warmly as they do all the tourists that walk down their driveway looking for a tour and ours, as usual, began with a misunderstanding. Mike had talked to the family the night before and asked if we could come see how chocolate was made. They said they produced it, which we had learned from Iluh the day before was rare or non-existent in the area. Obviously excited, but also knowing not to get our hopes up, we walked down the driveway ready to work. They walked us out to the terraces as Iluh had and showed us the trees and the different fruits and talked about what everything was. I wasn’t really paying attention. Mike was walking with the man of the family and they were speaking in Indonesian about the trees. Mikes Indonesian was better than the man’s English, so it was the language of choice.

I hung back with the kids. The man’s oldest child was a girl named Butuh. She was 11 and accompanied by her 6 year old brother, Made. They were both very patient for children, respecting the exchange that was happening between Mike and their father, they brought out some dried cloves to show and hung back quietly without making a scene. Not understanding what was going on between the men and not really caring much about the trees, I started watching Butuh and Made. Made would have little outbursts where he would start dancing or moving his arms. He would spontaneously climb a tree or jump around. If the kid were in the states, I have no doubt he’d be on rydalin by now. He was that kind of boy. His sister never dismissed him, though. She was as patient with him as she was with us.

This one bored me a lot (people looking at cloves)

I took out my camera and snapped a few photos. They weren’t remarkable and I was honestly kind of boring myself with what I was doing, taking pictures of trees and kids and nothing. For whatever reason, my mind started wandering as I watched the kids and I started thinking about what messages I was giving them with my actions. What was I telling them was important to me, to westerners, what was I saying about the way we acted and what we did. I had a strong urge to communicate something to them, to bridge the gap and show them that we were not so different, so I started copying them. It wasn’t in a bad way, but I just wanted to become closer to them even though I couldn‘t speak.

They would march in place, so that the mosquitoes couldn’t land on their bare legs, so I marched in place. When we would head down the makeshift terrace steps, they would run down, surefooted and stop their momentum by cutting out and running along the flat ledge until they could stop. Despite their warnings “hati hati” I implemented this practice as well. I climbed a tree, I ran around. They soon wanted me to go in front of them and would laugh out loud every time I would go fast down to the ledge below. I handed the camera to Mike and went into a dead run up the hills and along the terraces. They immediately caught on and began chasing me. My size was an advantage and a disadvantage. My legs were twice the length of theirs, so my speed was far superior. The problem was, I was too tall o go running beneath the trees with ease like they could, so I had to duck almost doubled over as I ran. I would stop for a second until they had almost caught up, then, like a trapped animal, found a new escape path and darted in the other direction. I was happy to see that they were out of breath because I was gasping for air, so we stopped and walked along with the men again.

We walked up to the house and sat down at an outdoor table. The dad asked if we wanted any coffee and we said yes. I believe this area was like a tasting room to get you to buy coffee from them, but instead we used the time to do tricks with the kids. Mike was a hit. He would put a piece of fruit in one hand or the other and the kids would guess which hand it was in. The third child had appeared, Neomin, with huge eyes and fine curly hair. The three of them would point to one hand or another. Sometimes they would all chose the same hand and other times, one would defect from the group. Whoever got it right would do a little victory dance in their chair to rub it in and then they would all scream “lagi lagi!” (again, again).

Lagi Lagi!!!

We went into the mill area to watch the chocolate beans roast in a big metal oil drum, heated by a gas burner below. They simply picked the chocolate fruit, opened it up, dried the seeds in the sun, then roasted them in the oil drum. After all the seeds had been roasted, the family sat around the courtyard and shelled them.

I sat with the women near the door of the house and Mike sat with the men under a covered open space across the courtyard from us. If I thought olive sorting was tedious, I don’t even know the word for what this was. It went SLOW. We shucked less than a gallon an hour between 8 people. The women were more serious about the work. While the men would talk and go off on tangents, getting up and down, the women powered through. Especially the oldest woman, who was the grandmother. I tried to stay on par with her, but she never took a break. Not one. Mike had mentioned that the older women never smiled and I wondered if it was because they had the hardest lives. Not only did they work their entire lives, they also didn’t have the same freedoms as the men.

Mike conversing with the men.

We were sitting on ground. The floor was made of cement and I had to hunch over to grab the chocolate beans to shuck them. The women kept offering me a small wooden stool and I kept declining. I tried to explain that since I was so big, it was hard enough to reach the ground. If I were to sit on the stool, I would have had to bend an extra 8 inches to pick up my beans.

The day pushed on and we kept up the shucking. Tedious work suits me. I find it rewarding. And, it was an activity that everyone could participate in, which I appreciated. The grandparents could shuck, the kids could shuck. Aunts and uncles shucked. It was truly a family activity, a time that everyone could get together and just be in the same space for hours and hours.

My hands started to hurt after a while. It is similar to shelling peanuts, except the pieces inside are not loose in the shell, so it makes it harder. My back ached badly, but I wanted to finish the job. People started getting up and messing around, but as long as the old grandmother continued, I continued. People came down the driveway from time to time. A French couple came on a guided tour, a brother returned from his transportation gig, a man selling snacks on a bike came down and the family bought us some bags of jackfruit and tofu treats. Butuh showed me how to eat them.

Eventually, the sun shifted and I was forced by heat to go to the men’s compound. The kids followed. The men didn’t work as consistently as we did and they eventually had all gotten up. It was just me and the three kids. My back hurt so badly that I needed to lay on my stomach to shuck. The kids did the same. The youngest started touching her toes and I copies her. I did some push-ups and yoga moves and the kids mimicked. It was like gym class, except they were laughing the whole time. I eventually looked over at the sunny spot I had abandoned and the old woman was still shucking quietly. Everyone else had left. I straightened up and got back to work.

Laying down on the job.

Eventually everyone left to go look at the new addition that the family hoped to rent out. It was just me and the old grandmother in the courtyard. I was uncomfortable and my fingers hurt so bad. That would have been fine if I knew we were making progress. I looked over at the basket and we had barely made a dent. We were maybe 20% done and we had been working for 3 hours. I finished the little pile that I had started and stood up to join the others.

I thought I was tough and that I worked hard at home, but I had met my match. There is no way that I could work like this, day after day, with so little progress, for so little reward. I thought about what I think my time is worth and how much the grandmother thought her time was worth. I wonder if she felt valued at all. Does it bother her that her hours are worth pennies. It is the only thing she has ever known, so I suppose it doesn’t. It bothered me, though. It seemed pointless.

At the end of the day, I could understand the kids. I related to the way they played with each other and with me. Butuh wants to be a teacher, Made, a pilot and the youngest one wants to be a banker. I don’t know how she got that idea, but the point is that I can understand what it is like to be a kid with a dream. I could understand the dad and mom. They were doing the best with what they had, trying to make an easier life for their family with tourism and expansion. The Grandfather liked to work. He reminded me of my father. He was out working in the fields even though he didn’t really need to be, but he had his time to talk and at times laugh.

It was the grandmother that I was stretching to understand. We only made eye contact three times all day. She kept her head down. She smiled at me once when they were asking if I would have kids someday. That was about all I got from her. I never understood anything about her except that she loved her family, perhaps sacrificed much for them. I imagine she had seen it all. I think her stories would be the most different from my own and the most shocking of the family. I wished I could have spoken with her about her life because there were no answers in her actions, she only worked.

We left on the best of terms. They gave us a papaya and a young coconut. Mike said the littlest girl cried. We had spent the whole day with the family. I had said perhaps ten words the whole day, Mike many more of course, but their presence had seeped into my life. They were familiar to me now and I liked that. When we went back to say goodbye the next morning, everyone was around. They immediately came out and were even more welcoming than the day before. They said when we come back to Bali, we should come see them with our baby (I accidentally told them I was pregnant and never corrected the error).

A clove tree dropped olive-shaped berries which would give up their oil – there is no spice in these old cloves. The oil can be used for digestion on the skin to heal wounds or, if rubbed near the eye, it will cure headaches. He broke up a leaf and rubbed it on my arm where I got the lime burn. The farmer roasts the young cloves to burn off the oil, then he chops them to use in cigarettes. People can just chew them for digestion, and of course there are the 1000 other uses for cloves. He referred to the taste as “menthol,” though I don’t know if menthol is actually from cloves.

We moved on to the coffee berries. When the coffee is young, Indonesians feed babies the meat of the berries. The mature berry meat sweetens around the bean and takes on a hint of the coffee flavor. I sucked on the meat then spit out the bean. The bean is pale beige before it’s roasted. I wanted to know whether we could chew the leaves – is it the cocaine-like stimulant? – but I never got a straight answer.

He showed us other fruits, one of which I’d never seen before. It grows at the base of a small, spiky palm that sports some nasty thorns. When the tough, thorny skin is peeled away it reveals a fruit that’s fibrous and sweet, shaped like a shallot but tasting like an apple. We also nibbled on an unripe mango (which they eat, I guess), and we had bites of this and that as we picked our way through the orchard.

Azure inspecting the product.

The farm is three hectares with about 300 coffee bushes. The bushes, which prefer hot shade, produce 200 kilo per harvest, each kilo fetching 50,000 rupiah ($5), two harvests a year. The family makes $2000 per year off their coffee bushes. Five people work (all older men) the three hectares, none of whom are family, though we did run into the farmer’s father out gardening on a terrace. I asked the father if he liked working and he said he did. High in the forest a couple men swayed from bamboo stalks, cutting down dead bamboo.

The kids chased Azure up and down the terraces. The kids loved her. I was impressed with them – they climbed trees and knew a hell of a lot about plants and Butuh, the oldest girl, was very patient with me when I couldn’t find the right Indonesian words. If I had been a kid I would have been bored to death. She was nice but a little shy, and I think intelligent. At one point we quizzed her in English – what was her favorite food, her favorite teacher, her best friend, etc – and she answered well (though, to be honest, I wonder why kids who have taken English for 6 years aren’t fluent – they should be). In the forest Azure hung the camera strap around her neck and let her take some pictures. I explained that she needed to focus the center of the view finder on the object she wanted in focus, and she managed to snap a good shot. She wasn’t thrilled with the attention, though, and handed the camera back, preferring her basked of cloves.

The kids LOVED durian – Az caught the boy kissing one in the forest, very cute. When their dad finally opened it they crowded around, mouths watering, but the boy threw it down in disgust when it proved unripe. They also grew jackfruit and mangosteen in the forest, and some fruit they said was used for nasi goreng (fried rice), but not eaten. I simply couldn’t imagine what the hell that meant, and gave up trying.

On the way back I asked about chocolate – whether people make it here, and the farmer gave an affirmative response! I was pumped. He said we could make some today, so he climbed a tree and pulled down a couple ripe fruit and opened them right in front of us. We sucked on the flesh outside the seed and again it was sweet with a subtle flavor, not really of cocoa.

Chocolate fruit! Those white things are the cocoa beans.

In the roasting room, a room lit only by natural light which would look beautiful at any hour, the farmer dumped a bucket of sun-dried cocoa beans into the roaster, an empty oil drum. They rolled over the fire for about 2 hours, I think. He then dumped them on the floor to cool for about half an hour.

Doesn’t melt in the hands.

After the beans cooled he carried the bucket to the courtyard where the family started shelling. They’d peel the outside and hopefully reveal a full bean. They dropped the shell on the pavement and the bean in a bowl. Eight people shelled in the courtyard, myself & the farmer and his grandfather on one side, then five women including Azure on the other.

The three kids sat around with us and we talked a little nonsense. I taught them some magic tricks – notably the one where you show them a coin then have them guess which hand it’s in. Instead of using a coin I used a fruit rind. The kids loved it, shouting “Lagi, Lagi!” Again, again! I also taught them the one where you make a bean “disappear” by counting 1, 2, 3! and tossing it over your shoulder on 2. It landed on my head once and the boy thought it was hilarious.

He was a ball of energy – running around and jumping on things, shouting, running after tourists who’d come halfway down the driveway. He’s already a handsome young man, I think the chicks will dig him.

Back at the roaster the farmer lead a French couple on a brief tour. While trying to figure out what to do with ourselves, I misspoke then misunderstood whether we should stay or go. We eventually decided to stay. I asked the grandmother if she was the one who cooked, but of course I mangled the meaning. I tried to ask a number of times who cooks for the family, and every time they thought we were asking for food, which they would be happy to supply. Az and I insisted that, no, we were just asking who did the cooking. Ohhhh. His wife. Every day. “But,” he insisted, “do you want to eat here?”

He asked if we eat pig and we said yes. He said the pig was butchered halal. Apparently both Hindus and Muslims practice halal, but they prefer different animals. The pig was actually very tasty, served in small bites on bones. With it he served an excellent homemade sambal and not-bad vegetables. We fully expected a sit-down meal with the whole family, or maybe just the kids & men, or at least the farmer, but instead they placed us in a small room with the dishes, alone. We ate hurriedly because we weren’t interested in sitting alone while the family worked outside. The farmer briefly ate with us, then he jumped up to attend to something. He didn’t sit with us, though, he sat in a separate chair. He cooked the whole meal, making the pig Balinese style, with jackfruit, somehow. Lawar, I think.

Outside we continued shelling beans, I joined the men and Az joined the women. The sun came out strong and we moved under cover into the shade. Later it started raining, the weather changing easily. I gathered most of my information about the family at this point – they lived here for 70 years, the farmer and Made were married 12 years ago (the official start of their family and the age of the oldest girl). Bapak Dewa was 69 but he looked older. I asked how many people lived in that little compound and never got a straight answer. He said five lived there, but many more than that came and went. I wonder if “people” discounts children and the elderly, which might put the actual number closer to 18.

Grandpa spoke the best English of anyone there, save his older son who briefly stopped in. I tried to ask whether Americans landed in Indonesia during WWII, but he didn’t understand. He was a learner – he pulled out his ragged English-Indonesian dictionary and often leafed through it to find a word. He showed genuine intereste in us, in learning from us. I told him that we love to learn on trips – language, work, people. He seemed happy to hear this. I asked how long it had been since he’d learned English and he said he learned it in school over 50 years ago. I was amazed that he spoke the best English considering that everyone else attended school more recently than he.

They asked whether Azure and I were married, of course, and they expressed concern that we had been “married” eight years without conceiving a child. Azure let slip that, yes, we’re expecting a child, and the kids got excited. Of course we’re not, but you can only be asked so many times before you start lying. At 30, Azure would already be starting late for an Indonesian. They showed surprise that I only have one sister and Azure doesn’t have any siblings. This kind of loneliness isn’t part of their world, it’s probably seen as a sickness.

I explained that I’m Jewish and Azure is Christian, but it’s not a big deal in the US. The kids loved Azure, and at a number of points the kids mimicked what she was doing. She laid on her stomach because her back hurt and the kids all laid on their stomachs. She did pushups and they tried to do pushups. She got into downward dog and they followed. It was really cute.

The time shelling cocoa is absolutely no different than the time we spend sorting olives. It’s time spent on a mindless task, socializing. I wonder how many hours people spend every day, around the world, sorting or shelling things by hand and talking. That we don’t have anything like that seems to be a loss – relationships are established and strengthened there.

Shelling.

According to Bapak, this shelling procedure was “experimental,” but here’s the process: They harvest the fruit and open it up to take out the large seeds. They dry the cocoa beans in the sun, then put them in the roaster for two hours, and let them cool 30 minutes. After that the family shells them in the courtyard. They take the shelled beans and put them in a mill to be crushed by pestle. At that point the beans should be a powder, but they were too oily, so they wrapped the beans in newspaper and pressed out the oil. This batch was a little less oily, but not quite a powder yet. I’m not sure what they did next, maybe they ended the experiment. Apparently they ship the finished powder to Java, so they don’t even make the chocolate in Bali, as promised. I was duped.

Yeah, that’s LeBron.

A man came by selling eggrolls (lumpia) while we were shelling. The young boy bought me a bag and showed me how to open it with my teeth, then how to access the sauce with my teeth, then pour the sauce on the eggroll and savor. Take a bite of the provided fresh chili in between bites of eggroll. They also bought us jackfruit and a popsicle.

We spent some time showing each other tricks. I did the sewing-my-fingers-together trick. The boy tore a piece of paper and pulled it with an invisible string. I showed them how to remove your thumb (which they loved) and I crossed my eyes and moved them independently. The farmer whistled by blowing into his cupped hands, and I’m still working on it. I whistled through my teeth, which Made matched in both pitch and volume. We said we could communicate in the forest, if need be. I wanted to show them that I had double-jointed hips but decided it might be inappropriate.

At one point Made went running after a couple who wandered down the driveway. He shouted, “You like coffee? Production?” The tourists didn’t respond, so his dad told him to shout, “Transport?” This unsolicited solicitation rubbed me the wrong way. I explained to him that it’s more polite to address a wandering tourist with, “Can I help you?” He repeated, “I can help you?” and “Do you need help?” but Az and I reiterated, “Can I help you?” in exactly that order. He made a note of it and I told him that Made should learn the phrase.

The rest of the time we helped them make their business Westerner-friendly. I asked how many tourists came and he said about seven groups per day, which I imagine was an exaggeration. Azure and I would never have known they made coffee here unless Fred had told us. Even then, when we walked down the driveway we would be welcomed or an annoyance. A roadside sign explains that they make coffee, but it’s in Indonesian. I promised I could double or triple the groups of tourists, and here’s how: “Family-Run Coffee Farm, Tourists Welcome.” Simple, informative, inviting without being sell-out pushy. I wrote it on a piece of paper.

After hearing my promise of increased traffic he walked to the road, took down the sign and painted it white. It was drying when we left.

Seeing the value of having his target market right here, giving free advice, he started asking us about the room they rented out. I went to investigate. It was an alright room, but not that great, and certainly not worth the 300,000 ($30) they were asking for when we could stay up the road at Munduk Sari, with a spectacular view and immaculate rooms, for 220,000. They even imagined renting out both bedrooms for 600,000 total, which would never happen. Azure wanted to consult them about the price, but I insisted that we let them learn their own lessons and not talk about money. We wouldn’t want someone telling us how much or little to charge for our business. We investigated the bathroom: there should be two rolls of toilet paper at all times and a bathmat, but otherwise fine. The kitchen: first, advertise the kitchen. Many tourists would love a kitchen but don’t have access. Add a permanent stove top (which they were planning to do), cutlery and a mini fridge (which they were planning to do). Otherwise great. In the bedrooms I had to advise him: those air holes above the door are where mosquitoes come in, at least in paranoid minds. Westerners are afraid of malaria, and if I saw that I would decide not to stay here. Either put a screen over those holes or put a mosquito net over the beds. Otherwise great.

The last thing was something I repeated again and again. I hope they understood how serious I was. I said carefully, “If you have internet or wifi, many people will come here. The only internet in all of Munduk is at an expensive hotel, and it’s not wifi. Americans and Europeans might spend two or three hours a day on the internet at home, so when they come here they want to use it. Azure and I drive to Lovina (one hour away) just to use it. Get the internet. You buy it and the tourists will pay for it.” I said it to Bapak, I said it to the Mom, I said it to the Dad. Get the internet, you will be able to charge much more.

Afterward, Az was saying how it’s kinda like someone telling us, “No, you have to have transportation to the moon. Our people go to the moon, you need to get it because it’s important to us.” Trying to figure out how we could better get the point across, she said we could blow their minds by taking them to an internet cafe and showing them video chat. Yep.

We ended the day by ordering a young coconut (Iluh explained to us that nobody sells coconuts because everyone already has trees in their yards) which Made delivered via a tricycle with a boxed-in wagon in tow. He got off his bike, opened the side of the box and pulled out the coconut with hilarious ease. We all laughed, just like in a book.

Dad accessed the coconut water, which Az and I drank from cups. Then we ordered a papaya for the road. The disappeared for a while so we assumed it was time to go. Made got upset, saying, “Aren’t you going to eat papaya with us??” and we said, “No, we’re eating at the hotel tonight,” thinking he was inviting us for dinner. As we approached to say goodbye, Dad walked out with a plate of sugar-covered papaya cubes. Of course we sat down and finished it with the kids, then we really, seriously excused ourselves. I asked Mom (who runs the business) how much to pay for the coconut, papaya and farm tour, but she refused to accept money. On the one hand this was a generous gesture because of course she could have charged us. But on the other hand we had just helped them shell chocolate for a couple hours then provided some pretty valuable hotel consultation. I would have been surprised if she’d charged us.

Eating some local chocolate would have been great, but apparently they don’t make any fucking chocolate here, for real. So I’ll have to wait on that. We took some incredibly beautiful pictures today, confirming the adage that the best photos come after the stories.

Lesson learned: NEVER ASK SOMEONE FOR PERMISSION TO TAKE THEIR PHOTO. Mike’s tips to becoming a travel photographer, rule #1. Expect an e-book.

So… were you a sailor?

He was particularly proud of a tattoo of a ship, so I snapped away at that one. I tried to ask if he was a sailor by doing a wavy thing with my arm (indicating the sea) but he didn’t understand.

Miming didn’t do much good in Bangkok – our cultures are just too different for a lot of those things to work. For example, what sound do you make to get a cat to come to you? Some ladies with that particular dilemma baited the cat with a falsetto “mamamamama.”

Anyway, after I took the pictures I turned the camera around to show him the result and he seemed genuinely disinterested. And we parted ways.

Both the days I was at this Wat he was sitting there on the platform, smoking. I don’t know if he fell on hard times and took refuge there, if he was a worker, just a friend of someone or what. It seemed that his platform was set up for sleeping, but why hang out in a temple without joining in the fun?

In a place where you speak NONE of the language this is about as deep as the interactions go, and it can be frustrating. I’m left guessing their story and they’re confused by my miming.

“Wait – do that wavy arm thing again.”