A 90 Minute Walk in Bali

 We are currently in Sidemen, a heavily agricultural small village in Bali that has seen hotels appear only in the last decade.  We went for a ninety minute stroll today (Sarah had found a walking route to the local river) and in that microcosm saw much of what we love in Bali.

First, the amazing scenery - lush fields, tropical trees, with mountain backdrops.

The scene above is the view from our hotel.  The picture below is just a few feet down the road.

Buildings are going up everywhere we travel.  Typically men are building temporary bamboo structures to support concrete, reinforced by rebar, being poured in place floor by floor.  The workers stand on thin beams in high places, appearing fearless and immensely competent.

It's easy to get off-road into the fields, and the ever-present farmers don't object.  We stay on the narrow (8") mounded pathways between terraced or flat fields.  Farmers often reply politely, or smile or laugh when we greet them with our very few words in Indonesian ("Selemat siang," "Good Mid-day").  If we ask about their crops, they show us what they are growing or harvesting.  For most of them, Indonesian is a second language learned in primary school; Balinese is spoken in the home.

Here, Sarah was leading us between a rice field nearing harvest, and a field of chili peppers.

This being a tropical place, we see beautiful flowers and critters.

On our way back from the river, the sky grew dark.  Farmers in the fields started carrying their harvest baskets and bags to safety.

As it started to rain, and then pour, we found shelter on a six-foot square platform with a roof above, and a sign in English advertising it as a Pub.  The rain sheeting down, we were approached by a farmer wearing the traditional bamboo hat.  Like almost everyone we have encountered, she was incredibly tolerant of us as foreigners; she was friendly and inquisitive.  We shared with her a snack bar and some bottled water (deploying our few words of Indonesian and some hand-waving), after which she conveyed to us that we should follow her to her house.

At her home, we were greeted by her husband ("Selemat siang!", we said, and "Siang" he said in cheerful reply).  The house was a bamboo structure with a corrugated metal roof, about eight feet by twenty, inside which was a cook-fire and pots, a sleeping platform, and chickens.  Our hosts made space on the platform for us to sit, moving some of the chickens.

We had what conversation we could given the language barrier.  Pointing, we asked about a set of small baskets like those we had seen used for offerings ("banten").  This resulted in the woman giving a demonstration in the deft construction of these little baskets from cut pieces of banana leaf, shaped and stapled with toothpick-like slices of bamboo.

The chickens, in their bamboo baskets, paid occasional attention.

The conversation then moved on to word-sharing, as objects in the room were assigned their Indonesian, Balinese and English names.  Coconut is "kelapa" in Indonesian; the Balinese word didn't stick in my head.

Almost everyone we have met in Bali has cheerfully agreed to be photographed.  (When posing, many Balinese put on a serious face, which brightens as soon as the picture has been taken.  After Amy showed her this picture, the woman laughed about how muddy her feet had gotten walking home in the rain.)

It would only be a short walk back to our hotel.  The woman we had met continued to wave as we made our way through her fields, back to the road.

Mini-post: The Birds of Petulu

The village of Petulu is a 20-minute walk from our hotel north of Ubud, Bali.  Every evening, herons fly back to the village to roost for the evening.  There are hundreds upon hundreds of them, roosting in just a few trees.  This wasn't always the case; the huge flocks started coming in 1965, and the resulting tourism has been a financial rescue for the town.

It was a truly amazing sight !!

In Bali: People, Religion, Mythology and Costume

OK, the title of this blog post sounds like a scholarly dissertation, which this isn't.  We've been in Bali almost a week, though, and I have been gobsmacked by the extent to which (mostly ancient) Balinese mythology surrounds us here, and is a real and present part of people's lives.

Immediately upon arrival in Sanur, Bali we saw an enormous number of stone carvings of manifestations of God/deities, demons, and animals.  Temples and shrines are everywhere - every village has a temple, every home has a family temple, most every field has a shrine -- and Balinese pay daily attention to these and other opportunities to express respect and gratitude.  Even the grounds of our hotel in Sanur had numerous stone sculptures.  

We've been to a couple traditional performances based in Bali's culture and religion.  Among the dances we saw, two included Barong characters like the one below.  Barong is the king of spirits, and a force for good against the harm which can be caused by the evil demon queen Rangda.

But what really astonished us was the enormous parade we attended, which started the annual month-long Bali Arts Festival.  There were throngs of Balinese people lining the streets, and parade floats and marchers going by for hours.  We were told that the musicians, dancers, and other dressed-up people attending came from schools, clubs, and other organizations all over Bali.

The costumes were magnificent, even if we don't have the background to know the full story behind each of them.  What was clear to us was that there was a story behind each.  And the more we read, look at exhibits, attend performances, and talk to people, we realize the extent of the catalogue of stories that are part of Balinese culture, and how intertwined these stories are with Balinese Hindu religion and the lives of most Balinese.

For now - take a look at some of the costumes and floats we saw in the Festival opening parade, with just a few comments thrown in:

This costume - one of a set of ornate fish costumes - looked pretty great when we first saw it.

But then the woman in the costume pulled the strings! 

Hanuman the Monkey God.

The onlookers thought these characters were pretty funny.

But they thought these guys, winding their way down the street in a boat, were absolutely hysterically funny.  Clearly an allusion to some story that we don't know, but quite amusing nonetheless !

Isn't a float one of the biggest costumes you can imagine?

The parade was visually fantastic, but what kept us there for hours was the combination of music, movement and costume.  You'll get a sense of it from the eight minutes of video below !

(If clicking on the video below doesn't work, you can see the video here: https://youtu.be/Dt5jBNiU8zg )

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Addendum:  After leaving Sanur, we went to Ubud (also in Bali).  Today we visited a celebrated mask-maker, Anom Suryawan.  Below you'll see a picture of him with a mask he made; and below that a mask made by Anom's great-great-grandfather.  Anom is the eighth generation of mask-makers in his family.  As I've tried to suggest:  culture runs deep in Bali.

Tending Gardens

You’re going to see a lot of The View From Steve’s Camera this summer.  Hope you don’t mind.

Last week, I left Connecticut Legal Services, a wonderful place I had worked for 33 years.  This summer, Amy and I will be traveling, joined along the way by Sarah and then Rebecca.  In the fall, I hope to continue my work towards justice as I join “the gig economy.”

Our flight left New York the day after my last day at work.  I didn’t sleep very well on the plane; the view out the window looked much like what the inside of my head felt.

Fortunately, we were headed to England.  A wonderful set of Amy’s cousins live there, and I was looking forward to spending time with them.  Some of that time was, unexpectedly spent in a hospital, which turned out to be a surprisingly good place not only for Amy's Aunt Ruth to recuperate, but also for us all to visit.  

(Yes, charades in the hospital.  Couldn't get the doctors or nursing staff to play...)

A lot of the rest of our time was spent in gardens, and in lovely homes with big windows looking out at gardens.

Most of our relatives in England keep wonderful gardens.  Often there's a mix of vegetables and flowers growing.

So much time spent with growing plants made me think of promise and future.  These plums won't ripen for months; I am already sorry I won't be there when they ripen. 

In every garden there was great attention paid to color, to shape, to contrast, and to the use of space.

 

The gardens were wonderful to look at and to be in, even when it rained.

Gardens aren’t ever finished.  And in fact, the less finished they are, the more opportunity there is to think about what to grow, about what comes next.

The same might be said of work; or friendships; or our lives in general.

Here’s to cultivation and tending !