Hiring a Driver

It is somewhat disorienting to be living in a society where the wage rates are so different than in the U.S.

The wage for a day laborer in a rice paddy, according to Dewa, is 50,000 rupiahs, or around $6 per day.  Housekeepers, gardeners and night security are paid around the same rate. 

The other day I splurged on a package of imported British potato chips.  They cost around $8.  Then came the realization that I spent more on that bag of potato chips than a typical Balinese makes from a day of hard manual labor.

We pay our driver, Dewa, 400,000 rupiahs a day, or around $45/day, which is on the high side for a driver.  He speaks fairly good English and is a non-smoker.  He provides the vehicle- a newer small minivan, and covers all repairs, gas, and parking fees.  He says he is available '24/7'.  He doesn't work set hours but is 'on call' as needed.  He is at our place at 7:30 am for the drive to school, and is often driving us home from dinner out at a restaurant at 8 pm or later. 

Dewa with the girls

We are very happy with Dewa.  Dewa is friendly, helpful and professional.  He is our main guide to all things Bali.  As we drive, he explains what we see around us.  He also tries to educate us about the many and complex ceremonial practices and spiritual beliefs of the Balinese.  We now trust Dewa to drive the girls the 20 minutes to school in the morning without one of us coming along.

The housekeeper and the gardener come with the rental property.  They are paid by our landlords.  We hired Dewa directly.

We have an instinct to be egalitarian and not to hire people to do things for us that we could do ourselves. Do we need a driver?  No, it is not essential, but it is certainly extremely helpful.  Some, but not many, expat families drive themselves.

There are many benefits to having a driver.  Driving conditions in Bali are chaotic and stressful.  Few intersections have traffic lights, and you have to push your way through.  Tailgating is the only driving style, yet cars and scooters randomly merge in and out of traffic or abruptly slow down to veer off into a side street.  Two lane roads are in practice three-lanes, as cars veer into oncoming lanes to pass scooters or slow-moving trucks, while scooters coming from the other direction hug the edge of the road so they aren't run over by the oncoming car.  There are swarms of scooters weaving in and out of slow-moving traffic, passing on either side of you, zooming into the oncoming lanes to pass and then wanting to abruptly merge back in the split-second before they are mowed down by a car coming from the other direction.

The patchwork of twisting roads is confusing to navigate, there are few road signs, and roads change their name every few intersections.  There are few places to park in downtown Ubud, so the best option is to be dropped off and picked up later.  The police are worse than useless in any fender bender, as their main role is to solicit bribes.  Compensation for any accident is usually negotiated on the spot, which would be difficult to do as a non-Indonesian speaker.  In addition, expats are always considered at fault.  Driving often means spending hours inching through very congested traffic.

It may be self-serving to say this, but one thing we can offer coming to Bali as an expat is employment.  As a Green School administrator put it, when Balinese see expats driving themselves their reaction is that the expat needn't be so cheap, and should cough it up and hire someone.

Our back-up driver is the husband of one of the nearby inn's staff members.  He mentioned some of the jobs he had before-  construction work and wood carving.  These were hard jobs for low pay.  He said he felt very grateful to now be able to work as a driver.

Thanks to the tourism industry, many Balinese now are able to have less grueling work for better pay.  Dewa says that it is now difficult to find Balinese willing to do the hardest jobs - road construction and some farm labor.  Javanese are often brought over for these jobs.

Maybe if I became more confident about my ability to drive in Bali, I would consider driving myself.  But then I would realize that the consequence would be to deprive Dewa of a steady, well-paying job- one he tells us he is very happy to have. 

I learned from my days at the Commerce Department visiting overseas clothing factories that sweatshops where imported workers spent 10 hours a day, six days a week, bent over sewing machines were not an  unmitigated evil, but in many ways a good thing.  The fact that the workers chose this work meant that this work was better than any available for them back home.

By choosing to live in a developing country, rather than in Barcelona or London for example, we chose a place where our circumstances are far different from the average local population.  Unlike in a Western European city, we cannot blend in and live as a local.  Even if we tried to live as a local, we certainly couldn't fit into the intricate web of Balinese familial and village social relationships.  Nor would we want to give up the Western comforts we've become dependent on.

Given the reality of that situation- and certainly we benefit from it too- hiring help can benefit all involved.  I hope I am not deluding myself, but I don't sense resentment or envy by the Balinese of the relative wealth of the expats.  Perhaps it makes it easier to swallow that we are so clearly alien, and not someone from within their own society.  Perhaps a somewhat fatalistic worldview leads them to be more accepting - but I haven't been here long enough to speculate with any accuracy.  I expect from the Balinese perspective that they are willing to tolerate the expats who are constantly coming and going, as long as a generous amount of their money stays behind.