A day in the life of Alexa II

Rice Harvest

Green School students from 1-8th grade have been working in their rice paddies and studying the life cycle of rice all year.  When I came to school in January, the rice was at the "child" stage.  We built scarecrows and noisemakers to scare away crows and other birds.   Finally, at the end of February, the rice was ready for harvesting. 

All of the students and teachers (and a lot of parents) went into the fields one Friday afternoon.  Every class had their own rice paddy. Everyone got scissors and began cutting the rice from the rice stems.  We formed an assembly line and passed handfuls of rice toward the basket.  It was hard work running around in mucky mud for an hour, but despite the mud we still had so much fun!

The day started with a traditional ceremony and prayer to the goddess of the rice for a good harvest.  The students received a blessing with holy water and rice kernels to affix to their forehead.

Ogoh-Ogoh

My classmates and I made an Ogoh-ogoh.  An Ogoh-ogoh is a creature, usually life-sized or larger, made out of papier-mache.  It is used on the Balinese holiday called Nyepi.  We started with a design drawn by Pak Rai, an artist who came to our class for several weeks to help us in the process of making the Ogoh-ogoh.  The design was an Ogoh-ogoh with a trident, three heads, three eyes and sharp teeth, with hands out and one leg up.

After we had the design, we started making the box the Ogoh-ogoh would stand on.  We all took turns carefully sawing, hammering, and nailing until we made a box.  As we were leaving for the end of school, Pak Rai made a wood frame for the Ogoh-ogoh.  The next week we cut open chicken coops.  We took baskets made out of bamboo that they use to make the chicken cages and we put them around the frame as a holder to put the papier-mache on.

On the next day came the step that was the most fun...papier-mache!  We all took turns making the ingredients and sticking it on.  I had to run to the library to get more paper so I missed some of it but I still joined in with the fun of mixing the ingredients and putting the gloppy paper on the frame.

Next we added a second layer of papier-mache.  We all agreed at the beginning (after some argument) that the Ogoh-ogoh would be red.  But sadly I missed painting the Ogoh-ogoh because I had a basketball game.

So we had an Ogoh-ogoh with red skin.  But there was something missing.  The head!

Pak Rai painted the head on styrofoam and it looked perfect.  He also made white hair.  We placed the head on and then we were up to the second to last step --- accessories.

We worked on cutting, gluing, taping, more cutting and a little bit of sewing until we had a crown, one bracelet on each arm, one anklet on each leg.  We also had a belt and a sarong.

Then we were at the last step- the trident.  We used a bamboo pole and three smaller bamboo poles for the tines.  Finally we were finished.

We paraded it happily at the Nyepi assembly for everyone.  It was so much fun!

                                                       Alexa's fourth grade class carry their Ogoh-ogoh in the 
                                                                        Green School Nyepi celebration

Earth Day

When I got to school on Earth Day, I was very excited and a little bit nervous about what would happen.  I went to the 2-A classroom in the morning and got dressed up for a Balinese dance performance.  We all got offerings with flower petals to toss.

In the beginning of the school day was an art assembly, in which we did a Balinese dance which was very fun.  We had flowers in our hair and lots of make-up.  We did the dance and after threw petals at the audience.

At the end of the assembly, we changed our clothes, then joined our house teams for a walk around the banjar (neighborhood) to collect trash.  Mom came along.  I picked up tons of trash.  By the end, we were dirty, tired, and had many big bags of trash.  We had a blast doing it.

Next we split up into groups and had many fun activities including face painting, recycled bookmarks, making offerings, making fruit juice, doing races, and much more.

After all the fun, we took a break for lunch.  Many organizations involving the environment were in the Heart of School with little stalls set up.  We walked around and looked at them, sampling food and taking business cards while enjoying lunch.

Then we all gathered in the gym to watch a beautiful, touching movie on the planet.  It had many pretty pictures of places on the earth.

To sum up the day, we had one more Earth Day assembly in which someone from a group in Washington, DC gave the Green School the "Greenest School on Earth" award.

A couple of weeks earlier, the Green School music teacher had announced a contest for a new paragraph in the school song.  Mommy and I had created a new verse for the contest.

After the "Greenest School on Earth" award was presented, there was an announcement about the winner of the school song contest.  We won for our half of the paragraph and two other kids from sixth grade won for the other half of the paragraph!

Mom and I now have a part in the school song! 

The lyrics are:

Living in Bali
Sustainably Growing
Green School is Showing
Our Care for the Earth

The part the sixth graders made up is:

We learn through nature
Its incredible power
It start with a flower
As new species birth

I went home with a smile on my face, face paint on my face, make-up on my face, and happy memories.

                                                 Alexa in the Balinese dance performance

                                               Alexa singing the lyrics to part of the winning entry in the 
                                                              school song competition




Photos Lynn & Nat, videos by Lynn

Bahasa Indonesia Snippets

We (and by "we" I mean all of us) could use a way in English to clarify what is meant when we (and by "we" I again mean all of us) say "we".  What we (this time I mean just our family here in Bali, but not you readers) have found is that the Indonesian language makes that helpful distinction.  "Kami" means "we but excluding the listener" and "Kita" means "all of us, the speaker and the listeners included."

So we now think that we would benefit if we adopted in English the equivalent of "kami" and "kita" so that we can distinguish between the two meanings of "we."

On to bathroom matters:  #1 is "making small water," while #2 is "making big water".

[Update: I often pop into small roadside shops to buy bottles of water.  Usually I ask for water by asking for it by the most common brand name, Aqua.  But it dawned on me after writing this post that at times I had probably said 'I want a small water' or 'I want a big water', with 'bottle of water' implied.  As I confirmed with Dewa, what I was actually saying so emphatically was that I wanted urine, or worse.  I wince in retrospect, especially as at the time I would have been feeling proud of myself for my ability to communicate in Indonesian.]

If one is sick, that is expressed by saying that one is "tidak enak", which literally translates as feeling "not delicious."  Going for a walk is "eating wind."

Plurals are often made by repeating the singular.  "Anak" is a child.  "Anak-anak" means children.  "Buku" is a book.  "Buku-buku" means books.  Often as a shortcut, the plural form is written as "anak2."

Bahasa Indonesia is much simpler than English. 

There is no conjugation of verbs.  Tenses are indicated by adding a helper word to indicate past or future, but the verb stays the same.  The subject is often dropped as being understood.  Articles (the equivalent of "the," "a" or "an") aren't used at all.  The "to be" verbs are often dropped as well as they are understood from the context.

"Mau makanan," which translates literally as "Want food," and means "I would like some food," is a perfectly fine sentence.

As is, "makanan bagus," which means "the food is excellent" but translates literally as "food good."

Because the sentence structure is so simple, one of our friends likens speaking Indonesian to speaking "caveman," meaning it as a compliment not an insult.

I feel for the Indonesians who are trying to learn English, as English is fiendishly difficult and arbitrary, especially when compared to Indonesian.  That the common language throughout much of the world is English is a cruel twist of fate for all the many millions of students who need to learn it as a second language.  Much suffering would have been eliminated if through historical accident Indonesian had become the common tongue instead.

I have been very lackadaisical and not that all that motivated in learning Indonesian.  But I have found the little bit I've picked up comes in handy.  If we were staying longer then I would be putting in the effort now to develop a basic conversational ability.  But instead I pick up a word here and there and I am not making much progress.

Learning English

The ability to speak English separates the Haves and the Have-Nots among the Balinese.

Farming, fishing, weaving fabrics, construction, and other traditional jobs will pay around $2 for a full day of hard manual labor.  We see our closest Balinese neighbors, who live at the entrance to the small access road to our villa, working far into the evening turning the tall elephant grass (alang-alang) that grows in nearby fields into panels of thatched roof.  We're told that they will earn around $2 for what they can produce in a day.

In the tourist industry, an unskilled bellhop can earn $5 in a few minutes carrying some bags, or a waitress can earn a $2 tip for serving a pizza and a beer.  If you can get a job working with tourists, the work is far easier and the pay far higher.  The key requirement, however, is that you speak English.

Those who are ambitious and in traditional jobs are trying to learn English.  In Amed, when we went to the beach, we were quickly engaged by some of the local fishermen who both wanted to offer us "programs" of snorkeling and diving, and also just wanted a conversation so they could practice their English.

An invisible line on the beach separated the end of the Life in Amed hotel property and the fishing boats of the local fleet.  On one side were villagers who set off fishing at 5 am for what would often be a small catch and a paltry payout.  On the other side were the tourists and those locals who had learned enough English to work at the hotel at reception or in the restaurant.  Some of the local fishermen desperately wanted to be on the other side of that line where they could earn the easy money that came from working with tourists.

The men and women who work as helpers in our villas and other expat villas often have rudimentary English, and in spite of being employed in a tourist related job, are paid a low wage by the villa owners.  (We supplement it with bonuses.)  One of the benefits, though, is the daily opportunity to practice English in the hopes of moving up to a better paying job.
 
Wayan, at Sanctuary, was apologetic about her poor English and eager to learn.  She helped us learn Bahasa Indonesian and we helped her with English.

Here at Villa Jati, Putu is more assertive, always looking forward to a conversation and a chance to try out his English.  He seems not to have learned much English in school. His knowledge is quite haphazard.  He often struggles to communicate the simplest ideas.  It is also often hard to understand his pronunciation.

We're learning that some English words are quite challenging for a Balinese to pronounce.  "Vacuum" is nearly impossible to say as there is no "v" sound in Indonesian.  (Lynn was delighted that, after practicing with him for a while one day, he was finally able to pronounce it.)  Similarly there is no "th" sound in Indonesian so a word like "teeth" is quite difficult to say.  The last consonant is often dropped in Indonesian, so "milk" will come out sounding as "mill".  

Putu is clearly quite sharp.  He has an Indonesian-English dictionary on his phone and is making heavy use of it.  This has the odd result of him tossing advanced vocabulary into a sentence of broken English.  This always catches us off guard; with the combination of his rudimentary English and uncertain pronunciation, we can't quite believe that he is trying to say the word that he seems to be saying.

One day he tried to convey that it would be safe for us to eat at a local restaurant because after being in Bali for a while we now had "invulnerable stomachs."  Just the other day he said he was going to a local temple to be "accommodating" - a word he had pulled off of the dictionary on this phone - as he meant that he was going to help with the preparation for the ceremony.  And in the conversation mentioned below, he said that he is an "autodidact," which very much surprised me when he tossed that word out, but at least in this case it is a cognate of the Indonesian word, "otodidak".

[Update]  A day after writing the post above, I learned that I didn't know as much as I thought.

The family that is working late into the night weaving grass into roofing panels are not our neighbors, but workers brought over from the nearby and poorer island of Lombok.  Our Balinese neighbors are sufficiently well off, as land owners, that they do not have to perform the manual labor themselves.  They can hire the workers from Lombok and pay the workers by the piece to weave the elephant grass that grows on their land.

In talking with Putu, he confirmed that he did not study English in school, which explains his haphazard approach to the language.  But what I just learned is that Putu studied Japanese, and can speak it with much more fluency than English.  Knowing Japanese came in handy for several years at his previous job in an art gallery, at a time when large numbers of Japanese tourists flocked to Bali.  But the number of Japanese tourists has slowed to a trickle, so now Putu is working on English as his fourth language, with Balinese and Bahasa Indonesian being his first two.

This new information I learned after working on the post above reinforces that the judgments and assumptions I make as a newcomer to Bali are often erroneous.  I can see the surface, but the truth often lies beneath the surface.

Posted by Nat, comments/edits by Lynn

Everything's for the best

As Dewa Made, the property manager for our villa says, "In Bali we always say 'Good luck' no matter what happens".  If a coconut falls and breaks your arm, then it was good luck that it did not kill you.

The Balinese try to have the attitude that they are fortunate no matters what happens, as no matter how bad the thing that actually occurs, there could always have been a worse outcome which was fortunately avoided.

Balinese try to avoid expressing anger.  Anger is a pathway to allowing bad spirits to enter your body.  Better to smile, as this deflects the bad spirits.  The bad spirits then have no access to you, and you are protected by your smile.

Balinese are fatalistic.  What happens it not necessarily because of a chain of causation, but an unpredictable outcome that is "between good luck and bad luck."

Causation is often assigned to supernatural agents.  Bad things can befall those who don't make the proper offerings, who do bad acts that create negative karma, or who offend the bad spirits.  Dewa, our driver, can usually point to evidence of bad things happening to people as a result of their neglect of the spirit world.  But as everyone constantly experiences a mixture of good and bad outcomes, evidence that is persuasive for Dewa is less convincing to me.

To my Western eyes, I see this attitude as a mixed blessing.  It helps the Balinese find happiness in a tough life that is usually filled with many hardships.  But the anger and dissatisfaction that in the West would be channeled into trying to improve the situation is dissipated, so things stay as they are, unchanged and unimproved.

Hardheaded Women

Balinese women don't have it easy.

They are responsible for childcare, for cooking, for preparing all the ceremonial offerings, and for fulfilling the obligations to go to the temple to pray.  Many also hold full-time jobs outside of the home.  As Ibu Made says, "Balinese women always working."

Women with Nyepi offerings at the temple

Our neighbor at Sanctuary with some of her daily offerings

When a woman marries, she almost always leaves her family to go live with her husband and her in-laws (and often her husband's brothers and their families, and everyone's dogs) in his family compound.

Women in Bali do not have the same legal rights as men. According to tradition, land is only inherited by the sons. The undeveloped land next to our villa to the west is owned by a family with six children- five daughters and then the youngest is a boy.  But that boy, Dewa Made Putra, is in good shape because he will get all the family's land.  His sisters will get nothing.

Sons are highly prized in Bali.  A major reason is that daughters leave and become part of their husband's family.  Sons stay with their parents, so the son's family will take care of the parents when the parents get older.  The family home and lands are also passed on through the sons.

Sons are so important that fathers of daughters will keep having more children in the hopes that eventually they will have a boy.  Our driver Dewa's eldest brother had three daughters aged 15, 10, and 5, but he decided to try his luck again and is overjoyed that their new baby is a boy.  Lynn has remarked that Dewa often mentions his son's daily activities and concerns about his character and well-being.  He rarely brings up his daughter in conversation.  Lynn of course asks about her regularly.  Dewa is aware that Balinese culture differs from other cultures in this respect.  Lynn said that Dewa occasionally notes that things are "different for women in Java ... and maybe different in your country."

Dewa Made, the businessman and property manager for our villa, is among the most prosperous Balinese we know, but is considered unlucky by some since he has four daughters, aged 15, 10, 5, and 2, but no sons.  Dewa Made says four children is enough, so there will be no son in his future.

One can speculate that the family of Dewa Made Putra, mentioned above, had exactly six children because they kept trying to have a son and when after five daughters the sixth was finally a boy, they were finally able to stop having more children.

Women perform much of the hardest manual labor.  It is a common sight to see groups of women, some of them quite elderly and frail-looking, carrying heavy loads of cinder blocks and other construction material on their heads.

It is unusual to see men performing this work.  Putu says that women do this work because they have the skill of carrying things on their head, which they do routinely when carrying food back from the market on their heads and when carrying offerings on their heads.  This seems to beg the question of why the men can't carry these heavy loads some other way than on their heads.

Not infrequently as we watch the roadside scenes unfold as we drive along, we'll pass a group of women carry stones on their head, and then a short while later see the contrasting sight of a man squatting by the side of the road, gently massaging the chest muscles of his rooster, in preparation for an upcoming cockfight.

Dr. Ating

Dr. Ating is the Green School's resident physician.  He not only tends to the children, but parents often take advantage of his availability for consultations.  I went to him for some stomach pains last month, which he cleared up with some activated charcoal.  He's married to the school librarian.

Lynn has enjoyed chatting with him since we first arrived and has taken the girls to see him several times for tending minor ailments.  I didn't give him that much thought, but then learned that he is leaving Green School to spend the rest of his life among the people of the Indonesian island of Sulawesi in an effort to try to encourage them to preserve the Lore Lindu National Park, a large park home to many species found nowhere else on earth.  The forest dwellers in Sulawesi are quite poor, so they are cutting down the rainforest to earn money.

Dr. Ating has an ambitious goal of changing the behaviors of the people of Sulawesi with an innovative approach of offering health care as a way of gaining trust and then developing an eco-tourism business that will both employ the locals in higher paying jobs and give them an economic incentive to preserve the rain forest.

The Lore Lindu is home to a species of tarsiers, the world's smallest monkey.  Tarsiers have large, bulging eyes which when combined with their small size helps them look cute and cuddly.

Tarsius lariang
Lariang tarsier
Photo credit: Stefan Merker

The tarsiers have therefore become the mascot for Dr. Ating's Foundation.   Green School has supported Dr. Ating's efforts by having t-shirts with the tarsiers printed up and sold to the members of the school community as a fund raiser for the foundation.  Charlotte's class has adopted Dr. Ating's foundation as one of their service projects as well.  They have held several bake sales and popcorn sales.  They decorated posters and sang a song to him at one of the assemblies.

Dr. Ating has a special fondness for Charlotte since she was literally the first person to make a donation to his foundation.  Charlotte developed an immediate affection for the tarsiers.  Shortly after hearing Dr. Ating was working to save the tarsiers, Charlotte found a 2,000 rupiah note (worth about 25 cents) on the ground.  She immediately brought it to Dr. Ating as a donation.  This was a selfless act by Charlotte, though made a little less so when she later explained to us that the money was worthless to her as the cheapest snack in the warung costs 5,000 rupiah, and if it had been a 5,000 rupiah note then she would have kept it to spend it at the warung.  She has recovered from this less-than-stunning display of altruism by making other small donations to Dr. Ating, creating posters to raise awareness, helping out with the bake sales, and of course purchasing (and consuming) many baked goods.

Dr. Ating with Charlotte and friend, wearing their tarsier t-shirts.  'kita cinta' means "we love"
Photo credit:  Lynn

We are impressed by Dr. Ating for his willingness to devote his life and endure many hardships in pursuit of the demanding yet worthwhile goal he has set for himself.

Chatting with him one day at school, he mentioned that he had written up stories from his time working as a traveling doctor among the native tribes in the interior of Papua.  One story was of his adoption of a "devil child," one of a pair of twin girls born to an impoverished Papuan family, whom if Dr. Ating had not adopted would have been destined for a short and cruel life.  I edited the story for him, at his request, and hope to post it on the blog soon.

Additional information about Dr. Ating can be found at his foundation website and in this profile.

Posted by Nat, comments/edits by Lynn

Cockfighting

Cockfighting is very popular among the men of Bali.  It is deeply entrenched in the culture.  It is even incorporated into some of the Hindu ceremonial rituals, as the blood spilled during a cockfight outside a temple distracts the bad spirits and keeps them from interfering with the ceremony inside the temple.

the men of Silungan massaging their roosters

Every village apparently has its own cockfighting grounds.  The one in Silungan is just a short distance from our villa, on the small, rough and bumpy field that the local boys use as a soccer pitch.  We haven't seen any cockfights, but we've seen the after-effects of one fight - a crippled and badly wounded rooster staggering down the side road near our villa.

Gambling on cockfights has touched the lives of some of the Balinese that we are closest to, including our driver Dewa and our household helper Putu.

Dewa's grandfather worked very hard to turn jungle in Western Bali into arable farmland.  He had a large farm of 50 hectares.  But he lost about half of it gambling on cockfighting.  Dewa says that back then, wagers weren't simply for money, but were often for land.  Dewa's uncles and one of his older brothers also enjoyed cockfighting, and more of the family land was lost as a result.

Dewa says that no one makes makes money gambling on cockfights.  If you win, your friends expect you to share your winnings, or else you will have no friends.  But if you lose, then the loss is yours alone.  The village hosting the cockfight takes 10% of the winnings.  Unless you win and leave immediately, you are likely to lose the rest of your money either by making bad bets or gradually from the 'rake' paid to the village.

Roosters in the traditional cages on the road to Besakih temple

The owner of the winning rooster is awarded the carcass of the losing rooster as a prize.  The victorious rooster is often sold off at that point, so the counter-intuitive result is that a sign of a successful night is to return home with a dead rooster.  Dewa said that after a losing night his father would  often purchase one of the dead roosters to bring home to Dewa's mother, on the pretense that he had been the winner and the dead rooster was his prize.  If not for this ruse, coming home after losing a lot of the family's money would have caused, as Dewa says, "big problems with my mother."

That's because the sums gambled at cockfights are huge: hundreds of thousands or millions of rupiah - the equivalent of hundreds of dollars - from families trying to eke out a living on a few dollars a day.

Putu's story is even sadder.  He is from the village where we live.  His house is just a few meters down the road.

Putu's cousin sold off all the family land to pay off gambling debts.  The cousin used some of the money to build a house, but ran out of money and is now in debt on his house.  The land on which our villa is built once belonged to Putu's family.  His grandfather once had a small house on the property.  The cousin had no right to sell the land, but by the time Putu's father found out, the sale had already happened and all the money had been spent. 

The land was sold for a pittance, about $600 per 100 sq. meters.  Due to skyrocketing land prices, it is now worth twenty times as much.

Putu's father is angry, but there is nothing he can do about it.  The courts can't help; the land is sold and the money is gone.  Putu is sad that the opportunity for a bright future for his son and future grandchildren was sold out from under him, and he is left to earn a subsistence wage maintaining our house.

Surfer Dude

Nat tried surfing for the first time a couple of weeks ago.  He's too modest to post on this subject, so that leaves it to me!

I signed him up for a lesson at Rip Curl, one of the most respected surf schools in Bali.  It is located on Double Six Beach in Seminyak.  Double Six has a moderate surf, and the waves the roll in at a steady pace, which makes it the perfect place to learn surfing.
 
Nat had a great first outing.  He got up on the board...and looked pretty good doing it!  (We had no success in attempting to photoshop the dorky helmet out of the photo.)  My friend Tracy's partner Cliff joined him for the outing, and he had a great day out on the ocean as well.

Surfing the massive 40 cm waves

They had fun and are looking forward to trying it again.

Afterwards, we toasted their success on the deck at Ku De Ta, an uber-hip beach front restaurant in Seminyak, and watched the gorgeous sunset.

Posted by Lynn, photos by Rip Curl.

Butterfly Park Field Trip

Charlotte’s class had a field trip to Bali’s one and only butterfly park a couple of weeks ago.   I volunteered to join the festivities.   

We drove from school to the park in a caravan of mini-SUVs.  Charlotte and I traveled with two of her Balinese friends, Belle and Tirta (whose name means “holy water” in Balinese), and Nikita M., who speaks next to no English.  In a strange coincidence, there are two Russian boys in Charlotte's class, both named Nikita.  On the hour-long ride, we played “20 questions,” “I Spy,” and took turns counting to 10 in English, Bahasa Indonesia, French, Spanish and Russian.

The park is small but it's the largest one in Indonesia.  The kids held giant insects and marveled at the developing butterflies and moths.  

 

Putu, a young woman on staff at the park, explained how the butterflies emerge from their cocoons and eventually dry off enough to fly away.

Everyone enjoyed the exhibit (and a bit of clowning around).

After the tour, the kids had a chance to roam free through the park while parents guarded the exits. 

Of course, no trip to a "tourism object," as Dewa calls it, is complete without a visit to the gift shop.  Charlotte and many other kids were delighted to purchase a single framed (dead) butterfly.  Here is a much larger example:

After finishing lunch and making their purchases, they played the "butterfly life cycle game," an educational version of "rock, paper, scissors," with Pak Matt.

 

Finally, they posed for a group photo.

Charlotte’s class is a lively, interesting group of kids.  I was impressed by their curiosity and kindness toward each other on the trip.  It was good fun spending time with them.