Confrontation

"Your tennis teacher is temperamental like an animal not like a human being.  Many people are very upset.  Enemy is coming from the mouth."

Lynn and I read these words in a text message from Dewa.  We had just finished a tennis lesson given by our American tennis teacher, whom I'll call Will.  We have been taking tennis lessons at a nearby village that rents out its tennis court by the hour.  Will rides his motorbike an hour each way to meet us at the court.

We had no idea what was going on.  We had never received a message like this before from Dewa.

Dewa's text message began:

"Excusme...  I just want to let's you know...  About your tennis teacher...  Wow many people is very up sad...  Because he always talk with really no good word and emotional he just angry with the bus driver because of throw out rubbish on the street.  I know that is not good but your tennis teacher is tourist here in Bali normally he must be say thank for to do business and make money in Bali... Enemy is coming from the mouth.  If speak more polite maybe people will say thank.  ...I hear somebody say if he do a second time bad luck for your tennis teacher."

The message ended with:

"Paradise and hell coming from the mouth.  If speak good that is make many people smile and happy  and if speak no good directly is make the people mad and angry.  Bali people like peace and love.  Thanks"

We asked Dewa what had happened.  He told us that before our tennis lesson began, several buses full of students on a class outing had parked on the street opposite the tennis court.  The bus drivers and teachers, upon exiting the buses, had instructed their students to take all their trash that had accumulated during the bus ride and to toss it over the side of the road into the stream below.

Upset by this, Will, who speaks no Indonesian, had confronted them and told them in English that they shouldn't be teaching their students to litter but instead should be teaching them to throw away trash properly. (This is not an isolated problem.  The Balinese dump plastic trash into rivers all over the island.  Trash disposal is a complex social problem in Bali that we are aiming to address in another post.)

Even by Western standards, Will is a passionate guy who can come off as a bit of a hothead.  He is a well-meaning guy, committed to excellence in his tennis instruction and very good with the girls.  We like him.  But observing social formalities isn't his strength.  Indeed, this is likely the reason he travels so far to give us lessons rather than teaching at his former job as a tennis pro at the swank country club near his home.  He mentioned at one point that his personality had clashed with the refined manners of those who ran the country club.

Will's behavior, which would be a little out of the ordinary in America, is very extreme in Bali.

As Westerners, we are taught to speak up -- and do so with varying intensity and decibel levels -- if we see a wrong being committed.  We believe in "power to the people" and taking matters into our own hands.  We feel free to confront strangers over a parking space, over smoking where they shouldn't, over whispering in the theater, or if we think they are endangering their children.

The Balinese are non-confrontational in the extreme.  Expressing anger in public is shameful behavior, and only reflects badly on the one expressing the anger, not the one at whom the anger is directed, even if the anger is justified.

According to the Balinese, unless you are in a position of authority no one has the right to tell someone else what they should be doing.

Will thought he had done the right thing: calling the adults to account for instructing their students to throw plastic trash in the river, which is contributing to destroying the beauty of Bali. 

But Will's behavior in aggressively confronting the Balinese bus driver was seen as grievously insulting, and brought the warning from Dewa that Will should be careful because it might provoke some of the people he confronted to try to harm him.

Shortly after the incident with Will, Dewa had an unrelated incident with a Green School parent who confronted Dewa and chastised him because the parent thought Dewa had been driving way too fast.  Dewa said that he felt very upset.  He added that it was his worst experience as a driver and that if he had been a woman he would have cried.

He was also quite angry.  He said that it was a good thing he had had eaten breakfast that morning and was able to keep his calm, otherwise he might have sought out someone who knows black magic, regardless of the bad karma that would have brought upon Dewa, and made something bad happen to the Green School parent.  (In yet more drama, we later learned the identity of this parent:  our next door neighbor.  This made for a slightly awkward conversation, but it was entirely amicable.  We were, in fact, glad that he voiced his concerns.) 

The Balinese do not respond in kind to verbally aggressive behavior.  They are constrained by their code of behavior from yelling back or getting in the person's face.  But if they react, they might overreact by trying to covertly harm the person that confronted them.  Often this seems to involve turning to practitioners of "black magic."

All of the Balinese we've talked to where the subject has come up believe in magic, including Dewa.  It may not be Harry Potter-style magic.  But they believe that certain people have "extra energy" and have undertaken extensive lessons in magic, learning how to use it for good and for bad.  Those who know black magic can use it to make people sick.  To be a master of magic one must study and know both black magic and good magic.   

I am naturally skeptical about all this talk of magic.  But we know a Green School family who went to a Balinese healer and experienced her extraordinary healing powers first hand.  They wrote up their experience here.   There may be something to all this talk of magic after all.  I wouldn't want to test it out by being on the receiving end of some black magic.