zimatravels

In 1995, I traded living in a 100-year-old house in Macau for a 100-year-old renovated Dutch house on a mountaintop in Munduk, Bali.  My students were the staff of  the tourist accommodation called Puri Lumbung.  Our classroom was a room with a roof, but no walls, in a colorful, fertile garden where the flowers couldn’t wait to bloom and roosters walked through the classroom whenever they wished.

On my flight into Bali, the man sitting next to me said nothing during the five-hour flight except that he could not speak English.  As we neared the airport in Denpasar, he became visibly excited while straining to see out my window.  He said with pride, and in perfect English, “Bali is my home.”  While at a Munduk dance performance for the villagers (rather than for tourists) the young Balinese man sitting next to me told me he had spent several happy years studying in an Indonesian city outside Bali.  “But,” he said pointing to his chest, “something inside me made me come back.  I don’t know why.”  I did.

I received a letter from my mother while I was in Munduk letting me know that my good friend, Carolyn, had died.  She had suffered too long with a respiratory illness that tried, but never fully succeeded, to take away her zest for life.  I thought of the variety of our shared experiences over the years including standing together gathering signatures for petitions for non-smokers’ rights; long, insightful conversations on many topics; her joy in eating hot fudge sundaes; her light, easy laughter; and her love for her pet cats.  I wanted to bring Carolyn’s spirit to me in the paradise of Munduk.  One of my students prepared an appropriate leaf and flower offering and guided me through a little ceremony in my garden.

One night, just before it was my time to leave Munduk after two idyllic months, a cat came onto my porch and looked me straight in the eyes.  That started me floating in a stream of  consciousness back in memory to people and times I hadn’t thought of in years.

I thought about the parts of my life in Munduk that I would have to do without — faces of my young and old students from the village, people I had only been able to smile to, and those who had talked to me deeply.  Then the stream of consciousness carried me past the magnificent views of the mountains, valleys, and terraces that echoed with thunder rolling in the limitless, infinite sky.  I saw the flowers calling for my attention as they joyously burst into bloom.  I again heard the peculiar sound of a certain bird that made a trilling sound as though it were playing an instrument.  I felt all the things about Munduk that seemed so right to me — the indescribable beauty and peace of a life lived entwined with nature.

All this and more jumbled together in my mind, ran to my heart, and came down my face in a gush of tears.  I felt so incredibly sad that I must leave Bali soon — perhaps for a while, perhaps for a long time, perhaps forever.  Even if I returned, Bali may have changed.  Munduk may have changed.

When I thought my heart would truly break as panic took over, I intuited the invitation to walk out into the cool, star-filled night.  As I calmed down in the embrace of nature surrounding me, I felt Carolyn’s spirit slip her hand into mine.  As her presence and I stood together in the garden, a very clear message enveloped me.  It was a simple statement from Bali to me.  “You can take with you everything you have learned and felt here.”

I wrote a letter to Bali in that moonlight, declaring my gratitude, sincerest thank you, and deepest love.  Then, I buried it in my garden.  I had to leave Bali, but I carried the spiritual wisdom of Munduk inside me.

In 1995, I spent two months in the village of Munduk in northern Bali teaching English to the hotel staff of Puri Lumbung.  The following is taken from my travel journal and included as an excerpt in my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.

I had never heard of palm sugar, but I was told that Jakeri sugar, mostly used in baking, is available throughout the world.  The pleasant toffee taste brings high prices and comes only from a particular palm tree.  I was able to see this sugar being made by Made (pronounced Maday) K. in Perdawa village near Munduk.  Accessible by road or a four kilometer walk from Munduk, the small village reveals an older, smaller, quieter lifestyle than Munduk.

The wild-growing palm trees around Perdawa are utilized in several ways.  The hair from it is used in roofing, the sugar is taken from it, and the inside of the tree itself can be eaten.  Getting the sap for the sugar involves climbing the tree, cutting a branch, and placing a gourd under it to collect what slowly drips out.  After about 12 hours, the full gourd is collected, cleaned out by using melted sugar and replaced under the branch.  The liquid is boiled for four hours.  When placed on a banana leaf in a coconut shell, it hardens in five to ten minutes.

There is a fermentation process that occurs, making an intoxicating drink if the juice is drunk after about 12 hours.  If the hardened sugar is wrapped in a special leaf and kept dry, it actually gets tastier over time and can last five to six years.

The sugar palm must be seven or eight years old before the liquid can be tapped.  After the branch is cut, it will flow for three to four months with the strongest flow after dark.  The flow from the tree stops mysteriously for one month, and then will continue to flow again.  The tree can produce sap for more than ten years, with each branch eventually dying after its flow permanently ceases.

What was even more fascinating to me than the palm sugar was the home where Made K. lives.  It is a 100-year-old village home.  More modern structures have replaced most of these practical, well-built homes.  Consisting of one huge room, there were two very large  beds supported by sturdy wood from local trees.  The floor was dirt, and the large oven had been built out of dirt.  There was only one small window that looked out upon a simple bamboo family temple.  But there was adequate ventilation because the walls of the house were not solid!  The strips allowed a little light and air to flow through the smoke-darkened room.

There were shelves for cooking utensils and the family’s belongings.  Suspended baskets allowed food to be kept away from the ever-present dogs and cats.

Surprisingly, the darkness of the smoke-blackened room gave it a comfortable, cozy feeling.  Certain hotels in Bali are actually going back to this old style in decorating the rooms.  It made me, accustomed to plastic and bright colors, feel like a traveler to the primitive past.

If  I conjured up in my imagination the most tranquil, serene lake I could, I would not even come close to the spectacular Lake Tamblingan.  Tamblingan village is an intentionally small village, which lies between a forest and the sacred Lake Tamblingan.  Considered Bali’s center of prosperity in water, forest, and spirit, Tamblingan is a government-protected area that allows only 12 families to live in it.  Each family is given a 250-meter area at no charge.  In exchange, they protect the forest, lake, and the three important temples here.  They fish three to four hours daily.  Although there is yet no restaurant here, one can request a meal of one of the perhaps seven kinds of fish here.  Although August to October are the best fishing months, some fish are available year round.

From the village, there is a two-hour walk to the cave called Nagaloka, which is indeed the center of Bali.  The primeval forest (never planted) has the Cemare Pandak tree that only grows in that forest.  In Tamblingan, Niluh S. is a small, but strong woman who takes passengers on the lake in a dugout canoe.  There is a temple right in the middle of Lake Tamblingan.  Although the lake looks inviting, it is not safe for swimming because of the weeds that can drag a person under.

These villagers welcome visitors.  As a matter of fact, they told me that meeting travelers is one of the attractions of living there.  They also enjoy fishing rather than being tied to crops like farmers must be.

What I remember most about Tamblingan was just sitting close to the lake in the late afternoon.  There was the beauty and stillness to drink in, broken by the commotion of the fighting cocks lined up in their baskets all crowingly demanding their dinner before bedtime.

A waterfall a short walk from Puri Lumbung combines many elements that make Munduk so lovable a place.  After negotiating the seemingly treacherous dogs and asking for permission to pass through someone’s property, the gentle walk is made more interesting by observing the intricate and highly efficient waterways Bali is known for to irrigate the the rice paddies.  As I reached the sound of the waterfall, I also began to see some carvings placed along the trail.  The carver was sometimes there, but often not.  The waterfall enlarged or shrank depending upon the recent amount of rainfall.  With the wonderful integration of nature and human culture that Balinese have achieved, there was a small wooden structure where one could sit and play a small bamboo gamelan to accompany the music of the waterfall.