ONE BALINESE VILLAGE (part 1)
The following describes Munduk village in Bali where I stayed for two incredible months in 1995 while teaching English to the staff of a new resort. It is an excerpt from my book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird, published in 2006.
Magnificent sights, pleasant sounds, interesting smells, friendly smiles, sweetness, and the strength of the Balinese tradition surround me in Munduk, perched on a mountaintop in northern Bali. I am working here for two months teaching English to the staff of the only hotel in the area. Puri Lumbung’s tourist cottages are in the style of a barn used to store rice. They are furnished in the delicacy of all locally, handmade products — handmade hangers, carefully carved doors, and wooden furniture. The large bathroom has a full garden INSIDE the room. A traditional “phone” made out of bamboo amplifies one’s natural voice enough to be heard for a short distance.
Nature provides both the scenery and a cool mountain climate. The people of Munduk, and the astounding beauty of Munduk combine to delight every sense, especially the sixth sense that I call spiritual. Living right over the terraced rice paddies provides an all night symphony with the early morning disharmony of the resident roosters. I eat in a tree house restaurant perched over sweeping vistas of mountains and terraced rice paddies, coconut and clove plantations sloping 800 meters down to the sea. A local musician accompanies meals on a bamboo instrument called gamelan, blending in with the peace of the setting.
It was at Puri Lumbung that I first heard the term, “eco-tourism” which I distilled to mean making tourism more of a blessing than a curse. Is that really possible? Unfortunately, parts of Bali have sunk to the level of sad, bad examples of how tourism can completely change a local community. I was invited to come by the builder and owner of Puri Lumbung. Having traveled widely and lived in other countries, he is a native of Munduk and seeks to provide a place for local villagers and foreign guests to interact in ways that lead to mutual respect, enrichment, and understanding. Although locally made arts and crafts are available, they are never aggressively pushed at tourists by the high-pressure salesmen so prevalent in other parts of Bali.
Providing economic benefits for local people is another tenet of eco-tourism, which Mr. B. adheres to by hiring mostly local staff and using local skills. One purpose behind such hiring is to stem the tide of young adults leaving the village for the jobs in highly-touristed towns.
Another way of giving dimension to the interaction between villagers and foreigners is to make everyday activities, rather than special ceremonies and holidays, the main attractions of Munduk. Hands-on opportunities include helping to cook a Balinese meal, working in the rice paddies, making a bamboo gamelan, weaving traditional baskets from bamboo, and making natural sugar from sugar palm trees.
In most of the world, the relationship of society to its environment is like that of a rapist to its victim, but in Munduk I watch people going about their daily lives in harmony and balance with nature. It is as refreshing as the air. I entertain myself for hours watching the clouds cover and uncover the mountains and valleys, the flowers that bloom in front of my eyes, the rice growing, the light and shadows playing, the sunset painting the sky one stroke at a time — all while breathing the lightest, purest air I’ve ever found. It is the most like heaven I can imagine.
Balinese culture surprises me in both its simplicity and its complexity. There are a large variety of ceremonies that mark a person’s life from pregnancy until death and afterward. One day, I noticed the heightened activity at my neighbor’s home in preparation for one such ceremony. The nimble fingers of the women fashioned intricate offerings from palm leaves and other products of nature. A large table was set up on the porch on which an impressive number of offerings were stored. Guests began to arrive from other areas of Bali and slept over the night before the ceremony. Although Balinese may move to other parts of Bali or beyond, they return to their family temples to perform ceremonies.
I learned that this ceremony was for a six-year-old girl who was considered to have a bad character — stubborn, hard to control, sometimes stealing and lying. She was symbolically purified in an elaborate ritual in which she was bathed in flowered holy water and had to break a few eggs and several coconuts, releasing the purifying coconut milk. The village priest prayed in Sanskrit (which most Balinese cannot understand) while his wife translated for all to understand. Then, laden with offerings, we all went to a family temple to continue the request for purification. The father and mother were brought into the ceremony, with the hope (quietly confided to me) of purifying the father who had the unfortunate, but quite common, excessive love of gambling.
The little girl did all that was expected of her in exemplary fashion and was very proud of a string placed on her head, a leaf with flowers tied around her head, and braided yarn with ancient coins wound around her chest.
Although she and I had no common language, she often came to visit me during the few days she was there. We played long and well together. Unlike her shy cousin just a little older who lived next door to me, the six-year-old’s character was quite different. Her boldness and attraction to me, rather than fear of my strangeness, made me wonder if this was a case of independence being seen as contrariness.
Tags: Bali; Balinese village; teaching in Bali, Bali; Puri Lumbung, Munduk, Travel
