Novelist in Paradise

One of the mysteries of Bali is the eternally full garbage truck. You never see any empty ones. They are always full, and always stopping to cram on yet more garbage. You almost get the feeling that something….mystical…is going on.

Bali’s garbage trucks collect 5000 cubic meters of garbage a day that is taken to official dump sites. It’s estimated that another 5000 cubic meters are tossed elsewhere, in rivers and streams and your neighbor’s empty back yard. So says AA Gede Alit Sastrawan, head of an environmental organization, in an article in today’s Bali Post.

Bali is only about 5600 square kilometers in size. Considering only the officially collected garbage, in three years you could cover the whole island in a centimeter of trash. Of course, sometimes its seems that the illegal garbage is already doing the job.

Sastrawan estimates that about 300 cubic meters of the collected garbage is packing material that could be recycled. And indeed, pemulung from Java (no self respecting Balinese would be a garbage picker) have a thriving business by collecting recyclables. Unfortunately, the plastic bag (which if you go ocean trolling after a good rainstorm and full rivers is also considered to be Indonesia’s national fish) is not taken for recycling.

What the article doesn’t stated is that a significant percent of the volume is composed of plant material from discarded ceremonial offerings. Perfect for compost and fuel projects. But is anyone making compost and fuel? Nope. Foreign companies have in years past invested in pilot projects for commercial ventures, but get stuck in the morass of corruption. Foreign aid for this problem mysteriously vanishes.

One of the main dump sites is in the mangrove swamps near Benoa harbor. It’s been there for decades. And it keeps going up and up and up. One hill there is at least two hundred feet high. It’s certainly the highest geographical feature for miles around, if garbage can be said to be geographical, and I have heard that the Udayana military command has marked it on their maps as a strategic high ground.

If you a person of authority, you are allowed to say really dumb things.

Some years ago, the Minister of Justice commented on a foreigner who’d been on death row in Sumatra for several years, his appeal dragging on, causing him mental suffering. The Minister said, “It is best that we execute him as soon as possible, for his own peace of mind.”

More recently, despite protests the local administration has built a six-foot high wall along Kuta beach. The mayor said, “It stops the sand from blowing onto the road, and besides, the wall is done in Balinese architectural style and provides an excellent backdrop for tourists to take their photos.”

I don’t about you, but if I want to head out to the beach, or have a sunset drink at a restaurant by the seaside, I want to go the beach without having to bring rappelling gear. And I don’t want to seeing the sun setting into brick, no matter how ornamented.

This island and country has long had a tradition of respect for persons in authority, no matter if they got their positions from lineage, nepotism, or corruption (only rarely, alas, by dint of intelligent hard work). Such persons are allowed to get away with saying really dumb things, in part because they aren’t capable of saying really smart things, but also because they know nobody is going to bat an eye. “Yes, sir, very good, sir, that makes eminent sense, sir.”

The Indonesians have a phrase for it: asal bunyi saja. As long as you’re making noise.

Lately there have been news reports in the local paper of riots and houses being burned in a community. The papers faithfully report the number of houses burned, the names of the victims, initials of those arrested. The article quotes police commanders being stern, saying they will not tolerate violence, and also report that community leaders of the factions have sat down to establish peace.

But what factions? What the heck is the fighting about? It’s all very murky, and unsatisfying. People don’t want to know just the facts—we’re all voyeurs, we want to know the dirt.

But it’s not really stated.

This is when it behooves the reader to understand the principle of SARA: suku, agama, ras, antar-golongan. Roughly translated: ethnic group, religion, race, and groups.

It’s long been a principle in Indonesian news, in the interest of maintaining harmony, to NOT openly identify the actors based on SARA, or to detail a conflict’s core issues if they are rooted in SARA. This is why articles will say “members of a certain religion” or “people from a certain island” instead of Muslims or Christians, or East Timorese. The articles will report the cause of conflicts as “disagreements over customary law” or “misunderstandings arising from the allocation of space for a house of worship”.

Of course, it’d be a lot more interesting to the reader to find out that (for example) a Balinese family has refused to pay its temple dues because they felt cheated out their fair share of village windfall from a tourism project, and the village cultural authorities then in turn don’t allow the family to bury one of their elders in the temple grounds to wait for the cremation, which in turn results in the family calling on their extended clan to take the body to the burial grounds anyway, which causes everybody to storm out in force with bamboo staves and spears.

Tip number 1: Think corruption

Not too many foreigners can read the local language papers, but if even they could, they might still scratch their heads and go, hunh?

For example, some time ago, in the same day’s edition of a local paper, there were two reports on drug sentencing (I’m changing the facts, but not the gist). In one article, a local man caught with a joint of Aceh marijuana was sentenced to 8 years in jail. Turn the page, and in the second article, an Australian tourist caught with 2.6 grams of cocaine was sentenced to 9 months in jail, and immediately deported because he’d already been detained prior to sentencing for, guess what, 9 months.

Confused as to the discrepancy? Don’t be!

Imagine Aretha Franklin belting out her trademark song: c-o-r-r-u-p-t, imagine what it means to me, a card says get out of jail free….

Enlightenment!

(I once was talking to a prominent lawyer who was celebrating a win in court. A Western woman had been acquitted in an embezzlement case brought against her by her local partner. The lawyer had expected her to lose because she flatly refused to pay bribes. The lawyer was all jazzed and excited because, as he exclaimed to me, the judge actually went by the evidence and the law and acquitted her without having received a single rupiah! Great cause for rejoicing, for lo and behold, an honest judge is found at last!)

(There’s an old joke: in Indonesia, there is good corruption and bad corruption. Bad corruption is when you have to pay somebody to do something they are supposed to do in the first place. Good corruption is when you can pay somebody to allow you to do something you’re not supposed to do in the first place.)

Bali is going to the dogs

Well, jokes about rabies aside, maybe so, maybe so. But then so is the rest of the world.

If only people could be less greedy.

While I am at it, let me pause a moment to wish for world peace.

It does seem that greediness in Bali is just a tad more greedy than greed in other parts of the world. Let me have my slice of pie, Jack, and to hell with everybody else.

Bali is a vortex of higher spiritual energies, a sacred place to seek enlightenment.

I often wonder if the new age folks here in Bali (to use a catch-all term for a wide spectrum of somewhat similar beliefs and practices) really understand what Bali Hinduism is about. Siva is the main deity, with emphasis on local gods and spirits and demons, lots of blood sacrifices, continual struggle to keep good and evil in balance. There isn’t exactly a surplus of good energies. And here are all these strangers and visitors sucking up what good energies there are, making it harder work for the Balinese to keep things in balance.

One way to look at it.

I bet if one did a study on the progress of those seeking spiritual progress and enlightenment in Bali, compared to seekers in, oh, London or Sydney or Le Mars, Iowa, one would find no difference.

Bali’s the place to make your fortune.

He was an Aussie tourist I met surfing, ran into him a couple more times. A cheerfully mate-y type, he had a hire car with driver, and he was the sort of fellow who invited the driver to sit down for lunch or have a drink. Loved the Balinese, he said, loved the island and the surf. Worked as a greengrocer in the Sydney area.

He called me up one day and asked if we could meet up somewhere. Wanted to ask my advice about something. Over beach beers, he told me that his driver had put a business proposal to him, to put up money to buy three cars and open their own joint-venture car rental agency.

Various red flags popped up in my head, and I waved them all for the man, and added several stories. He listened and then said, “But I trust Wayan. He wouldn’t rip me off.”
His mind was made up.

You can guess the rest. He lost his shirt, of course, and two years later was suing his business partner, with as much luck as he’d had with the rental agency.

Another case of the gullible bulé. It happens all the happen the time. All. The. Time. I don’t know why folks who are level-headed back home and careful with their money all of a sudden, in Bali, tilt their head into a sluice pipe for their savings to be poured into dubious ventures.

Sure, quite a few foreigners have their fortunes in Bali, but of every one I know, it involved the usual: good business sense and an awful lot of hard work. Hard, hard work, a relentless and never-ending exercise of problem solving. Just like back home, but with the special travails of Immigration and various Indonesian bureaucracies thrown in. There’s nothing magical in the air in Bali that makes the money come any

Want to find peace and happiness? Go to Bali.

Blood was everywhere in the losmen mandi (the homestay bathroom). Puddled on the tile. The Australian girl slumped over the squat toilet, where she’d slit her wrists. This was in 1976 or so.

She’d come to Bali to find paradise.

Instead, she killed herself.

The family who owned the losmen had to pay for expensive cleansing ceremonies, but without a murmur of complaint, and pity for the girl.

This wasn’t an isolated incident. Over the years, I’ve observed many people arriving in Bali to live, or deciding to stay, thinking that at last they’ve found peace, a place for their soul.

What they really found was a cheap place to live, with warm weather, a bit of distance from problems back home, and no real peace at all.

Because the biggest problems of all are the ones you carry with you.

Louise (Garrett) Koke observed this as far back as 1936, when she and her companion Bob opened a hotel on Kuta. In her fascinating memoir, “Our Hotel in Bali,” she notes:

“European visitors have been inclined to romanticize Bali, and to say that the Balinese have the secret of harmony and contentment. They claim that a complete escape from the problems of civilization and the inner conflict worrying most of us can be achieved by settling down in Bali, as if some soothing spirit would enter the distressed soul or as if happiness were catching….”

But not so. The blue bird of happiness does not dwell upon Bali.

Myth Number 1: The Balinese are a particularly harmonious and peaceful people.

Well, sure they are. But not particularly. Not more so than most other peoples.

Some time ago at an international conference, a Balinese intellectual deeply involved in the preservation and revitalization of Balinese culture, remarked to a group that “We Balinese aren’t particularly peaceful, as Westerners think we are. Our own history bears this out. Our kings warred against each other, took slaves, sold them to foreigners. In 1965, we killed 50000 of our own people. We have continuous feuds and fights between villages and banjars. Our royalty still murder members of their own family.”

An expat resident became very upset at hearing this, and scolded the intellectual. “This is not true,” she said. “Nowhere in the world is there a place of harmony like Bali.”

The speaker merely smiled and nodded.

I think that friendly and peaceful is the default option of most every peoples who haven’t been traumatized by conflict and cancerous ideologies. This is built in to our social natures. My two sons, who grew up bicultural in Bali, are attending university in San Diego, California. They have numerous times remarked how kind and friendly everyone is there.

So why this myth, of the Balinese being particular exemplars of tolerance and peace and harmony? Yes, there is the Balinese teaching of ‘tri hita karana’, the concept of being in harmony with God, with each other, and with the environment, which is certainly a good thing, but other religions and cultures have similar teachings, and besides, being taught something isn’t exactly the same thing as doing it.

And yes, the Balinese place a premium on the appearance of harmonious relationships, but hey, if you ask a Javanese and get him or her to answer honestly, which probably won’t happen because the Javanese are even more halus, they’ll say the Balinese are, ahem, coarse and quick to anger.

I think the tourism industry helps perpetuate the myth by promoting the idyllic island. Also, as was once explained to me by another deep thinking Balinese, the Balinese are famously tolerant of issues that aren’t their own particular hot buttons, but push their hot buttons, and you see a different side to them.
This woman also said that colonial Westerners had for so long subjugated and intimidated the Balinese that unacceptable and even malignant behavior of Westerners, upon the advent of hippie trail and then mass tourism, was unchallenged.

Also, if you seek in Bali the tranquility than you couldn’t find back home, then you have a vested interest in wearing the rose tinted glasses.

In other words, the Balinese are just people, and being just people, they are courteous and friendly and peaceful, like other people.