Nengah our housekeeper, heard the sound of me stupidly smacking a kitchen knife against a mature coconut and came to see what the noise was. I’m not particularly handy, but I felt fairly confident that what I was doing wasn’t the right way to get the job done. The knife was the only tool I had and Emily bought the coconut from a roadside stand so she could have fresh coconut juice.
So, I stood behind the house essentially making a rather sad dent in the interior shell of the coconut. What else could I do?
One of the strange things about living here is that cookware, utensils and even cooking basics like salt and sugar come and go. There are three houses in the compound and staff assigned to each house – plus a gardener.
Not everyone is always home – in fact one set of neighbors has been absent this entire past week. So, the staff tend to take kitchen items, appliances and cooking utensils from one house to use in another as needed. We never know what is or isn’t in our kitchen. The entire systems rests on the assumption that only the staff use the kitchens – which is pretty much how it works.
Our house had only one knife. Nengah uses others when he cooks, but at the time I needed to hack open the coconut, I had one vegetable knife.
Nengah came out from the staff quarters, looked at me and asked in Indonesian, “You want to drink coconut juice? There’s a tree right there. Those are better. Where did you get that?”
I told him that Emily had bought it in town and that it was to drink.
“Ohhh…..” he said with a smile that said, “stupid people…” He walked away and came back with a giant meat cleaver. With a few strong chops, Nengah hacked the coconut open and brought it to Emily.
He then advised me that it’s better just to tell him and he’d get young coconuts which are better for drinking – in part because they have much thinner shells and are easier to open – from the tree 10 feet away.
Yesterday, Nengah picked two young coconuts and when we came home from town. He opened them up and served us each fresh young coconuts for our drinking pleasure. He’s very thoughtful and seems to want to please Emily in particular.
If our lives weren’t easy enough and the food wasn’t fantastic enough, we now have fresh coconut drinks being brought to us on our front porch.
Life in Bali is so easy to slide into. I’ve never been anywhere that makes a quality lifestyle so available. While I’m also in love with France and the way they live life – it doesn’t come cheap or easy, especially if you’re an expat.
But Bali….Bali is a seductress. Bali challenges you to leave her. She makes it so that it takes everything you have to get on that plane. And if you do manage to make it to the plane (which most of us do at some point), she’s sure you’ll be back. I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t want to return.
“I could get used to this,” Emily said the other day as she was standing on the porch, staring at the rice terraces and gardens on her way back to her computer following a quick dip in the pool.
Our rent is our lowest accommodation yet. The space and standard of living – the highest. The view every morning – stunning. We take turns sitting at the spot at the dining table with the best view.
There’s a magic to Bali that draws you in. I’ve been to many tropical places – none have this feel. It has a quiet peaceful quality which makes people feel as if they’ve found an idyllic safe harbor completely removed from the turbulent world outside.
Emily struggles with Indonesia – at least Bali – being labeled “third world”. It has a currency that’s 9,000 to the US Dollar; an annual per capita income of $600; families of five use a 125cc motor scooter as the family car; a meal at sit down restaurant costs about $6 a person; and the communication companies use radio transmission to create broadband Internet connections because they don’t want to spend the money to lay cable. Third world.
Because Emily’s first and primary third world experience was at the low end of the third world totem pole, countries like Thailand and Indonesia look rich. Without a doubt, the countries of Southeast Asia have vastly better resources than Nepal and much of India.
I understand Emily’s struggle because I used to share it. Bali doesn’t quite make sense.
Indonesia’s currency is weaker than almost all of the others in the region despite it having the largest population and the most resources. Yet, the standard of living here is not only better for expats, but seemingly also for the locals.
The easy answer is that Bali is better off than most of Indonesia – with a per capita income of $1200 a year – thanks largely to the Balinese skill in developing tourism which brings in $2-3 billion annually.
But that doesn’t explain it all – because not everyone has a hand in tourism and there are still plenty of people out working the fields and performing low-paying service jobs. The $1200 a year figure reflects the huge disparity in incomes between the people of the south where tourism flourishes and the rest of the island (minus Ubud).
Here’s some context. Our laundry service, cost $9 for 67 pieces of clothing. We paid roughly $18 for this in Bangkok, $25 in Mumbai and $36 in Patmos. Prices haven’t changed here at all since I left because my average laundry cost on my own was about $5 a week. These people hand wash, dry and iron and fold every single piece of clothing too. Balinese labor doesn’t command a high price.
Even in the tourism sector, prices are low. We pay $50 a month for a motorcycle rental. In Patmos, we paid $13 a day. Our average restaurant meal costs $11 for the two of us. A dance performance at the Ubud Palace costs $8 and dancers train from their early childhoods onward. It’s a VERY skilled profession.
From my own informal surveying, I gathered that a person with a university degree – which is not common – makes between $110 to $220 a month. Not overwhelming.
But looking around the island, you never see abject poverty. Not only that, people are largely happy and seem to be doing okay.
Some years ago, I figured out the secret – or I learned it from Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore. On an island filled with Chinese and Indian immigrants as well as Malays who had drifted down from the Malaysian Peninsula largely in response to the opportunities afforded by the British port – he realized that even after several generations, people didn’t feel Singapore was their homeland. It was just a place their families came for work.
LKY’s driving principle in building Singapore was that people need to have stake in a country in order to feel it’s theirs. The best way to accomplish it is through home ownership. He posited that if everyone owned a piece of Singapore, they would transcend their cultural identities and form a nationality. They would become Singaporean.
So began the Singapore Housing Development Board which has achieved an 87 percent home ownership rate – 74 percent of housing being government built. Because of the tight-knit family cultures, having every family own a home also resulted in dramatic decrease in homelessness, poverty and has effectively eliminated destitution. If nothing else, everyone has a place to hang their hat at night.
That’s the key to Bali.
Bali caught onto this long before Singapore. Not being that large an island and never overpopulated, every Balinese family had – and usually still has – their family land. They have a place to live and along with it, a means to raise crops. Plus fruit falls off the trees. They can all subsist at the very least.
No one is in danger of falling through the cracks of life. Everyone is always fundamentally safe.
This is very powerful and profound.
Balinese also have the advantage and safety net of their villages. Even if someone moves away or becomes wealthy, they’re always a member of their village. The cohesion of the community means a tight support network. When one family is hurting, there are people there to help. Village members who succeed give back. People are bound together – something not as formalized or strong in countries like Thailand or Malaysia.
People in Bali – especially on the north shore – are often cash poor. However, they have food, shelter, clothing, love, belonging and I assume sex. I think Maslow would agree that they’re doing very well.
I wholeheartedly believe this is a major reason why the Balinese are able to so doggedly pursue their art and cultural practices.
Emily points out often that relative poverty – feeling impoverished because you don’t have as much as others in your social strata or society – is very destructive. In a materially focused society like America, feelings of relative poverty flourish. People often gripe about when they don’t have when they really do have so much.
That may change for the Balinese as certain segments of their society become very wealthy as so many involved in increasingly higher-end tourism already are. However, looking around and talking to people, they seem to have exactly what they expect from life. When we walk down the street, we don’t feel resentment. We don’t – and I never did – sense that people wish they were us, or hate that we have things they don’t.
In fact, it seems to be the opposite.
The man who rents us our motorcycle has an adorable five month-old baby named Putu. In his small shop where he sells artwork and rents a few motorcycles and cars, his wife was playing with the baby.
“I think all parents feel this way, but we really do think we are the luckiest people on Earth. Our baby is the best. He brings us so much happiness. I don’t think anyone could be happier than us.”
Sent from my iPad
