Last Days of the Semester: Galungan and Bedulu

It's a bit surreal to realize that as I'm writing this, my semester abroad is officially over. Last night, we had our final party with the host families, ISP advisers, and some of the students from Udayana University who came to Munduk Pakel with us back in March. Then this morning we signed off and said our goodbyes. Most of us are either sticking around in Bali for a few days or traveling throughout Southeast Asia, so I might run into some of the other students in the next week (and I did about an hour ago) but still, the semester is done. Odd.

For the last few days we've been back in Bedulu, finishing things up for the semester. Tuesday and Wednesday of this week were Galungan, which some Balinese people have described to me as their version of Christmas, but I'm not sure I see the connection. (I think it's mostly because they hang decorations that kind of look like Christmas trees, in a very vague sense.) Everyone's description of the "purpose" of Galungan varies, but from what I understand, it's mostly a time to honor ancestors and make lots of offerings. (Balinese Hinduism is, to massively oversimplify, sort of a combination of Indian Hinduism, traditional ancestor worship, and a little bit of animism.) For the first day, people stay home and make offerings in their own family temple -- each family compound has their own temple/shrine -- and on the second day, people visit their friends and extended family.

The alleyway by my house. If you blow the picture up, you should be able to see the things that are "like Christmas trees" -- they're the palm leaf arches over the road.

Oh, of course I'd forget this sort of thing: on Galungan and the holiday ten days after it, Kuningan, lots of pigs get sacrificed to make babi guling (roast suckling pig) and lawar (a dish made of vegetables, coconut, and pig blood).

 This is not a roasting pig. It is, in fact, a dog eating offerings (which isn't considered bad -- once the offerings are out they're fair game for animals to eat). As soon as I tried to take a picture of her eating them, she started barking at me angrily. See why I say the dogs here are mean?

(I should also point out that right now there are a bunch of kids playing gamelan outside the cafe I'm sitting in, and two of the kids are dressed in a very elaborate boar costume and dancing. I wish I had my camera!)

Now to jump forward in time: I have a day to kill in Ubud, and then tomorrow my family comes to Bali! For a little over a week I'll get to play tour guide, and then after that we head to Thailand (assuming the political situation is stable enough, touch wood). So I'll have more adventures to post about there, and then I'm home May 31st. Excitement!

On Being Queer Abroad

There's not much (read: nothing) by way of LGBT community here as far as I can tell, so I hadn't given this topic much thought before today. I've been emailing with one of my friends (hi, Jack) about it lately, though, so I thought I'd throw some thoughts out there (how's that for alliteration) for consideration.

Being in Bali has, in some ways, been a little bit like being back in the closet. During orientation, I asked a bit about Balinese responses to queerness¹ and Pak Tom explained that people here don't have any particular problems with it, but the older generation is completely unfamiliar with it. So, as a result, I didn't tell my host family that I have a girlfriend or that I consider myself queer. Bahasa Indonesia facilitates that, since there aren't any gender pronouns. When someone asks me if I "sudah punya pacar," they're technically asking if I already have a significant other, since "pacar" is gender neutral. I can say yes, and since there's only one pronoun that encompasses both he and she, I can have an entire conversation without divulging her gender (sorry, J). (There are slang terms for girlfriend and boyfriend, "cewek" and "cowok," respectively, but it's easy to answer "sudah punya cowok" with "ya, saya sudah punya pacar di Amerika," yes, I already have a significant other in America.) So I'm in an odd in-between: I'm not quite in the closet, but nor am I particularly out.

But that raises the question of why I'm not out to them. Part of it, I think, is language: I'm not sure how to explain LGBT issues in Indonesian, and if I were to declare myself queer to my host family I'd probably need to explain it. I am out to the other students on my program, the program directors, and the language teachers (both of whom are Balinese), without much issue. (There's been a little bit of homophobia on the part of one of the students, but I won't go into that.) Interestingly, I've had no problem with the language staff; I've actually had a couple of conversations with Mirah, one of my teachers, about it because she wanted to know more. So if I haven't felt judged or ostracized by them, why my hesitancy toward telling my family?

Part of it, I think, was that I was afraid of making them uncomfortable with me before they got to know me, which is a fallacy I've fallen into in the past and that I think a lot of LGBT people find themselves worrying about. Because we queer folk are made to think that there's something wrong with us, there's a tendency to assume that everyone will automatically feel that way. So I assumed my host family would be somehow offended, and held back. (At this point, it feels like coming out would be a little bit odd, since I've only got roughly another week with them. But maybe I'm still just making excuses. Who knows?)

At the same time, I do question Pak Tom's assertion that people are completely unfamiliar with queerness. A month or so ago, I was watching a game show on TV with my ibu, and while I'm not sure what exactly was going on, I do know that two of the contestants were drag queens. (I don't think they were transgendered, but that's my own ignorance showing through.) My ibu didn't seem particularly offended; if anything she was amused. (In fact, she described them as "aneh," weird, but conceded that the particularly fabulous one was "cantik," beautiful, when I called them both that.) When I asked her about them, she said that crossdressing is fairly common in Java (the show was presumably from Jakarta) but that "they didn't have them in Bali." That's probably true; most queer people in Bali either move to Kuta, the big beach & nightclub city, or to Jakarta, or they stay closeted and eventually get married to someone of the opposite sex, since children are so important here. Still, it highlighted to me the fact that, at least in terms of crossdressing and transgenderism (transgenderness? someone correct me please?), there's a bit of a "not in my backyard" mentality. There's certainly no sense that a crossdresser would be in any danger here, just that he or she wouldn't be particularly accepted.

I'm not sure exactly what to make of all of this. A large part of me does wish that I'd come out earlier so that I could have talked with my ibu about it, but I'm also not sure what I could have said, since my Indonesian vocabulary doesn't extend very far into the realm of love and relationships. Still, it's important to lay a groundwork. I wish I were a little more familiar with queer rights and visibility here, but I suppose there's no better time to start than now.


¹ I know that "queer" means a lot of different things to different people, so I'll clarify. When I say queer, I'm generally referring to the entire Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Transgender continuum. I do this for two reasons. First, I think that saying LGBT is kind of clunky and it's easier to just say queer. Second, I don't like to declare myself as bisexual because of all of the baggage that comes along with that (people's assumptions that I'm either indecisive or promiscuous, neither of which is particularly accurate) so I find that queer works as a general "not straight" label. Feel free to ask questions if that's not clear.

Mystery solved

For a while now, I've been having mild stomach aches nearly every day. I didn't give it much thought, since I'm no stranger to random stomach pain; I had it a lot before I figured out I'm casein-intolerant and even after that, so I tend to just ignore it and/or pin it on the fact that I have a rather sensitive stomach. Especially since I'm living abroad, I figured I'd just eaten something that my stomach was unfamiliar with.

Turns out, I'm pretty sure, it's the water.

My homestay family compound has three kitchens, one for each nuclear family (my host parents, and each host brother and his wife and child), which is pretty standard around here. Usually I refill my water bottle from my host brother's kitchen, since it's closest to my room. He and his wife keep their water in one of the big water bottles, the sort you flip upside-down to attach to water coolers. It's always the same bottle and it just kind of magically refills (which is to say I've never seen them refill it), but I assumed, since it was water they give me, that it's not regular tap water.

An explanation, for a moment, as to why the distinction is even relevant: Balinese tap water isn't particularly potable. People who have grown up on the island all their lives drink it, but when we students showed up we were warned repeatedly not to drink plain tap water, only to drink bottled water or tap water that's been boiled. We were told it wasn't even a good idea to brush our teeth with tap water.

So this morning, the magic water container was empty. I went to find my ibu, who took my water bottle from me and said she'd refill it and bring it back to me. (This is pretty standard: my host family still considers me pretty much a guest around here, so they don't like letting me help around the house. It makes me a little uncomfortable, since I'm used to doing my own dishes and being self-reliant, but they do it all despite my protests, so I've more or less given in.) Instead, I followed her to the kitchen, thinking it was silly for her to have to bring the bottle back to me when I could just as easily carry it myself. I arrived in the kitchen just as she was finishing filling my water from the spigot.

At first I thought she was just rinsing it, but she put the cap back on and handed me the bottle. "That's tap water, though," I said, a little hesitantly. She nodded in the way that one does when someone's made an obvious statement. I shrugged, then carried the bottle back to my room.

So, presumably the magic water bottle is indeed also tap water, which would explain a lot: how it never gets swapped out for a different one, how it never takes long to refill it, how I'm always a little sick. I haven't quite figured out how to deal with the situation yet, but I'm going to do my best to switch back to bottled water, even though I hate how much plastic I go through as a result. Given all the warnings about tap water, I'm pretty certain at this point I should consider myself lucky for only having gotten really sick once (knock on wood) this semester, and I'd rather not court that happening again.

I don't mean for this post to be a rant about how I'm a delicate foreigner living abroad or anything like that. Generally speaking, these sorts of things aren't a problem, and they're vastly outweighed by the cool parts of living abroad. But it is an interesting example of how something so benign as tap water can be two completely different things to people who have grown up in different situations. To my host family, it's normal everyday hydration, whereas to me it's a potential hazard. It's also one of those times where I'm not really sure how to address the issue with my host family. I don't want to make a big deal or insult them, since they've been wonderful, I like them a lot, and I appreciate all that they've done for me. But at the same time, I really don't want to get another horrible stomach bug.

There are a thousand things I'm going to miss about Bali when I go home; I've no doubt of that. But I am definitely going to have a new-found appreciation for potable tap water.

I Guess I'll Actually Update This Thing

Sorry for the lull between posts. I've mostly been focusing on my ISP, so there's not all that much to report from the last few weeks. There is, however, a big festival going on at Pura Samuan Tiga, not far from my host family's house (really only a few blocks). My ibu has been spending all of her free time putting together offerings for it, and this morning she went to the market around 5 in the morning (or so she told me last night; I wasn't awake to confirm her departure) to buy fruit for offerings. The volleyball field (court?) near the temple, down the street from our program center, has been converted to sort of a tent city of warungs. Since people come from all over the area for the temple festival (which goes on for something like two weeks), locals set up food stalls to make a little extra profit. Perhaps later some pictures -- I keep forgetting to take my camera with me when I go places.

What else? I did end up switching my ISP topic just before the ISP period began. Instead of researching and writing about folktales, I've been writing stories of my own. One of them is loosely based on a popular Balinese folktale/legend, the story of Jayaprana and Layonsari. I won't recount it in full here, but Jessie has described it as a combination of King David from the Old Testament and Romeo and Juliet. (Admittedly, I remember next to nothing about King David -- is he the one from David & Goliath? -- so I can't quite vouch for the accuracy of that statement. Sorry, Dad.) My second story is based on things my ibu has told me about her life growing up and with her children, and the third is about topeng and sort of about Balinese Hinduism. All in all, I've written over 50 pages of fiction this month -- so you can understand why I haven't been up to much else.

That's about it for now, but sometime in the next couple of days I'll try to get out and take some more pictures. I'd like to get take some pictures of Bedulu, so that you all might be able to get a better sense of daily life. More later!

The trick is to get lost.

Not too far from my homestay in Bedulu is Goa Gajah, the elephant cave. It's one of those tourist traps that would pretty firmly fall into the Tour De Crap category (sorry, Dad), and everyone I've talked to about it has told me it's boring. It's where my ibu has her tourist stuff shop, and if she didn't work there I probably wouldn't ever have gone to check it out. Still, there's a vegetarian warung across the street, so yesterday I headed over there for lunch and my Tourist Moment of the week.


That's the mouth of the cave. The European guy whose name I forget who renamed the place Goa Gajah thought it was a carving of an elephant. He was wrong. I'm pretty sure it's one of the major spirits in the Balinese arcana, though I forget the exact details. Inside the cave, there's a statue of Ganesh and a couple of other carvings. Like people had told me, not terribly interesting.

I'd heard there was another cave somewhere in the vicinity, so I went exploring. After heading across a rice field and down some stairs, the concrete pathway branched. To my right, it continued, probably to a temple. To my left, it was a dirt path with a sign that said "Jungle Temple." I decided I was reasonably intrigued, and followed it.

After a couple of minutes of walking, I ran into a guy whose job it was to take donations. I looked at the register -- everyone had donated 15,000-20,000rp ($1.50-$2.00) -- and I decided I was too cheap to go see what the fuss was about. I told the guy I didn't have enough money, but I'd come back another day since I live in Bedulu. Either he was a really nice guy or happy that I spoke bahasa Indonesia with him, because he let me through without paying. I meant to pay him a bit on my way out, but for reasons that will soon become clear, I never got the chance.

I kept walking down the path, a couple of times running into women selling water, fruit, etc. Finally, I ran into a woman who chatted with me for a few minutes, asking me where I was staying and why I spoke Indonesian. She showed me a path down to the river, saying I could go swimming (I opted not to), or cross a bridge, see some meditation caves, and make my way back to the parking lot across the river. As I was following her, I slipped -- Birkenstocks aren't great for hiking -- and landed pretty hard on my knee. It's fine (only a colorful bump), but I should have taken it as a sign to turn around.

After I gave her some money, she left me on the path. I continued down the slope to the river, all the while dodging enormous troupes of ants that wanted to climb up my legs.

Then I saw the bridge. Picture the quintessential rickety southeast Asian bridge: four big bamboo trunks lashed together and stuck above the river, held there by what looked mostly like sheer willpower. I don't know how I convinced myself to cross it. I basically ran-walked across it, scurrying as fast a I could without slipping. It probably wouldn't have been horrible if I'd fallen -- it was only a ten foot drop or so into reasonably calm water -- but I had my camera and didn't much feel like taking it for a swim.

When I got to the other side, I realized there probably wouldn't be a way to get back over the river and scrambled back over the bridge. I tried to climb up to the path by another route, but my way was blocked by wet, slick rocks and a couple of terrifyingly large spiders. I don't know why I didn't try to go up the way I'd originally come down. By this time, it had started to rain -- maybe I thought it would be too slippery.

So, I crossed the bridge again, and miraculously it held my weight once more. I checked out the caves -- which were, admittedly, pretty cool -- and then followed a path upriver, the direction from which I'd come. Then the path dead-ended. It looked like it might continue up the slope, so I followed it, figuring that at the top of the ravine there would probably be people (at this point I was pretty sure I knew vaguely where I was.) After a muddy scramble, I made it to the top. Sure enough, I emerged onto a back road.

I asked two guys siting on a bale (sort of like a big veranda/pagoda/porch thing) where I was. They replied with the banjar (neighborhood) name, which wasn't much help, so I asked how to get to Bedulu. (A few minutes later I realized I'd asked them how to get to "the biggest road" rather than "a bigger road." No wonder they were confused at first.) They pointed me in the right direction. I set off down the back road, avoiding some frighteningly mean dogs, and asking people every once in a while how to get to Bedulu. They were all helpful, if a little weirded out by my muddy attire. Ultimately, I ended up on the slightly-less-back road that I took home from Mas when I was learning to make masks. I was incredibly relieved to know exactly where I was.

I headed back to Goa Gajah, it being on the way home, to tell Ibu that I wasn't lost or dead or anything. It had been less than an hour all told, so she wasn't too worried, but she laughed at my story. She gave me some water and sent me home to shower. Later that night, she made fun of me some more.

So yeah, Goa Gajah the tourist attraction was pretty dull. But if you do it right, it's pretty fun. The trick, of course, is to get lost.

More adventures

Hi all! Apologies for the long delay in posting. On a day-to-day basis, I've been doing a lot of topeng carving. I'm done with the chiseling component of my mask, which means the face is pretty much blocked out and I've carved out the back. The next time I go, I'll begin working with knives to make the face more detailed; after that, painting begins.

I've started walking home from Mas (where the topeng-maker's workshop is) to Bedulu. It's about a 5km walk (or so I've been told) and it's easier to do that then to try to catch a bemo (public transportation) in the late afternoon. Plus, it's a nice walk -- mostly downhill, and on the back streets of Mas I get to talk to lots of people and see some cool temples and sawah (rice fields). It confuses my host family (and basically everyone else), though. My bapak keeps telling me to call him for a ride home, even when I explain that I enjoy the walk. The people along the street assume I'm lost, which can also make for some entertaining conversations.

Let's see, what else has happened in the last week or so? Last weekend I went with Sylvie (one of the other students on the program) to Klungkung to work on our "archaeological sites" paper, which basically involves going to an important cultural/historical site, exploring it, doing some research, and, of course, writing a paper. We went to Kerta Ghosa (which I may or may not be spelling correctly, apologies), which is part of the old palace in Klungkung.

Sylvie walking up to one of the buildings.

The roofs of some of the buildings are painted in the wayang (shadow puppet) style, and all tell a story. This roof has the descriptions of various punishments in hell, plus I think one of the stories from the Mahabharata (although I may be mixing it up with one of the other buildings).

Interior of a roof at Kerta Ghosa

On Wednesday, we migrated to Denpasar for three days, where we went to Udayana University and met with some of the English students there (and also attended some lectures on Balinese culture). Yesterday, we went with them to Bedugul, which is in the mountains. We went to a temple on a lake and a botanical garden: pictures in the next post when I can upload them to my computer. Now, we're on a free weekend in Sanur, which is one of the touristy/beach towns.

This morning, we went to the University for a large ceremony, since today is Saraswati day and Saraswati is the goddess of knowledge. There were a ton of people there, and a full gamelan orchestra, a dance (I forget the name of it, sorry), and, of course, many offerings and a high priest officiating. We got to take part in the prayers, which involved being sprinkled with and drinking holy water, listening to chants (we didn't know the words so we couldn't really take parts) and making offerings ourselves.

Tomorrow, it's back to Bedulu for the week for more class and topeng making. Next weekend we head to Ary's (the academic director) village for a week, then to the northern part of Bali. Stories to come!

Just a quick post

To say that topeng making is deceptively difficult. In the last 3-4 hours, I have used two different sizes of axe, a saw, and a hammer and chisel cut a block of wood into a vaguely face-shaped block of wood. (Think somewhere between the second and third masks from the left in the picture in the last post.) I am not quite as coordinated as I might have hoped. Still, I'm learning, and hopefully I'll get better at it. I am definitely much better at using the chisel than the axe.

Of course, saying that I transformed the block of wood completely by myself is a little disingenuous. The way the topeng-makers are teaching me involves showing me how to do something, letting me fumble through it for a while, then taking it from me and fixing it, and sometimes doing the next step. So at the end I'll have a mask that I took part in making, but perhaps not one that I have made completely by myself. Ah well, it's still pretty cool.

I did have a somewhat odd experience when I was there, since an American family came in to buy a mask (it's both a studio and a shop). With my meager amount of bahasa Indonesia, I ended up translating a bit for the family and the guys in the studio, especially when one of the girls in the family wanted to know if she could pet the puppies running around and the topeng-makers had no idea what she was talking about. I guess I'm learning more than I thought!

That's all for now -- sorry for the lack of pictures. Back in a few days with some more!

The homestay begins!

Our group has shifted to Bedulu, a small town not far from the oh-so-touristy city of Ubud (where I am right now). Ubud is kind of a bizarre place after being in Kerambitan, because it's full of bule (slang for white people) and people trying to get us to take taxis. We avoid them and hop on the bemos (sort of a bus) instead. I haven't had my camera with me much since we've gotten here, but here are some pictures of Tanah Lot, a temple we went to when we were still in Kerambitan:

The temple just before sunset.

Tanah Lot is on a rocky outcropping right on the coast, so the waves end up surrounding it. Also, the sunset is amazing.

My homestay family here in Bedulu is awesome. Balinese households live in compounds rather than one main building, so there are always lots of people around. I live with my bapak and ibu (my homestay dad and mom), their oldest son and his wife and son, and their third son and his wife and 7-month-old baby. The third son is only a couple of years older than me. There is also either my bapak's or ibu's mother, who is a totally badass woman who carries 20-30 pounds on her head home from the market like it's nothing. I'm pretty sure she only speaks Balinese, because the only words I understand when she talks to me are things like "bapak."

I spend most evenings just hanging out with my homestay parents. Balinese don't eat together, so there's not a lot of hangout time surrounding meals (although the first night I was there, my bapak sat and watched me eat because he didn't want me to be sitting by myself). Before and after, though, people are pretty much always together. Two nights ago my ibu taught me how to put together dried leaves to make part of the offerings they use, and last night I watched Javanese soap operas with her and told her about the snow at home. My bapak tried to get me to smoke with him, and we talked about Rambo and Arnold Schwarzenegger movies and other movies he loves. He has about 6 roosters for cockfighting (which is illegal in Indonesia except for Balinese religious ceremonies, which means I'll get to see it at some point) that wake me up every morning at dawn (and sometimes earlier). There is also a dog that has learned that I'll pet it if it sits near me.

We have this weekend free, so the six of us are heading to Uluwatu, on the very southern tip of the island. We'll check out the temple in the area, and of course the beach. Next week I'll be back with more pictures, and no doubt some tales about mask-making and batik. (And probably some scrapes and burns -- I'm rapidly getting a reputation as the clumsiest member of the group, after stepping in a tidal pool at Tanah Lot and then stepping on a dead sea urchin a couple of days later, among many other clumsy instances.)

(Oh, and Professor Just -- I realized a couple of days ago that one of our language teachers, De Yudi, worked with the Williams winter study program. I've been hearing lots of funny stories since then!)

Righto -- sambai nanti, everyone!