Stuff You Don’t Know When You’re an Alien

As I get to know Balinese culture, there are sights, smells, sounds, and customs that dig their heels into my memory. Like:

Balinese Broom: not the long-handled variety I am used to, but a collection of stiff bristles bound together with a string or tape. Requires lots of back-intensive labor to use. Unless you're a small child.

School children can often be seen walking down the roads in the morning dressed in crisply pressed uniforms, a satchel on each back, and a… broom? Yes, a broom in each hand! Says the man I asked, “They take turn. They must clean.” If it’s the child’s chore day, they bring their hand-held broom to school! Imagine that on an American school supplies list!

20,000 rupiah, roughly $2, will make a village child jump for joy. And it should be accepted respectfully by placing both hands together and palm up. (I witnessed my compound mom giving the money to some kids she knew when we went to visit their village’s healer.)

One of the many gorgeous temples we saw in Bali.

One belongs to a temple in Bali the way one might belong to a specific church in the western world. However there are three types of temples and a complicated system of loyalties that can mean one family generally belongs to several temples — complete with privileges and responsibilities.

Pronunciation matters! Of course I know this, but it didn’t help me understand why the foraging woman was so confused when I pointed at her plant and questioned, “Cassava?” As in, “Are those cassava leaves you’re harvesting?” I would learn hours later that my pronunciation of cassava sounds too much like “Ca sah VAH” – meaning “Go to the rice field!” I can’t imagine what that poor woman must of thought as I insistently and repeatedly directed her to “Go to the rice field!”

Unknown connotations of English words mean some pretty gross or funny products.
Gross: ‘Pocari Sweat’, a substance to drink (ew!). No it’s not the sweat of a pocari. It’s a sports drink to replace electrolytes and liquids lost from sweating.
Funny: ‘Old Coconuts’, the grocery store label on brown coconuts. No, they aren’t “old” as in rotten. Since green coconuts are young, it stands to reason that mature coconuts must be “old,” no?

The size variety on the market is shocking. We bought the 1.5 L for a mojito mixer. It was great!

Balinese (like many cultures) would rather tell you a false yes than a no. They will give you fabricated directions to a place they’ve never heard of. Pat spent a solid hour on the back of a motorbike trying to meet up with us at the temple — a seven minute drive from the house. The compound Dad later told me the driver had called him. He asked the driver, ‘Where are you?’ The reply? ‘I don’t know. I have just been driving around.’

When Japanese tourist couples wear head-to-toe matching outfits, they aren’t trying to be funny or ironic. There are a shocking number of twinsies like this out there! Do they do this stuff at home?!

There are even places named "Swastika Bungalows!" For more information on the movement to dispel the swastika association with Nazis, check out the photo credit link at the end of the post.

Swastikas don’t belong to Nazi’s. This famed symbol has been around long before the notorious German campaign. In Hinduism, the dominant Bali religion, it’s a symbol that invokes auspiciousness (favorable circumstances or success). Read more on Wikipedia.

In a reversal of a common cultural pattern, I’ve found that adults in Bali seem to speak the international language (English) better than the children. In most places, one would turn to a teen or even an older child long before seeking language help from the teen’s mother. Here, most children’s eyes will go wide and cheeks will flush if they’re asked a question in English.

The daily offerings involve lots of grace. A palm platter with flower petals, nourishment, and symbols is placed on a shrine or on the place/item to be protected. A flower blossom (I’ve seen yellow) held in the fingertips is swirled three times above the offering, drawing energy in from the universe before the palm of the flower-hand is turned skyward and pushes the energy back out into the universe. Beautiful!

Gender in the blue-collar workplace, at least on the surface, is very different here. Women are workhorses, carrying huge loads of bricks, giant swaths of rebar, and heavy buckets of rocks or sand from a delivery point to the construction site. While it is possible (probable) that the work is less valued, surely that job sites are mixed-gender serves the society in positive ways?

Bread, incense, flower petals, and an old chilese coin (not pictured) were included in these morning offerings.

Banana leaves are the perfect container. Flavor-free, thick, biodegradable, beautiful, vivid… My favorite Ubud fish shop could easily be mistaken for Anywhere, Southern California with its pale blue walls and bright display cases. The giveaway: all the fish are presented on banana leaves!
Bali life revolves around a complicated calendar that is actually several calendars combined. The moon, however, is a dominate guiding force, requiring festivals on days whose Roman number changes significantly from year to year. Important celebrations, festivals, and ceremonies are popping up at all hours of the day, on all days of the week, during all months of the year. Perhaps this is the secret ingredient of the laid-back Bali culture? Western business predictability — 8 to 5, weekends, Christmas always on the 25^th, Memorial day always the first Monday in May — just doesn’t exist here. Employees are always taking random days, weeks, and months for religious reasons. The calendar is a beast that cannot easily be bent to the will of the Western system. As it should be, I suppose. â™£

See Pat’s fishing sunburn, a market, orchids, and prepped ingredients: a few photos as random as the aforementioned tidbits.

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