Page 1

We foreigners who stay in Bali live like little islands in a sea of Balinese humanity that flows around us, moving with its own currents. It is a sea of sound; the voices of some three million Balinese people in seemingly incessant conversation. Since most of us do not speak Balinese, we simply let the ocean of talk wash over us, and can only guess at its content. One can't help but wonder what it could it be that presupposes so much talking? What is on their minds? What is the stuff of today's ngomongan? Susy Johnston lets us in on the conversation.

GREAT SCENERY, NO SUBTITLES

You walk by a humble warung in Ketewel, where several chaps are sitting around on a bamboo platform tailor-made for freelance lounging. It's the Balinese equivalent of a British village pub. They are drinking very thick coffee in those ubiquitous ribbed glasses in order to maintain the pace of their lively banter, which ebbs and floods like a river. 
"1bu Warung" and her daughter are listening in while they half work. 1bu tosses off an occasional comment, while the daughter
absent-mindedly rearranges boxes of juice. It's a charming scene, but you soon wonder what is the material of the conversation, what is the soundtrack? 

 Somewhere on the down slope from Batukaru to Bajera, three women are sitting in the morning sun at the base of a high platform where a pedanda will be positioned later that night, when the ceremony gets into full swing. They are pengayah, part of the community volunteer squad that gets the work done when it's time for a temple odalan. As they fashion palm leaves into little parcels for tipat offerings, the conversation comes and goes, bubbling like a clear spring of sacred waters.

We visitors witness these scenes - and similar ones - which play out within our field of vision, and we appreciate them for what they are; vignettes from the sea of life around us. We feel somehow invisible, like benign observers of what we sometimes think is a totally self-absorbed culture, but a culture not  yet self-aware; an innocent people in circuitous discussion of private matters. But how can we know for sure? This is a foreign film with no subtitles. And it is a serious film that never ends, not just a themed scene rehearsed for our benefit. There is a thoughtful discourse under way in Bali. And if the players in the charming vignettes around us are not taking part in it, they are at least exposed to it. 

NOT JUST A WRAPPER FOR FISH MOBILES

Look again at those vignettes. That bluff fellow in the warung with the Gilligan's Island style hat holds the Bali Post open in front of his bare pot belly. One of the ladies in the temple is married to a minor local civil servant, and during the course of the day she, her husband and her son all read the same copy of, you guessed it, the Bali Post. In order to get a hint at what the soundtrack of this film really means, one could do worse than to peruse the pages of this favorite local daily paper for clues.

By religiously reading the Bali Post every day, one comes to realize that the Balinese people around us care about and discuss a lot of issues. Among them are tourism issues and the matters that concern foreigners in Bali; like the environment, the handicrafts industry, beach erosion, safety for tourists, recycling, building regulations and the future of the Island of the Gods.

Issues garnering generous column inches in recent months have included some fairly weighty matters. There was the post- election rampage in May, which has been analysed up, down and sideways ever since, yielding no real conclusions. The question of autonomy for the island of Bali in some form or other, is being played out and discussed constantly in the local media, as are other pertinent issues, such as the influx of non- Hindus to the island, and the constant nagging problem of development versus preservation.

[> Page 2]  

[Top]  [Highlight] [Welcome Page]

copyright © 2000  Bali Echo. All rights Reserved
site design by access bali online