Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 5

The 5th installment of my Bali adventure, found on the CUIndependent.com
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/27/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-5/

Opinion: Transportation has never been so interesting

By Stephanie Davis on October 27, 2009

I don’t remember the last time I wore a seat belt. It may have actually been on the airplane on my way to Bali. And there have never been so many times in my life I’ve sat in a car and thought, “Oh my God, I am going to die.”

The roads here in Bali seem like some sort of contemporary artwork – confusing and busy for those that don’t know them, but make perfect sense to those who do. There are very few dotted lines or straight lines going down the middle telling drivers what side of the road to stay on, and even when there are, they’re not followed. I’ve counted more times that drivers hang out right over the lines than when they’ve been in an actual lane.

Introducing the new mini-van: Since many families cannot afford cars, the main mode of transportation here is the motor bike. I’ve actually seen five people on one motor bike at one point — Dad driving, son standing between his legs in the front, mom behind dad with one child on her lap and one in a sling on her side.

On the day of a major festival this week, I was dressed in my Pakian Adat (traditional clothing consisting of a nice top, sash around the waste and movement-constricting sarong), sitting side-saddle on a motorbike balancing offerings to take to the temple on my lap. I was behind my host-sister (her 4-year-old son between her legs, of course), none of us wearing helmets. “Oh my God, I am going to die.”

Thankfully I made it the two blocks without incident, but I was practically whimpering the whole way. But shhh, this is violation to a waiver I signed at the beginning of the semester saying I wouldn’t ride side-saddle or without a helmet, so don’t tell anyone.

As one of the major ways students get around, we catch a ride on the local bemo routes. The brightly colored orange and turquoise mini-buses have routes all over Bali. For about 30 cents, we can get over to Ubud, the town 15 minutes away with all the food and Internet spots we cling to so dearly.

In a sense, this isn’t too different from jumping on the Skip or Hop back home. The part that makes the bemo ride so fun, however, is seeing how many people we can cram into one vehicle. Since the driver relies on the fares from his occupants, he (and yes, always a he, transportation is one of the jobs women here are discouraged from having) wants to get as many people on his bus as possible.

I had no idea you could fit 16 people into a vehicle the size of a minivan. It becomes almost a game, seeing where we can fit that one extra person and the giant bag of groceries they’re carrying. By the time I get off on a lot of those rides, I’ve made one more Balinese friend that I’ll probably never see again.

Unfortunately, the busy roads here are far from safe. Within the first week of my stay in Bali, one of our teachers lost his wife in a motor bike accident. Last week, another one of my teachers was in a motor bike accident that thankfully destroyed her bike rather than her, but she has a few scrapes and bruises that might be around for a while.

I haven’t had the chance to drive in almost two months now, and I miss it quite a bit. To get my mind off things in Boulder, I would hop in my car for a ride in the mountains. When I go home and have the chance to do so again, you can bet the first thing I’m going to do is put on the good ol’ seat belt.

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 4

My latest installment of my Bali adventure, found on CU Independent.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/12/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-4/

Life in a new culture: Bali, part 4

Opinion: Bali is where American pop music comes to die

By Stephanie Davis on October 12, 2009

The opinions represented in this article do not necessarily represent those of the staff of CUIndependent.com nor any of its sponsors.

Upon arrival three weeks ago, I was greeted in our transport by 90s trashy dance songs that crawled out here to Bali for another year of glory (or 10, since that seems to be how far behind they are in the music scene) before getting buried in a hole, hopefully to be forgotten for the rest of eternity.

And yes, I realize some of the bands I mention may or may not be American, but they have all been popular in America at one point or another.

In Bali, the large Hindu population believes in reincarnation, so moving from this life to the next is very sacred and important. Out of the numerous rituals here, cremation is the most celebrated. Our group of 13 students was very grateful when we were invited within our first week here to attend one. Many of us were nervous, and some had never been to a funeral before.

On the way to the cremation, to lighten the mood, Madonna kept us company, serenading us with “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina,” closely followed by “Like a Virgin,” as we rode along the rice terraces on the bumpiest roads I’ve ever been on. Our drivers were quite proud of their pirated cassette tape, asking us in broken English, “You like Madonna?” When I think funerals, I tend to play Wagner in my head as I go along with the flow, but I couldn’t seem to get “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time,” out of my head as I watched this procession.

Another ritual here in Bali is the tooth-filing ceremony, where young adults have six of their teeth filed down, which symbolizes control over greed, lust, anger, intoxication, confusion and jealousy. This ceremony makes prom look cheap. Then again, I don’t have much of a comparison, since my high school prom was held in an old gymnasium that had to be quarantined for a few weeks because of a worms problem, to give you an idea of our funding.

Of course, a few of my classmates and I weren’t disappointed by our soundtrack as we drove to the ceremony. We had the pleasure of sitting in the car with our middle-aged language instructor as he blasted rap music. He sat in front, smiling in his own world, bobbing his head to the beat of the music, as a few of us tried, and failed, to learn simple phrases like “Saya tinggal di Kerambitan,” which, in Indonesian, means, “I am staying in Kerambitan.” Our attempts to learn the Indonesian phrases were drowned out by, “My neck, my back / Lick my p—- and my crack.”

Lady Gaga, as much as I hate to admit I like you, judging by the music trends here, you’re the next to go. I think “Poker Face” is the only song from this decade I have heard since I landed.

However, to make up for the abysmal pop music that we’ve grown quite fond of again, Bali has a unique style of their own music, gamelan. Consisting of drums, bamboo xylophones, flutes and other instruments, the music sounds completely disorganized until you really stop to listen to it. Not following the 8-note musical scale on which most music is written, it took me a few days to realize that the music wasn’t just out of tune.

The gamelan orchestra accompanies many important ceremonies and dances. It can accompany the “wayang,” or shadow puppet performances. It gives the Legong dancer a beat to move to in their traditional Balinese dance.

I have grown used to the sound of the gamelan bands playing late into the night as I fall asleep (sadly no later than 10 p.m. these days—what kind of college student does that make me?). Even though I thought gamelan bands sounded like nails on a chalkboard when I first got here, since then I’ve found them to be as comforting as the bad 90s music we get treated to.

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.

Bapak and Ibu

I spent the last week in Bali in a small village called Munduk Pakel. The top is of the program director's mother as she looks on as a wayang (shadow puppet) crew sets up for a performance. The second is the program director's father, who is cutting open a young coconut for the juice.

Life in a New Culture: Bali: Part 3

From the CU Independent, published Oct. 5, 2009.
http://cuindependent.com/2009/10/05/life-in-a-new-culture-bali-part-3/

Life in a new culture: Bali: Part 3

Opinion: Even when everything seems to be going wrong, it's okay

By Stephanie Davis on October 5, 2009

This week, I went from trying to have simple conversations about food and family in a foreign language to trying to describe when, where and by whom I was sexually assaulted.

Now, before I say much more, I need to clarify. It was not rape, or any verbal assault that will leave me scarred for life, but I discovered how much having your breast groped in broad daylight can seriously screw with your sense of security. Especially since it happened in a house down from where I’m living, on a route I walk every day to and from school.

I have been in Bali now for four weeks, and I was finally starting to settle in and feel comfortable in an environment completely different from anything I’ve ever known when this happened.

Since I started planning my semester abroad, it seems like I have had everything go wrong. I had to re-write an application proposal before being accepted because the subject was too touchy. My financial aid hit a roadblock, and I figured it out only a week after I was supposed to have my plane ticket. The price of the ticket went up an extra $500 the day I purchased it.

Upon arriving, I immediately came down with what they call here “Bali Belly.” With the lack of water treatment here, I’m sure it’s easy enough to imagine what that entailed. Within a week I was limping with the first injury of the group, and half a toenail missing. As soon as I figured out how to tame my Bali Belly, I came down with a cold that knocked me out for about a week, and left me stranded at home while my classmates spent the weekend at the beach.

For two weeks, I thought my camera was broken. I’m focusing on photojournalism, and thought I would have to spend my semester in Bali sans camera (thankfully my fantastic photojournalism professor, Kevin Moloney, let me know it was a minor problem and something I was able to fix myself).

It’s amazing how quickly my self-confidence plummeted.

But in the last two days since the incident, I have come to realize something: If there’s a place for everything to go wrong, it’s here in Bali. While I don’t have many resources here, and have to work around a communication barrier, it’s not all that bad.

I am, after all, on a tropical island. My classes are held on a covered porch, with tropical flowers falling constantly from the trees in the landscaped yard into ponds with koi surrounding us. For class, we went to archaeological sites built in the 11th century, and walked back to our school through a tropical rainforest in a downpour. I don’t think I’d ever done something so unique in my life. Granted, this is probably how I caught my cold, but I’m trying to ignore that.

I only live 30 minutes away from the beach, and after living in Colorado my whole life, I think that’s pretty darn nifty.

So when I do start to lose my confidence, I have decided that I am going to remind myself that I just need to open my eyes and look at everything I would miss out on if I shut myself into a shell.

After I was groped, it occurred to me how strong the communities here in Bali are. When I told my home stay, Bapak, what happened, you could see the anger on his face. Not only was it an insult to his hospitality, it was an insult to the community’s honor. Within minutes, the entire banjar, or neighborhood, knew what had happened and vowed they would find the perpetrator. This is not a community you would want to mess with.

After all was said and done, and I visited with neighbors who asked about what happened and wondered if I was OK, I realized how much Indonesian I really did know, and was just too scared to use.

That, and my home stay mother was feeling so bad for me, I had access to hot water for a bath for the first time since I’ve arrived. What more could I have asked for?

Contact CU Independent Contributor Stephanie Davis at Stephanie.davis@colorado.edu.