Tales of a Female Nomad (30 page)

I can understand his fear. We are different, his mother and I. Her skin is dark; mine is light. Her eyes are deep brown; mine are light blue. She is bare-breasted and there are scars in a pattern, running from each shoulder down to her nipples; I am wearing a T-shirt. Her bottom is covered by a grass skirt; I am wearing long khaki pants.

The mother and child are huddled together, just inside the back opening. I pass by them and go a few feet beyond the house. They watch me as I sit on a tree trunk and take a small bottle of bubble stuff out of my pack. It’s the kind that has a little wand inside that you dip in and blow through, making dozens of bubbles with each blow. Wherever I go, I carry that little plastic bottle of bubbles.

The child stops crying; I am far enough away (about twenty feet) and ignoring them. I dip the wand in the liquid and blow. Bubbles float into the air. I sit there, blowing bubbles and smiling as I follow the bubbles with my eyes. Mother and child watch.

Then a bubble floats inside and close to the child. He reaches out and touches it. It pops. He touches another. And another. He looks up at his mother and smiles. She begins popping bubbles too. They come closer to me. I blow bubbles directly at them. They smile and chase them, laughing. I am laughing too.

After a few minutes, I hold the wand toward the mother and she dips and blows. Too hard. We try again. Another failure. I exaggerate the slow steady blowing and give her another chance. Yes! The bubbles float out of the wand; and as the child chases them, the mother and I exchange smiles. Soon, we are all giggling and chasing bubbles.

When we are finished, the little boy walks over to me and looks up at my chest. Then he reaches up and cups my breast in his hand. The mother comes over and does the same thing with my other breast. Yes, I am the same, I nod. Look. I pull up my shirt and unhook my bra. My breasts pop out and they both smile.

I think about the Zapotec village in Mexico where I was not accepted until I was wearing their clothes, and the Balinese ceremonies I would never have attended in anything but a
kebaya
and a sarong. I smile when I realize that if I were to live here, I would walk around topless. If I weren’t with three westerners, I would do it right now.

That night the mother leads me to her cookfire, which is one of many along one side of the longhouse. We are the only ones cooking; most of the people who live here are off hunting and gathering.

The main food in this part of Irian Jaya is sago, a flourlike paste that is collected and filtered with great effort from the pith of the sago palm tree. The mother pats and cooks the yellowish blob in the fire, adding no flavoring to the dough. And then with a look of affection and anticipation, she offers me a taste. It’s dry and flavorless.

I smile and indicate that I like it. I take some more. Accepting food is a fundamental part of forming a relationship. She is pleased.

As we sit, legs outstretched and touching, white and dark side by side, I hum a quiet lullaby. She hums with me. And then I put my arm around her and she puts hers around me. The little boy sits between my legs and we sing in the dark. I wish I could stay. If I ever come back to Irian Jaya, this is where I will live.

Several days later, we are about to visit a traditional men’s longhouse that stretches for perhaps two hundred feet along the river. When our boat pulls up to the shore, we are greeted by a crowd of men, smiling and waving. But as we are disembarking, Hans bangs his leg and splits open a deep gash. Blood is spurting. Michael stares. Horst climbs out. Joseph looks on in shock. And the blood keeps gushing.

I grab the cleanest shirt I can find and apply pressure to the wound until the bleeding stops. Then I clean it with Betadine, put on some antibiotic ointment, and cover the wound with clean bandages. (Before we left Germany and the U.S., Michael sent us each a list of stuff he wanted us to include in our medical kits. I made sure that mine was complete.)

“Don’t stand up,” I tell Hans. “It’s a deep wound and it will open easily. Just sit there and keep the pressure on.” My hands are bloody. “I hope you don’t have AIDS,” I say, only partly in jest.

“I was tested two weeks before I left. I’m fine,” he says, standing up and trying to climb out of the boat. The blood begins to spurt again.

Our onshore greeting committee is horrified. I don’t know the cultural significance of spurting blood, but from the looks on their faces, something frightening and perhaps evil has happened. None of us is permitted to go anywhere near the longhouse. We are polluted.

“Hans,” I say, when we are en route once more. “Keep your wound clean and don’t get it wet in the river.”

The next morning I ask him how it feels.

“Oh,” he tells me. “It’s fine.”

“You should probably let me clean it,” I say.

“The scab will keep it clean. I don’t need you,” he announces, sounding hostile. His English is better than I thought. He takes his towel and heads down to the river for a bath.

“Don’t get it wet,” I call after him.

Then he turns to me and blurts out like a child, “Who do you think you are? A doctor? Leave me alone.”

I do. I watch as he bathes in the brown river, but I don’t say another word. Neither does he.

Four days later, Hans cannot walk. His leg is swollen and sensitive and he’s burning with fever. Michael tells him to take the antibiotics he was told to bring. He didn’t bring any.

The other three of us exchange glances. We have all brought antibiotics in our medical kits. But the fact is, we aren’t doctors and none of us has any idea about the appropriate antibiotic. Additionally, we are in the middle of nowhere, and we might need them ourselves. Do we give him ours? And what if the medication doesn’t work? What if our antibiotics are wrong for him? It’s one thing to treat yourself; another to treat someone who is very sick.

Instead, Horst and Michael carry him to the boat and we change our itinerary, going many hours out of our way to get paramedical help. Hans says he has no rupiah to pay for the treatment, so we pool our money and buy him penicillin at the clinic. The next day we take him hours away to Agats and the only hospital on this part of the island. By this time Hans is nearly delerious. The doctor performs some kind of surgery; I don’t ask what kind. I care enough to want him to be treated, but not enough to want the details.

Once again, we pool our cash to pay the doctor. Hans claims to have a credit card but no cash.

Our programmed trip is over . . . three days early because of Hans; but we are still far from an airport, and Hans needs to go home. He is too sick to go with us on the ten-hour boat trip that will take us to the big airport at Timika; but we cannot leave him here alone. Poor Michael has to find a way to get him airlifted out.

Turns out there is an American tour that is flying out of nearby Ewer the next day on a chartered plane (they are flying to Timika). Their plane has empty seats. The timing is perfect. It’s too good to be true.

The rest of us hang around the town of Agats for two more days, days we would have been touring if Hans hadn’t become ill. We walk along the raised planks that are the sidewalks. Because of very high tides, Agats is built on stilts and wooden walkways. We visit an intriguing museum about the local tribes and their art, and a Roman Catholic church. And we watch a boat unload sharks’ fins for export to Hong Kong.

When it’s time to go to the airport, Joseph, who lives in Agats, tells us that the best time to take the ten-hour boat trip is at night. The water, he says, is calm; and the trip to the north and west along the coastline is less dangerous.

We assemble in the rain and board our canoe. It is already dark. Joseph arrives an hour and a half late, drunk. About an hour after we leave, a dense fog descends and we have zero visibility and no navigational tools. I offer Joseph my compass, but he does not know how to use it. I begin to get nervous when he stands up, puts his hand to his forehead like a cartoon, and looks around. He can see nothing. And if he can’t see, he can’t navigate. He turns off the motor and announces that we have to wait until morning. In the cold. In the rain. In the dark. He needs to see the coast in order to navigate.

We dig out our sleeping bags and try to stay warm, all of us hoping the sea stays calm. In one direction, no more than a couple of kilometers away, is the coast of Irian Jaya. In the other direction, around a thousand kilometers away, is the coast of Australia. And our captain doesn’t know which way is which. I am frightened by the randomness of it all. At least Joseph knows enough to admit he doesn’t know. And he doesn’t look nervous. He’s confident that when it gets light out, our problems will be over. And if it comes down to it, I could find north on my compass.

The night is long and cold, and it’s one of the only times in my adult life that I’ve ever wished I were a man; the guys have no trouble peeing over the side. At least it’s dark and foggy.

I use the sleepless hours to think about my Irian Jaya experience. There were ecstatic moments and agonizing ones. Physically, I was a disaster, unfit and achy during the trek, barely able to get out of my sleeping bag a couple of mornings. I’m still angry at myself for being so out of shape. But I made it. And connecting with the people of the highlands through singing was thrilling, unexpected, and worth the pain. It would never have happened if I hadn’t met Ursula, Teresia, and Elsa. And we might never have trekked together if I hadn’t spoken Indonesian and gotten us seats on that first plane out. I love it when things come together like that.

And I particularly loved Holuwon, that place in the clouds, where I arrived out of the sky and was accepted so comfortably, treated so gently, and literally sent off with a prayer.

The tour with Michael confirmed my feeling that I am best suited to traveling alone, without a plan, moving on instinct and trust. I’m definitely not a tour person. How badly I wanted to stay with the hunters and gatherers and settle in with the people of the high houses (living, of course, in the low one). I think I will return someday. Next time I will just get on a plane and go.

But I also know that I would never, could never, have made that first trip by myself. Meeting Michael in Bali—another of those extraordinary serendipitous events of my journey—brought me to a world I have dreamed about.

One by one, all my nomadic dreams are coming true.

Two days later I fly to Bali.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

ON TO MAS

Telephones have come to Kerambitan. The mayor has one. The bank has one. And the king has one. I have decided that Tu Biang and I need one too.

A phone would benefit the puri. They have no income. If they had a phone, they could work with travel agencies, as well as with individual tourists, in offering a Balinese banquet and a tour of the palace. I would write and produce the brochures, and Tu Biang and I could take them to travel agents and hotels together. She has often done banquets and tours, but never in an organized way. A phone could be the answer to her financial worries.

I also want a phone for personal reasons. My mother is fragile and I want to be in closer touch. I volunteer to pay the astronomical connection fee of five hundred dollars. The monthly fee is also high; but if the brochure brings just one guest a month, the fee would be paid.

Since Tu Man is making the decisions these days (Tu Biang has yielded her authority to him), I sit with him and explain my proposal. He thinks about it and decides that the monthly fee is too much. He rejects the phone plan. As he tells me his decision, I feel myself tighten up. My breathing quickens. How can he do this to his mother, to me? Why did she turn over her authority to her son?

I want to tell him that it is a shortsighted decision, but I don’t know how to say “shortsighted” in Indonesian; so I use the word
bodoh,
which means “stupid.” I should never have said it. Tu Man is insulted and he refuses to talk to me.

The next morning I stop by Tu Aji’s altar with a Cadbury milk chocolate bar offering. It is easy to know what to bring a spirit if you know it well.

“Oh, Tu Aji, I am sorry. I have failed you. I tried to help Tu Biang build her guest business, but all I did was offend your son. I have no right to tell your family how they should live. But I cannot stop myself. The time has come for me to leave Kerambitan. Thank you for your guidance, for your wisdom, for your wonderful family. You have enriched my life forever.”

A few days later I hire a driver to take me and my belongings to Ubud, the tourist town an hour and a half away. My plan is to rent a bungalow there. By the time I leave, Tu Man is talking to me again. I apologized for telling him he made a stupid decision and he accepted my apology. Tu Biang is tearful as I climb into the car. Dayu Biang and Jero Made feel abandoned. Dayu Biang tells me that the laughter goes out of the
puri
when I am not there.

I too am filled with emotion. It is nearly four years since I arrived in the
puri
with that piece of paper from Dr. Djelantik, and nearly two years since Tu Aji died. In those four years I have seen courtships and feasted at weddings. I have participated in animal sacrifices and heard the voices of the ancestors. I have cooked and danced with the women, prayed with the
banjar,
and given permission to spirits to go on to the next world. I have loved and learned from these extraordinary people, and wrapped myself in their sarongs and their culture. It’s been wonderful.

But I have become too involved. It is not my place to change their lives. I am here to learn from them, not to alter their history.

I have adapted in many ways to the pace and style of living in Bali, but I will never be a Balinese woman, or a Mexican or a Nicaraguan. I can live in other cultures, celebrate their rites, love their children, but I must constantly remind myself that my background will always slant the way I see things. When I am tempted to change who they are or rush what they are becoming, it is time to move on.

I ask the driver to stop at the house of some friends. I want to let them know that I will be living in their part of the island. Ubud is just fifteen minutes from Mas, the wood-carving village where they live.

Dayu Mayuni, her husband (whose sister is married to one of the king’s sons), and their daughter are my second family in Bali. Dayu and Jan became good friends when Jan was here; they are nearly the same age. It was Dayu’s husband, Ida Bagus, who came to Kerambitan to tell me that my father had had a heart attack. I feel close to them.

Dayu is the youngest sister of Bali’s most famous and talented wood sculptor, Ida Bagus Tilem. In a world where copying is an art form, Tilem’s work is breathtakingly original. The gallery that bears his name is the finest in Bali.

Dayu is happy that I am moving closer. “But you cannot rent a bungalow in Ubud,” she tells me. “You are not a tourist. I will find you a place to live. Come back at six.”

I do. Now there is another couple with Dayu and her husband. The two women are dressed exquisitely, in silk sarongs and lace
kebaya.
They have just returned from a ceremony. I have met the other woman before; she is Dayu Mayuni’s niece, Ida Bagus Tilem’s daughter.

Dayu Raka is small, delicate, and exquisitely beautiful. She is in her mid-thirties, nearly the same age as her niece. Her husband is a Ph.D. economist who teaches in a university in Surabaya on the island of Java. He is closer to my age. We are reintroduced.

Dayu Mayuni speaks first. “Raka has a place where you can stay.”

I smile at Dayu Raka and say what a Balinese person would say. “Oh, thank you, but I could not stay with you. I will be here for at least two months.”

It is common etiquette to say no at least twice.

“That is no problem,” she says in beautiful English.

“Thank you, but I couldn’t,” I repeat. “I will find a place to rent in Ubud. It is very kind of you to offer to let me stay in your home, but I cannot accept.”

“Please,” she says. “I would like it very much if you would stay.”

I give up the game and accept. I have no idea what she is offering; I assume it is a room in her home.

“Please, come with us,” says Dayu Raka. She, her husband, and I climb into a Toyota SUV and travel about a mile along the main road. Then we turn into a driveway and stop in front of a big bamboo gate. Dayu Raka gets out and rings a bell.

A few seconds later a young man named Putu opens the gate and we walk through a garden along a stone path and across a bridge that traverses a lily pond. The frogs stop croaking as we cross the bridge and begin again when we step into the house.

The first room we enter is tiled in marble. There are quiet silk pillows on the couches and spectacular art on the walls. The second room is about twenty by thirty feet, with marble floors and tabletops. Every piece of furniture is handcarved. There are six paintings on the walls, all of them museum quality.

I am overwhelmed by the beauty and the simplicity. We sit and talk.

After about half an hour, Dayu Raka says, “You will probably want to sleep in this room,” and she walks me into yet another exquisite space with art on the walls and craftsmanship in the furniture. “And you are welcome to use the upstairs, of course. If you need anything, ask Putu. He will take care of you. I am pleased that you will be here. A house should not be empty; it needs people.”

And they leave.

The house, it turns out, is mine. Dayu Raka and her husband built it, furnished it, and continue to fill it with paintings and sculptures and antiques. There are trunks with inlaid abalone shells, lifesize figures made of Chinese coins, corner chests with antique glass, and several sets of beautifully carved chairs, no two exactly the same.

There is also a phone in the living room.

Dayu Raka, daughter and granddaughter of brilliant sculptors, has their artistic genes coursing through her body. But in Bali, women rarely carve. All of Dayu Raka’s creative energy has gone into her house. This place of such impeccable taste is her creation. And she does not even live here. She lives in her father’s house, next to the gallery, with her mother, her eight-year-old son, her husband (when he is in Bali), and her father’s spirit. (Ida Bagus Tilem died just a few months ago.) Dayu Raka and her father were very close when he was alive, and she does not want to be separated from the place that holds his masterpieces, his collections, and his spirit. Someday she expects to move her family into
her
house, but not yet.

When they are gone, Putu introduces me to three young men. They live out back in a separate building attached to the kitchen. (Dayu Raka told me that she thought about putting the kitchen in the house, the way we do in the West, but she didn’t want cooking smells permeating the other rooms.)

Two of the men Putu has brought in to meet me are guides in the Njana Tilem Gallery (Njana was Tilem’s father, also a fine sculptor); they tell me they are hoping to practice their English with me. The third man is Dayu Raka’s driver.

Over the next months the five us talk for hours every night, play cards (the Chinese game of
ceki
), and watch television. Often I add a dish to the meal that the gallery provides for them, and we eat together. I am pleased. Dayu Raka has provided me with a new, instant family. They call me Ibu Rita, or Bu Rita, Mother Rita, a form of address used with older women. Sometimes Wayan, my young friend from Kerambitan joins us. He comes by to say hello and stay in touch. Often Wayan and I go off on his motorcycle to have dinner in Ubud.

That first night, as I listen to the croaking frogs in the lily pond outside my window, I think about what I can do to reciprocate. I have been given this exquisite place to live in, without even a hint of their wanting anything in return. But life has taught me the doctrine of
reciprocity,
and I have found that it is alive and well and operating all over the world. Kindnesses must be returned.

What I have to offer is English.

The next day I walk to the Tilem gallery, about half a mile down the road, and reintroduce myself to Pak Tut, the manager. I have met him many times over the years because I always bring guests to this extraordinary gallery.

The two young guides from my house are working.
“Selamat datang, Bu
Rita,”
they say softly, welcoming me. Everything in the Njana Tilem Gallery is gentle, including the staff.

Pak Tut introduces me to the other guides, and he and I chat a while. I tell him I am here to talk to Dayu Raka about how I might use my English to help her and her family. I am thinking about giving English lessons to her eight-year-old son, conducting formal classes for the guides in the gallery (they begin the next week), and perhaps helping Pak Tut with gallery correspondence. But I have to tread lightly. I don’t want her or the family to feel obligated to accept my offer. And I don’t want Pak Tut to feel judged or hurt if I correct his English. He speaks well and writes well; but English is not his first language.

“If there is anything I can do to help you,” I tell him, “Please let me know.”

“Oh, there is,” he says, and he takes an album from a shelf. The album is filled with plastic slips that hold sheets of information. “When we sell a sculpture of a god or a character from the
Mahabharata
or
Ramayana,
we give the buyer an explanation of the piece. I would like it very much if you would read the stories and correct any mistakes.”

“I’d be happy to do it, but I want to warn you before I begin, that as a writer and an editor, I always have corrections. I hope you will not be insulted if I make changes.”

“I would be happy to learn from you. Take the album home and read it tonight. Tomorrow we can discuss your comments.”

The grammar in the stories is impeccable. The sentences are correct. But Pak Tut is not a writer. He offers more information than the customer needs, filling the stories with the names of mothers and fathers and sisters and priests instead of telling a good story. And often he rambles, as do the texts of the
Mahabharata
and the
Ramayana
(and the Bible and the Koran). We talk about the idea of telling stories in a more modern style. Pak Tut says he would be happy to rewrite everything with me.

The next day we begin what will take us two months to finish. We take out a sheet and I read it. Then he shows me some sculptures of the characters in the sheet so I know how they are represented. And then we sit down and he tells me the story of the sculpture. I ask him questions. Together, we write a new story on the gallery’s computer.

For me, our sessions are fantastic. I feel as though I am taking a class in Balinese folklore and Hindu religion. Pak Tut is a scholar and a fine teacher.

For Pak Tut, our sessions are a revelation. He cannot believe how slow I am, struggling with words, staring into space until I come up with a way of presenting a theme.

“English is your first language,” he says to me one day. “And you are a writer. I thought you would just sit down and write.” I wish I could.

I love spending time in the gallery, especially in the collection room, which is filled with carvings by Tilem and his father that are not for sale. They are so exquisite that I often find myself in tears simply because I am in their presence. No one has been able to buy an Ida Bagus Tilem sculpture since the early seventies, when Tilem decided that he would not sell any more of his or his father’s work. (The gallery sells the sculptures of their students, the master carvers who sit in the courtyard every day, carving.)