Tales of a Female Nomad (32 page)

“Oh, yes,” I answer. “I would like that very much.”

“You will have to dress in traditional clothing. I will help you.” And off she goes.

The white hooded blouse is like a tent. The head part of it nearly covers my face, and the rest hangs down past my hips. Neatly ironed and much whiter than the whites in my wardrobe, it slips on easily. She also brings me a sarong, white with black squares, similar to the one I just brought to Budi’s mother; Budi had helped me pick it out. “No colors,” he’d said when I brought him into a shop in Bali.

By the time we are ready, it is dark out. “Come with me,” says my guide and we go outside and begin walking. As we walk, my young friend teaches me a chant praising Allah. I am wearing rubber flip-flops with very worn thin soles and I can feel the tiny rocks in the dirt alleyway that leads to the main road. Once again, I am following someone somewhere, but I have no idea where.

I am pleased when we finally arrive among a group of her friends, most of them in their late teens, like her. They are standing around a ten-foot-high, twelve-foot-wide model of a mosque. It is exquisite in its details, with columns and entryways and a tower at the top from which the call to prayer is given. The girls explain to me that there is a contest every year to see which of the three mosque congregations in the village can make the best model mosque. They are speaking quickly and I am able to understand most of what they are telling me. Unfortunately, I miss the point of this gathering, which is to organize a procession of the three mosques.

Soon after we get together, one of the young women in the group tells everyone to line up, and suddenly I am third in from the side and fifth from the front, and I am part of the procession. And then we begin walking and chanting the prayer I was just taught.

At the end of the first block I see Budi and his family. They see me and wave and point me out to the people around them, all of whom crane their necks to spot the tourist in the middle of this holy procession. My face is nearly covered and my shape is well hidden under the white tent I am wearing. And . . . it is dark.

As we walk, I hear voices in the crowd on my left, the side where Budi was standing. “Turis.” “Turis.” “Turis.” The news moves through the spectators like a giant wave. I hear the voices before we pass and the cries of discovery as we go by.
“Di mana?” “Di mana turis?”
Where? Where is the tourist? The game moves just ahead of the procession. The point of it all is to find the
turis
. . . me!! I have become Waldo!

The procession does not stop when we reach the end of our village. It passes through two more villages before we reverse the route. On the return route, word has spread and both sides are looking for the
turis,
but on the return trip I am easier to find. My feet are touching the ground through the holy soles of my flip-flops, and I am walking with a limp on my multiple blisters.

All weekend I participate in the festivities with Budi’s family and I tour the island on the back of Budi’s motorcycle. When I get back to Bali, I’m restless and eager to return to Lombok to take the advanced diving class. I am in Bali for less than a week.

My first morning back on Gili Trawangan, I am drinking coffee on the deck of my thatched-roof bungalow when a great-looking blond guy walks by. He’s tall, blue-eyed and in his mid-thirties.

“Good morning,” I smile, and he stops. An hour later, after we have breakfasted together, his partner passes our way and joins us.

Lars is a chef from Sweden; Nirin is a doctor, the exquisite combination of a Danish mother and a father from Madagascar. They live in Nantes, France, and are staying two cabins away from me. The bonus is that they speak perfect English. Whenever I am not in class, at the bottom of the ocean, or studying, I hang out with them. We walk and talk and laugh a lot. We share life stories, travel stories, books, recipes, and dinners.

Lars and Nirin are foodies . . . and we never run out of food talk. One day we preorder a grilled fish at a restaurant. When we arrive, the owner shows us the barracuda they are about to put on the grill. It’s gorgeous, about two feet long, and it’s been out of the water for two hours. It is served unadorned, moist and sweet, with a touch of soy sauce and lemon and ginger. The three of us sit, moaning in pleasure as we bite into the succulent fish.

My scuba classes are not going well. There are eight in the class and no one else is over twenty-five. A fireman from Australia adopts me and helps me carry my tank. We become buddies in the water.

The first sign that this is not going to be easy is when I completely forget how to use my regulator to achieve buoyancy, which is the essence of diving. Then, after a deep dive, I forget to do the safety stop at the ten-meter depth to prevent the bends. Fortunately, we were not so deep that they have to rush me off to a decompression chamber.

The next day we learn to navigate with compasses. Our instructions are to go out to a spot about forty feet from the boat, then, using our snorkels, swim in a square until we end up back where we started. When I come up, I am nowhere near where I should be.

I have never been very good at navigation. I try again and do no better. Everyone is a little amazed at how totally inept I am at reading the compass. The thing is that you have to hold the compass level or it won’t work. I can’t seem to get mine to stay level. I swim back to the boat and promise that if they pass me, I will never do anything in my entire life that requires compass navigation.

“Night diving is wonderful,” says the scuba teacher the third day. “You’re going to love it. All the nocturnal creatures are out.”

The thought of going down into the black depths with a tank on my back and a regulator in my mouth terrifies me; but I have to do it if I want the advanced certification. Besides, I don’t want to quit. All those under-twenty-fives in my class are rooting for me. I’m the senior mascot. How can I let them down?

As we motor out to the dive spot, my heart is pounding. I cannot remember ever being so frightened. Our teacher informs us that the combination of the full moon and the hour might make the current too strong for us to dive safely. He will send his assistant down first to assess the safety of the current. Please let it be cancelled. Oh, how I do not want to go.

The assistant comes up with his assessment. We can do it.

Now I don’t know how it happens that I go down first, but once we do our over-the-side-backward-into-the-water entry, I am told to descend along the rope and wait for everyone else down there. I do not remember if we have been told at what depth to wait, but I go down into the black water and I keep going down. When I level off, I look around me for the next person and I see nothing but the beam of my flashlight in the water. Where is my buddy? He should have followed me down. There is a strong current and I can feel it pulling me. Why did I let go of the rope?

For what feels like a very long time, I try to stay in one place, moving my flashlight around, hoping someone will see it, but no one arrives, so I swim around searching for another light. I can feel myself floating in the current, my head is light and empty, and I suddenly feel giddy. I know that I am experiencing nitrogen narcosis, but one of the characteristics of this condition is that you don’t care. I don’t. I should be looking at my regulator to see how deep I am, but I’m not. I have no idea how long I have been alone when the teacher’s assistant finds me and pulls me up. I am many meters below where I should be. This is a deep dive (twenty-four meters) and I am well below that.

Once I am at the level of the rest of the class, I look around for my partner, but all I can see are flashlight beams. Everyone looks alike in the dark. I try to stay still and wait for my partner to find me, but the current is pulling me. Don’t panic! This is all about remaining calm. Finally, my partner taps me on the shoulder and we move on together. I cannot bring myself to search for night creatures. I keep my flashlight focused on my partner. We are down for a total of five minutes when we go up. It feels like an hour.

As we ascend, slowly, I repeat over and over, don’t forget the safety stop. I am afraid that I will whiz by and end up at the surface with the bends. But I do it right.

When I am finally on board, I am both relieved and disoriented. It was worse than I imagined. I vow that if he passes me on this dive, I will never, not ever, do another night dive.

I don’t have to. But the teacher, with an apology, informs me the next day that I am not ready to be issued an advanced certification. I agree.

Over the next two days, I do four fun dives, playing, exploring, and enjoying the underwater world. My confidence is restored and when I finally go down for an assessment dive, it’s perfect. We float past a shark on the bottom, giant clams, hundreds of spectacular fish of every possible color, two massive manta rays, and several of the gorgeous tiny sea slugs called nudibranchs, the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen, decorated in ruffles and paisley prints and iridescent colors.

That night Lars, Nirin, and I celebrate my hard-won Advanced Diver card. The next day I return to Bali.

When I am back in Mas, I decide that it is time for me to move on. I have been in Bali, on and off, for eight years. During those years, I have meditated on the beach, prayed in the temples, feted and released the spirits of the dead, and deepened my belief that there are other levels of existence. In Bali I have felt a warm smooth flow inside of me, an ethereal sensation of well-being. Now I feel it is time for me to reconnect with my family for a while.

I say good-bye to my friends in Mas. Then I go to the
puri
for my last night.

I am sitting at the dining table, which is set for one. All through dinner I can sense Tu Aji’s spirit. He is sitting across the table in the chair where he always sat when we talked into the night. There are tears in his eyes as there are tears in mine. After eight years, I am about to leave him, perhaps never to return. How can I leave this man who was closer to me than my father, who taught me more than any teacher, who told me his secrets and helped me through pain. I’m sorry, Tu Aji. Please forgive me for leaving. He does.

I am still sitting at the table, surrounded by the kindness of Tu Aji and filled with his spirit, when Wayan greets me.
“Selamat malam, Bu Rita.”

“Hi,” I say. Wayan senses my sadness.

I don’t want to say good-bye to him either. We have shared so many conversations, so many motorcycle trips and dinners and lunches. It is from the back of Wayan’s motorcycle that I have seen the villages and hills and vistas of the island, done my shopping, visited computer repair people, toured rice fields to see how rice grows, and gone to the cool mountains when the heat of the lower lands got to me.

I remember in the beginning, when he used to come over in the evenings after dinner; as we talked, I would give him wonderful words, the kind you don’t learn in school, like
serendipity
and
silhouette.
And when he came back the next night, he would somehow manage to slip his newest word into our conversation.

Wayan has remained a good friend. He’s followed me to my various homes in Bali. And even when I’m in the U.S., he stays in touch by e-mail. He’s become a certified guide, and everyone I send to him loves him.

“So what do you want to do on your last night?” he asks.

“Let’s go eeling,” I say.

“Eeling?” He laughs. It’s an odd request.

The first time I saw eeling was one midnight, about a year after I first arrived on the island. I was staying in Ubud, alone, in a thatched-roof bungalow in the middle of rice fields. The air was heavy, the night was dark, and I couldn’t sleep. I walked out onto the small deck that stretched across the second story of the bungalow. There were two balls of fire dancing in the pitch-black fields.

Leyak?
I had read that
these
evil spirits sometimes take the form of fire-balls. Several friends had related stories about the terrifying black nights when they’d encountered them. Now I was staring at a strange fire-ballet in the midnight
sawah
(rice fields).

Turned out that
my
balls of fire were not
leyak
but people with lanterns who were out catching eels. Now, eight years later, I am saying good-bye to Bali, and I realize that I’ve never seen eeling up close.

“I don’t know when I’m going to come back again and I’ve never caught an eel. Will you take me?”

“Sure,” said Wayan. “But we can’t go until after the moon sets. The eels only come up out of the mud if there’s no moon in the sky.”

At about 10:30 Wayan picks me up and we go to his family’s house to get the eeling tools: a pail, a plierlike gadget for gripping the prey, and a lantern, the kind that pumps and throws out blinding light. Wayan’s father and mother and some neighbors are waiting for us. Like everything else in a Balinese village, our activity is no secret.

“We’ll bring you dinner,” I joke as we leave.

Wayan carries the lantern and I carry the pail. The paths between the terraced fields are raised, sometimes three or four feet higher than the cultivated part. As we walk, Wayan explains to me that we are headed toward a group of fields where the seedlings are still tiny.

“If the rice plants are big,” he explains, “You can’t see the eels lying on top of the mud.”

There is no rice season in Bali as there is a corn season or an apple season or a summer growing season in other parts of the world. At all times you can find rice at every stage of development. The folklore says that there was once a giant who came to the island and threatened to eat all the children. “Wait,” said the parents. “We need the children to help in the harvest. You can have them when the harvesting is done.” The giant agreed, but the farmers staggered their planting and the giant never got his feast. And so it is even today. Wayan and I walk through nearly ripe rice on our way to an area with tiny seedlings.

The paths through the
sawah
are narrow. Wet and narrow. I place one foot in front of the other. Mud oozes into my flip-flops. Now my foot is sliding in the sandals and the sandals are sliding in the mud. From time to time, we have to step wide, from one path across a dip to another path. My legs are short, my feet are slipping, and I am afraid to take the long step.