Thursday, Aug 28, 2008
In the communal kitchen, young women were boiling up batches of coconut oil from grated copra, while others ladled servings of yams and steaming rice out of clay pots. The villagers scrupulously washed their hands before eating. Sitting on their haunches on a dining platform nearby, they deftly scooped their food out of coconut shell bowls with their well-scrubbed fingers. When I admired a special spoon made of a bamboo handle and a coconut shell, a similar one was snapped together and presented to me faster than I could pronounce its name, sinduk.
Although there were cattle, pigs and chickens at Kelating, little meat or poultry was eaten outside of festival days. Except for eels, caught at night by coconut oil lamplight, fish too was seldom eaten. The villagers did little fishing in the adjacent area, being wary of the briny deep, the legendary dwelling place of sinister spirits.
Sudjana's sister, a striking girl of 17, carrying her infant sister in her arms, had been following Sudjana and me wherever we went. Finally she approached us and began asking Sudjana many questions. The questions were for me and about the world I came from. He told her my home was in a faraway land beyond the seas. She asked if it were true that some people lived in houses high in the sky, one family on top of another.
Did the cows and chicken live up there with them too? Were the rice fields, vegetable gardens and fruit trees nearby?
After traveling such a long way, she worried, wouldn't I want to stay and rest in their bandjar for a while? From her innocent tone, I gathered I was one of the few foreigners she had ever spoken to.
By next year, Sudjana said, his sister would probably elope or be "kidnapped" by a bridegroom from another village in the customary manner by which Balinese girls marry at 18. If she truly loved the young man, she would offer only token resistance to the abduction.
Despite their preoccupation with rituals and ceremonies, the graceful, creative people of Kelating had a simple message on the conduct of life. They practiced social unity, the responsibility of one human being for another. In their peaceful compound they were more in harmony with their environment and with one another than any people I had ever met.
When Sudjana and I left Kelating through the creaky wooden gate, no one said goodbye. But his great-grandmother did beam a smile at us, wishing us "Selamat djalan" -- a safe journey.
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