Part V
Livin' la vida local

by Mad Dog

    It was Made (pronounced: ma-day) who called to me. Go ahead and ask “Which Made?”, everyone here would. It was the Made who rented me the motorbike and I was glad he saw me parking safely, wearing my helmet, and remembering to use the kick stand instead of laying it on its side. Okay, instead of it falling over on its side. Hey, I‘m new at this motorbike thing.

    It didn’t take me long to realize that a motorbike was the only way to get around here, zipping around town and weaving in and out of traffic like I’m in a video game. I have no doubt that all those hours in the arcade helped my driving immensely. See Mom, I wasn’t wasting all that time and those quarters!

    But it didn’t help me in the beginning. The first day Kadek was teaching me to drive—actually about twenty minutes into the first lesson—I drove into a stream. With me still on top of the bike. I learned two valuable things that day. One, there’s a reason it’s called a motorbike and not a waterbike. And two, it’s “more gas, twist the handle towards me; less, twist away from me.” And yes, the leg is healing fine, thank you.

It’s not surprising they burn bodies since they burn everything else here. They burn the rice fields, they burn the trash, they even burn my laundry. 

*  *  *  *  *

    It’s always disconcerting to hear your name being called out or to be recognized when you’re in another country. I don’t know why it should be, since I’ve met a lot of people here, but there’s that moment of hesitation when your brain is trying to register whether it really was your name that popped out of the unintelligible ambient babble or whether it was just another gecko fart. In France it took two months before this happened. Being recognized, that is. After all, there aren’t any geckos in France. There were at one time but they turned them all into pâté years ago. Here it took a mere six weeks to be recognized on the street. Who says things move slower on Bali?

    It shouldn’t be surprising that I’d be spotted since I’ve been adopted by a Balinese family and that’s a lot of people. I was only here about ten days when my landlord Kadek invited me to his village’s cremation ceremony because his mother was one of those being cremated. She’d been dead for four years but they had to wait for an auspicious day, and they don’t just happen all the time, you know. You can get those images out of your head of Mother Bates sitting in her rocking chair while the motel lights blink on and off. They bury the dead, then exhume them when it’s time to cremate the bodies, take the ashes to the ocean, then beckon the spirit back to the family compound, hopefully to cook and clean while they sleep, much like Balinese Keebler Elves.

It’s important that the demons not snatch the spirits when the bodies are cremated, so confusing them and distracting them is important. They tried pointing and yelling, “Look! It’s Demi Moore and she’s single now!” but the demons aren’t that stupid, they read People.

    It’s not surprising they burn bodies since they burn everything else here. They burn the rice fields, they burn the trash, they even burn my laundry. Yes, the other day there was a fire at the laundry and my clothes had a front and center seat. Most of them were okay though the white ones have big brown scorch marks and my light jacket, which I loved because it packs small and is light yet warm, melted. It was an educational experience—I never knew silk melted. Now I need to consult a priest to find out if I should take the ashes to the ocean, then summon the jacket’s spirit to my cottage, or whether I should just have the laundry reimburse me the $6 it cost me at Goodwill.

    Burning things is a popular pastime here. People burn their trash in the road in front of their houses and businesses. There’s no trash pick-up so I guess it beats the alternative: cooking it at the laundry and feeding it to the tourists. The other thing they do with their trash is throw it in the rivers and streams. Yes, the same ones they bathe in, wash their clothes in, and go to the bathroom in. Apparently there’s no word for sanitation in Balinese.

    I wore my first sarong at the cremation ceremony, and I was pretty fly for a white guy. The people of the village spent weeks making offerings, decorations, and building elaborate sarcophagi. They parade them through the streets to the cemetery, turning in circles to confuse the demons. It’s important that the demons not snatch the spirits when the bodies are cremated, so confusing them and distracting them is important. They tried pointing and yelling, “Look! It’s Demi Moore and she’s single now!” but the demons aren’t that stupid, they read People and know that Bruce says she’s hard to live with. Thus the families place drawings on the altars to distract the demons. Hell, they distracted me too! [If you’re over 18, click here to see if they distract you.]

The next couple of days I got to go with the family and other members of the village to private ceremonies. They were all so nice to me. Not a one tried to make me buy a ticket.

    Then there’s the waiting. The Balinese must be the most patient people in the world. They’ll sit for hours at a ceremony, not having any idea what they’re waiting for or why, being perfectly content to talk among themselves and eat sate, ice cream sandwiches, and cotton candy. You see, food vendors flock to cremations. There are almost as many of them as tourists. The difference is many of the tourists buy tickets to watch the cremation, not realizing that it’s open to anyone who stumbles in. The food vendors, on the other hand, know a captive audience when they see one. After a while there’s nothing to do but sit around and eat, waiting for someone to strike the first match. Then out of nowhere everything goes up in flames. It would have been an awesome sight had I not been so used to seeing trash fires everywhere already.

    The next couple of days I got to go with the family and other members of the village to private ceremonies. They were all so nice to me. Not a one tried to make me buy a ticket. We piled into cars and buses—fourteen in our car alone— and took the ashes to the ocean where we prayed, then tossed them into the water along with the offerings while the local kids waded in and snatched the money that was placed in the offerings.

    The next day we went to Goa Lawah, the Bat Cave Temple, and sat around waiting for the bat signal so Bruce Wayne would change from his sarong into the Batman outfit. Just kidding. Actually on Bali his Batman outfit is a sarong. Goa Lawah got its name because the mouth of the cave is a temple with thousands of bats hanging on the ceiling and walls. The priests are brave and don’t wear raincoats over their nice white outfits. I guess you don’t need them when you have Shiva on your side.

    Afterwards we piled back into the car, stopped for lunch, then headed home. Mindy passed candy out to the kids—our car was like the children’s table at Thanksgiving plus one orphan tamu—and I decided to work on their trash habits by passing a plastic bag around for the candy wrappers instead of having them tossed on the floor as usual. Everyone cooperated and got into it, asking for the bag and handing it to the next person. It made me proud. We were just pulling up in front of their family compound to let everyone out when out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the girls open a window and toss the trash-filled bag into the stream by the side of the road. Did I mention that there’s no Balinese word for sanitation?

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