Three Little People that Make me Smile

There are Three Little People that make me smile everyday. I want to tell you a little about each one so you might get a small insight into these three Balinese people.

The first and probably the most important is Ketut. She is my everything lady ... she cooks, cleans, interprets, and general explainer of the Balinese life/lifestyle. I recently found out how old she is and was extremely shocked, she is 35 but looks about 25, she is approximately 5 foot 3, slight build and has been working since the age of 14.

Ketut is like most working class Balinese women, she has a child and a husband, she prepares their meals, mine and any other family who happen to be in my area of the puri. She prepares offerings for her family as well as the royal family which involves creating a small basket out of coconut palm leaf and then placing inside the basket flowers and leaves and depending on the religious celebration the offering can also include fruit, rice and a much more intricate baskets.

Ketut also cleans my quarters as well as any family areas when there are visitors, her own home as well. She walks to the market every day (luckily it is not too far around 1km), for her family and for me. When she returns from market all the goods are precariously balanced on her head. Ketut is average Balinese woman, it is commonly acknowledged that women run this island. It is a common sight to see the local men in their front yard surrounding by their fighting cocks smoking.

Gede is Ketut’s son, he is two and a half and the cutest and cheekiest Balinese talking little guy. My first few months here he was quite shy with me, but since returning from Australia he has come right out of his shell. He talks, sings, dances and laughs with me and at me.

Just the other day I was teaching him how to blow kisses and when he was leaving with Ketut he blew me a kiss goodbye! He is also slowly learning some English words.

Of a morning if he sees my bedroom door open he comes running to say hello, he tosses off his shoes and comes in to check out what he can play with. He doesn’t have many things to play with. When I returned from Australia I brought back some stickers, for a whole day he sat peeling the stickers off and then sticking them somewhere else. Ketut brought him two posters at the market, one with transport images and the other with animals, for three days he took them everywhere! There are a number of brooms laying about here and he makes a game out of the broom, he wanders up and down the verandah with the broom above his head making noises like Balinese music. Here is a photo of the little guy, I am sure he will make you smile too!

The third little person is Diah she lives with her Mum at the entrance to the Puri. She is four with a really cute bob haircut. She first started talking to me when I found two kittens on my afternoon walk. She came to have a look at the kittens and loved playing with the kittens, although they were not so fond of her. I took the kittens to an animal shelter and for the next two weeks every time I saw Diah she would ask where the kittens were (in Indonesian of course, which I can actually understand!).

Every time I see Diah (I actually should say every time she sees me and she just seems to appear from no where) she yells out ‘hello Pip’, she usually follows up with something else in Indonesian which I some times understand but most of the time I don’t understand! She usually pops her head over the wall and watches me walk up the street usually calling after me good bye or sumpai jumpa, which means see you later. She is such a bright happy little girl and I don’t know why she hasn’t yet started school as they normally would at her age.

These three little people not only make me smile but get me through each day.

I am going to ask something, but please don’t feel that you have to do anything but if you can I would really appreciate it. Diah and Gede come from families that don’t have much, I would like to buy them a few toys that will help with their education, puzzles, balls and maybe some pencils and books. If you have any of the above or other toys that are educational that you no longer want and happy to give please send me an email and we can arrange for the toys to come over here to Bali.

Terribly sorry for the delay in posts ... have been busy holidaying to Lombok, which I will cover a little later in the blog!

So you all know I am a bit of a Princess, it doesn't help perceptions now that I am actually living in a palace for this year. The Princess that I am, there are a few things that I really don't like to live without: my hair dryer, hair straightener, shampoo, conditioner, soap, hot water, western bathrooms and especially toilets that flush! I also love tradesman that arrive to fix a problem and fix it immediately rather than pull off a toilet and leave it as a hole for a few days. Guessing you have all figured out where this is heading ... my bathroom and the plumber that came to fix it.

I have a pleasant little bathroom for Indonesian standards. I have a western toilet (that actually sits above ground height ... quite like a throne) a shower head that works, a big sink that you fill with water if you so wish to use a scoop and throw water over yourself (traditional way that Indonesians bathe, called a mandi). And that beautiful toilet is one that you can throw toilet paper down, the only downside is at night bull ants like to crawl on and under the seat, before sitting you really need to look!

It was this toilet that caused quite a few dramas early in December. I had noticed that water wasn't going down the only drain very easily, a few days later water was coming back up that drain ... And other stuff (use your imagination). The toilet didn't actually flush at this point, I would use a bucket a throw water down. To get the bathroom fixed I worked my way through the people to contact and later on in the day I had a plumber rock up. At this point I hadn't showered all day and had been on a very long hot walk. The plumber was a typical balinese man, approximately 5.7, dirty moustache, shorts, t-shirt, thongs, bumbag/man bag, smoke hanging out his mouth and cell phone beeping and ringing.

He did an inspection of the drain and decided that shoving a hose down the drain and running water, needless to say the hose was attached to the sink tap so very little pressure was coming down. It didn't require a rocket scientist to realise that this wouldn't work as I had spent the morning putting drain cleaner down it, with no success which my cook had already told him ... in his own language! He did try though, he was a little more interested in fixing something in the outside sink, that really wasn't broken. But the next day he returned and attempted again to clear the drain and realised this time that he needed to do some more serious work. Next thing I knew he had pulled the toilet off, all there was left was a giant hole in the floor of the bathroom. Lucky I was heading to Jakarta the next day so didn't have to attempt to use a half destroyed bathroom. When I returned a week later I had a toilet that flushed and a drain that no longer blocks. I have to say I had little faith in my Indonesian Plumber but in the end he came through with the goods ... if only I had asked for a hot water system at the same time maybe he could have come through with that too! Cold showers get old very fast, especially at night when it is a little cooler.

The weather is starting to get a little annoying, roughly 100% humidity most days and rain most days still, I am really looking forward to the dry season which should be starting to kick in soon.

My trip to the Gili Islands and Lombok with Anita was fantastic, it was just what the Doctor ordered, a holiday from Bali and a friend from home. I know you must all be groaning that I needed a holiday from here, but I really did! We first headed to Gili T which is a stunning little island with no motorised transport. Our days involved walking and lazing on the beach, we ventured to the other Gili islands as well, Gili Meno and Gili Air, very similar to Gili T, quiet and everything is no more than a 20 minute walk away.

Lombok is stunning, so glad it has taken off like Bali as a tourist destination, amazing beaches along the west and south, but we didn't do much beach lazying we did quite a bit of driving, heading north to waterfalls located on the north of Mount Rinjani and also heading to Kuta in South Lombok. We had a great time but the boat ride back to Bali was a little rough ... Anita was looking very green along with about 5 others on the boat!

The new year has started well, had lunch with the Ambassador to Indonesia and also the Consul General, was a lovely lunch and thanks to Australian tax payers, us volunteers don't really look after ourselves and are very thankful when someone shouts us lunch.

I attended my first Balinese wedding, which was not very exciting, but the effort that goes into the brides hair is amazing! Check out the photo.

Next holiday/work is to Java coming up very soon. My next post I promise will not be 2 months from now, like my last!

Scooters

Welcome to my blog!

This adventure I have decided on a blog rather than email, I will still let you know when I post a new blog by email, but it means I can upload photos and it won't overload your email account.

So I find myself, being called Princess Philippa since I have taken up residence in the grounds of the Puri (or Palace in english). It is definitely not a palace like those found in the the UK and Europe, much humbler. I have a comfortable room, kitchen, bathroom and office all in the grounds. I am very spoilt and also have a cook/cleaner Ketut. She cooks the most amazing meals for me, makes my bed, cleans my bathroom and puts flowers in surprising places, but more on that another blog.

It has been four weeks now since I have moved to Amplapura and five weeks since I arrived in Indonesia. A day hasn't gone by without me being completely astounded at the happenings around me. I still think some of the funniest and shocking involve motorbikes/scooters and the people that ride them and the things that get transported on them.

Just last night for instance I was driving to a friends house, two guys on a scooter, in the dark, and the passenger was holding onto his push bike. Or this morning as I was driving home two guys again on a scooter, they obviously wanted to take their wheelbarrow for a ride too, so the guy at the back was holding onto it and it was bouncing along behind them! It is not uncommon at the end of the day to take your harvest home on your scooter - regular scooter width 40cm or so with harvest 150cm. Then there are your scooter salesman, whose shop is on the back of his scooter.

A regular scooter not only transports between one and two people in actual fact it can transport the whole family, including new borns. It is quite often that I see a whole family on a scooter, of course Dad is driving, sometimes there is a small child in front of him, then usually another child behind Dad as Mum is usually holding onto that child, oh then there is Mum. Many mothers use it like the 'Soccer Mom' car, of recent I have noticed Mum will head out to pick up one or more of her children from school and of course she has to take her youngest child along too, seems Dad is at work ... so you ask how does mum drive and hold onto small child/baby... well she does the smart thing and ties the baby to her using a belt/tie of some description. I wish I had a photo of this, but I am always too shocked to get my camera out fast enough.

The other day I did manage to get my camera out whilst driving the horrid Bali bypass. This is a road that I drive regularly to get to see my friends, the 30km stretch takes approximately 1 hour and leaves me feeling like I am still moving once I am out of the car. The road is currently under construction. When I say construction I don't mean like when Australian roads are under construction ... maybe I should say this road is ripped up and they are slowly adding cement! I will attempt to add a short video that I took the other day while driving, unfortunately it doesn't demonstrate well enough the bumps and the lack of speed that happens on this stretch of road, I am lucky to go 30km, no wonder 80km feels like 200km.

The other thing that they seem to love to do in Bali is fix their transport where ever it breaks down. They get out/off, they put a branch with lots of leaves at the back of their vehicle extending out if they are working on the traffic side, so people driving past know that they need to go around at that width, it is actually quite smart, but when the roads are thin and windy it usually means traffic has to stop.

For some reason Balinese regularly receive loads of dirt to their residence, in Australia a truck would normally dump the load of dirt on your front lawn and you then spend the next day or two distributing the dirt, not here in Bali the dirt gets dumped on the road, another hazard on single lane thin roads.

To sum up I have to say I feel very lucky. So far I not have had an accident, not broken down and not killed a family on a 'Soccer Mum Scooter'. I challenge anyone reading who has some awesome photos of people and their things on scooters to send it too me. I am still trying to capture people and their things on scooters!

Coming soon: Water and Indonesian Plumbers!

Fixing the truck on the road

Just two surf boards for this guy