Bali Tourism News

That special place in your heart

November 5th, 2007

Home is more than a place where we spend much of our time. It is where we feel safe and comfortable, where we belong.

My great grandfather’s village is buried under lava in the belly of the ancient caldera of Mount Batur. Eight kilometers in diameter, the caldera houses an ever-changing lake and a mountain constantly developing new crater heads like a Hydra.

From my grandfather’s generation onwards, the three villages of Batur have clung onto the steep slopes on the western caldera. These three villages are still within eyesight of the many new craters that have sprung from the heart of Mount Batur, but safe enough from any pyroclastic harm.

Every year, at a particular lunar conjunction, those of us who can make it return to the site of our ancestral village and camp on top of the lava for three days.

Once there, we turn back the clock to our medieval times and prepare for temple festivities at Pura Jati (literally `true temple’).

A delegation climbs to the highest crater of Mount Batur and gathers condensed vapor from his billowing fumaroles to use as holy water. Yet another, paddles out to the lake and offers sacrifices to her depths.

According to oral history the mountain erupted many times, but the lava flow always stopped before reaching the temple gates at the village’s highest ground.

In between eruptions, during a temple ceremony many went into a trance state and warned the villagers of a great impending eruption. It is said that when the village was eventually covered by lava, everyone moved up safely to the surrounding caldera.

Mount Batur remains our ancestral home where we feel safe, despite regular eruptions. We have come to perceive the regular spreading of ash as a blessing that keeps our soil fertile.

Having returned to my father’s lakeside house after the village temple reunion one year, I found myself wide-awake at midnight.

I was 17, about to leave Bali to go to New Zealand for my university education. Perhaps I was restless about leaving, but now I know it was anxiety of what I would come back to.

I got up and watered the garden. The full moon beckoned. So, barefooted and wearing only a sarong and T-shirt, I began to walk across the road, through fields and forest, up the slopes towards the highest peak.

Despite the occasional cloud and thick trees, I knew the path well enough to make my way through the shadows. I walked through the forest, past the scattered clumps of trees and sat on a rocky outcrop.

Clouds were slowly descending into the valley like waves crashing in slow motion, hovering above the lake and wrapping around the mountain like a loose blanket.

I watched and internalized the vision of the moon’s silver light playing on the lake and clouds. For how long, I’m not sure. I hardly recall the walk back home, but the vision of mountain, lake and clouds under the moonlight stayed with me.

In my travels around the world, whenever I need sanctuary, I close my eyes and return to that view.

We Balinese are natural-born census takers, but I do get tired of asking the standard `What do you do?’ I prefer to ask, among other questions,do you choose to do with your time?’

After months of pondering my questions, a Sundanese friend based in Jakarta responded to me recently, “There’s only one question I cannot answer, `Where is home?’”

Today’s world is moving and changing so fast, that perhaps we can no longer find any reassuring constant in our villages or cities. Having returned from my studies and travels overseas I am constantly amazed at the pace at which we are building. Modern palaces are growing in the place of rice and coconuts, while migrant slums mushroom along riversides.

Reader Jack of Hawaii, who grew up in a little fishing village called Kihei and has made Bali home for the last 24 years responded to my rant on the lack of waste management last week with the following statement:

“The single most important issue Balinese face is not plastic bags or narkoba (drugs). It’s real estate scumbags.”

Jack doesn’t want Bali to turn into another Hawaii, where locals can no longer afford to live in their villages because the high cost of real estate.

As a Balinese, I tend to be more introspective about the evils of villa development. I believe the crux of the issue is how we Balinese can find a balance between our desires to join the modern world with its demands.

How do we reconcile our dependency upon TV, motor vehicles, mobile phones, etc, with our love for our culture and environment?

Sadly, it’s often during the month of June, when parents have to prepare the big lump sums for their children’s higher education that land gets sold or leased long term. But where else are poor farmers going to get the money to give their children a chance to compete in the international workplace? More kids are dropping out due to financial pressures than palatial `your own piece of paradise’ villas being erected.

Education is the key to our better future, but its cost is skyrocketing. Losing our land for it is a high price to pay. If this continues, home may have to become a distant memory cherished only in the heart.

Source: The Jakarta Post

Entry Filed under: Bali Tourism News