follow Islam, a religion that doesn’t permeate their society with ceremonies and traditions nearly as much as Hinduism does on Bali. With a separate history, culture and language, the people are just as welcoming, however, and Lombok is an increasingly popular alternative to the utopian but congested island across the strait.
Most rice in Bali is still cultivated and transported using simple hand-made equipment, such as rattan baskets slung on a bamboo pole.
Bali’s highest peak, Gunung Agung (‘The Great Mountain’) seen from the crater of Mount Rinjani on neighboring Lombok.
THE BALINESE
VILLAGE LIFE AND FAMILY COMPOUNDS
Most Balinese are villagers at heart, even if they live in the chaotic capital of Denpasar or work in the tourist enclave of Nusa Dua. And somehow the relentless onslaught of mass tourism has barely affected ancient family traditions and rituals about birth, death, marriage and everything in between that are still decreed by village heads.
The arduous task of planting rice seeds and later harvesting and winnowing the rice is almost always undertaken by groups of women.
Despite urban development and impinging modernism, most Balinese still adhere to a desa (village) lifestyle dictated by the concepts of communal sharing and societal order. This is most evident where every person owning a rice field joins a local subak association to administer the remarkable system of shared irrigation and the banjar association, which represents up to a hundred households within a village. Joining the local banjar is compulsory upon marriage, although only men usually attend meetings, which are often announced by the specific pounding of a kul-kul drum and held in a bale banjar (meeting hall) in the village center.
While local governments provide the normal essential services under the authority of the kepala desa (village head), the banjar maintains temples, organizes ceremonies and cremations, arranges local finance, mediates in marriages (and, rarely, divorces) and funds a gamelan orchestra. It also ensures that the morals and behavior of villagers, especially youth, are maintained through a series of agreed guidelines called awig-awig.
Villages are designed according to strict religious and cultural principles. Typically, they are positioned towards kaja, which means facing the mountains, home to the gods, normally to the north, and away from kelod, which is facing the sea, normally to the south, home to demons and the source of destructive forces. These points of reference, however, are reversed along the north coast, for example, where the mountains are located to the south.
The crucial element of each village is kahyangan tiga, the three types of temples: the pura desa (village temple) or pura agung, located in the village center and dedicated to the protective spirits; the pura puseh, positioned in the north and devoted to Brahma, Creator of the Universe; and the pura dalem, situated in the south and used for cremations and burials.
Frequent rains and fertile slopes ensure bountiful harvests of fruit. Many of these may not have been seen before by some tourists, including the rambutan and salak.
Within every Balinese family, the very young and the very old are venerated. Two or three generations of an extended family often live together in the same compound.
The Role of Women
Balinese women are expected to cook, clean, buy food and raise children with minimal male assistance, but they do enjoy a degree of independence perhaps envied by their compatriots. Women dictate family life, for example, by ensuring strict adherence to all religious and cultural traditions, while men dominate society, such as in the banjar village association that sets and implements communal rules. There are some curious demarcations: weaving and pottery are undertaken by women, but most paintings and carvings are created by men; traditional dances are mainly performed by women, yet the gamelan orchestra is almost exclusively a male domain and women make offerings to the favorable gods, while men present chicken blood during cockfights to appease the demons. Religious ceremonies are the only occasion when men are usually involved in cooking. Women must still follow austere rules, but so do men, children and adolescents. For example, menstruating females are usually temporarily banished from family compounds to live in special boarding houses because anyone associated with blood, including those with injuries, is deemed to be sebel or spiritually unclean. Women are often still exploited and undertake many of the most menial and lowest paid jobs, like carrying bricks at construction sites and planting rice. Where tourists will see women working en masse is at the village markets, which start well before dawn and often involve long walks carrying heavy baskets on their heads.
Dikes between rice fields also serve as pathways for those visiting remote temples and isolated homes. Balancing a basket on her head is still the preferred method for a woman to carry just about anything.
Women of all generations help prepare food, especially during a ceremony when many mouths need to be fed and when numerous offerings must be made.
Chillies, shallots and garlic are the basic ingredients of all Balinese dishes. These, and almost every other imaginable spice, vegetable and fruit, are readily available at public markets in each village and suburb.
Dotted among the deliberately positioned temples, markets, puri (palaces) for nobility and bale banjar halls are family compounds in which most Balinese still prefer to live with their extended families. Designing compounds and homes often involves experts in asta kosala kosali, which, like the Chinese feng shui, ensures balance and harmony with the gods, nature and each person living there. So, compounds, homes and even rooms face kaja and not the demonic seaward direction of kelod (in great contrast to the preference of most foreigners for sea views).
In the southwest corner of the compound is the angkul-angkul entrance flanked with statues of gods, and the aling-aling wall that ensures privacy and deters demons (who can’t turn corners) but is not lockable and therefore unwelcoming to guests. The compound is subdivided into three main areas: the utama, a sacred section facing kaja with rooms for senior family member(s) and a sanggah temple honoring ancestors in the northeast; a nista, an ‘impure’ area at the back towards kelod, where animals are kept and rice is stored in the southeast and food is cooked in the southwest; and madya, where ceremonies are undertaken in the eastern section, and most of the family eat and guests are catered to in the west.
Attendance at primary school is compulsory from about age six. All students must wear uniforms, which for these youngsters is red and white, the two colors of the Indonesian flag.
Despite the advent of modern cultivation equipment, most rice across Bali is planted, harvested and threshed by hand because labor
