First off, I’m sorry I haven’t written any new posts in so very long. As most of you know, I’ve been recuperating from a fractured kneecap and, while you would think all that time spent doing pretty much nothing else would have made it an ideal time to write, I just haven’t been able to muster the will to do so. I’ve been pretty down, actually. Not being able to walk around and explore the few places I’ve managed to get myself to has really been a drag. But I am on the mend, and am now walking—still with a bit of a limp, but not hobbling like before—without my half-cast-thingy (called a backslap), which I wore for over six weeks after the original cast was taken off (about a week after my fall).
Now I’m in Bali and still doing pretty much nothing, but I’ve seen some pretty amazing things and have finally gotten around to editing photos and posting the albums online.
I’ve also been doing a very small volunteer project for a great organization called Bumi Sehat, which is a birthing clinic that also provides general medical services to poor folks here in Bali. They run completely on donations from individuals (and fees from those who can afford to pay), so if you’re feeling generous, do check out their website, where you can donate via Paypal. What I’ve been working on for them is a proposal to raise money to send four young women to midwifery school, a project that has its own website where, if you prefer, you can donate so that the funds go directly toward these scholarships.
The need for a pay-as-you-can clinic in a poor country is, of course, quite obvious, but what I also learned in talking to the clinic’s director, an American named Robin Lim who’s lived in Bali for decades, is that the hospitals here, as well as many village midwives, will actually keep the baby until the family comes back with the money to pay for the birth. She told me of one horrific case where twins were born and the parents couldn’t pay the full fee so the midwife kept one of the twins and then sold it. (Robin got human rights lawyers involved in that one and they eventually got their baby back, but in most cases like this the families would probably have ended up with someone else’s baby. Because this was an identical twin they were able to know it was truly their child.)
I know, too awful to even wrap your head around. I’ve been to the clinic when births were happening and it is truly a wonderful, comforting place where the women are getting very good—and compassionate—care. I of course am hesitant to ask anyone I know to donate (as I told the clinic’s volunteer coordinator from the outset, I hate fundraising), but, since a very small amount of money goes a very long way in a place like Bali, I’m just putting the information here in case you feel so moved.
On a lighter note, I’ve had some very funny experiences here thus far, so I thought I’d share a few anecdotes with you. (And don’t forget to catch up on the photos of the day, as there are some good laughs there as well.)
One
My friend Rob and I met an American guy who studied here back in college and comes back to visit every few years. He invited us to a dinner the family he stays with was giving in his honor. After dinner, some of the kids were playing and one boy said to another, ‘You’re fat and you have no teeth.’
The other boy didn’t react at all. Apparently, here things that we would take as insults are just really statements of fact that no one gets too fussed about. Like when Brad (the American) arrived at his family’s house this year. They greeted him and said, ‘You got fatter.’
Two
Rob and I were at a bar seeing some live music when two street dogs came in. (This itself is not so unusual. Street dogs are everywhere in Bali and are mostly ignored.) They were playing, biting each other’s faces and rolling around, and ended up right between our table and the next. Suddenly, one of them started mounting the other, which caused a big laugh among the patrons, one of whom was a young English guy who said, ‘I didn’t think this was that kind of bar!’
Three
I was hobbling home one night (wearing my backslap, which kept my knee from bending) and passed some men sitting on the sidewalk. (There are always men sitting on the sidewalk. Sometimes they are there to call out ‘Transport?’ to you. Sometimes they are just sitting and chatting.). As I walked past, one of them said, ‘I think you are a little bit sick.’ (Sick seems to be a catch-all word here, since most people’s English is limited, so I guess it covers being hurt, injured, etc. That or he had some other kind of insight without even talking to me…)
Four
This one is actually hearsay only: My friend Rob went to another island, Flores, where he met a really interesting man who took him on a tour of some local villages. The people in this area are Catholic but also retain a lot of their animistic traditions and rituals, including animal sacrifice (you can see Rob’s photos here). They got to talking and this man told Rob that he’d seen God several times, and started describing what he looked like: a sandal, a foot. The foot, he said, was white. And had hair on it. “Like a tourist,” he said. Which was followed by: ‘Jesus was white, right? Like the old Jews.’
I’ll leave you with that—and the photo albums, which you can check out on the photos page or use the links below where, to make things a bit easier, I’ve listed which ones are newly-posted (some of them are actually, chronologically, quite old). In the Ubud album there are a number of videos as well. And, as always, the stories are told in the captions to make up for all I’ve not been writing. Hope you enjoy!
INDONESIA
July 2009
Bali
Offerings
Ubud (includes Kecak Fire Dance)
MALAYSIA
June and July 2009
Pehrentian Islands
CAMBODIA
April and May 2009
Last Phnom Penh Snapshots
3 comments
Comments feed for this article
November 24, 2009 at 1:05 pm
Charlie Eastaugh
Just wondering…are you the the son of Jeff Eastaugh from Lennoxtown, Scotland.
If so , we are related and I’d like to know more about your and yours.
Cheers
Charles Eastaugh
Alberta, Canada
December 22, 2009 at 9:28 pm
Shuugo
Hi,
I’m just a random person who happened to stumble upon your blog. And being from a mixed background, Bali-Dutch to be exact, and living in Bali, I have to say that I found many of your post extremely amusing. Some things I just don’t notice anymore (even though I’m mostly Western in thinking and behaviour).
Since I (obviously) have a Balinese family, number one has happened to me a lot. I actually think it’s more of a Balinese thing than generally Indonesian. Sometimes it’s true, you might have gained weight, and they comment on that. Surely doesn’t make you feel better, especially when you’re a young girl, and you actually hate the fact that you’ve gotten a bit chubbier (as in my case). But more stupid is that one week you may meet some people who tell you to your face that you’re ‘fat’ now and the next week they’ll tell you that you’ve lost weight. In addition to which, they also always say ‘fat’ and ‘thin’, never ‘you’ve gotten a bit fatter’ or ‘you’ve gained weight’. In the same manner they talk about people being ‘black’ or ‘white’, when in fact they’re neither (even after 13 years in Bali I have yet to figure out why people don’t use the word ‘brown’ for skin colour [since there’s no real word for ‘tanned’]).
Browsing to your photos of the day archive, I had a really good laugh at some. Your comments are priceless! Especially the ‘semen’ one, I honestly never thought of that! And the t-shirts – that’s so true. I often have second hand embarrassment from seeing people actually wearing them :D
On the matter of ‘fortified’ snacks, you might cry if you see the commercials on tv here. The ‘intelligent’ cookies probably would claim that they make your kids smarter. It’s sad really. They’ll put vitamin C in some crap thing loaded with (previously empty) calories and it’s ‘healthy’ and makes your kid smart.
I had a look at the front page of your blog earlier and read about your accident. Since it was from October, I suppose you’re better now? Well, I sincerely hope so for you.
Thanks for the entertainment, it was much fun :)
May 22, 2012 at 3:43 am
Dayvson
Hi Barb .. Lovely to hear from you, Astrea’s told me about you! . I love Amed also and had some time at Lipah in June. Hope we can connect up in Bali somtmiee and talk about manifesting these dreams of ours!