Oh
Yes, It’s Paradise Here
Some days you just want to sit down and
cry. It’s not the crowded crassness of mass tourism that does this, or even the
mindless self-absorption of the Rave ‘n’ Groove sector; though both can cause
intense irritation if you let them. No, it’s the fragile, deadly, outer fringe
of Bali’s already marginalised rural life that stings your eyes and makes you
feel like a helpless fool.
We heard a dreadful story the other day from a new chum, Englishwoman
Sarah Chapman, who now lives here after many years of visiting as a tourist – a
common provenance – and who has found a little girl in east Bali who she calls
Annie. She found her via a Balinese
friend, Putu Yuni, who read about Annie in the local Bahasa press and told her
the story. Yuni also went round her own friends and raised money to buy a
mattress and some food for the family, and left the cash residue with them as
well.
Rotary Seminyak has come to the party too, we hear, by arranging for
Annie to have a full suite of medical assessments. Rotary does such a lot of
good work that is often unheralded.
Annie is eight. She weighs – at last report – eight kilos, and that was
after a three-week stay in Amlapura hospital. She may be deaf, since Chapman –
an experienced nurse – tells us Annie seems not to respond to aural stimulus;
she is given to screaming fits and tends to hit out at people. She lives in a
hut in the Karangasem district of Sideman with her granny, another elderly
woman who is apparently an aunt, an undersized (but otherwise OK) older brother
who is 14, her grandfather, and her father, who is mentally ill. Her mother
left the home when Annie was six months old, apparently because Annie’s father
was violent.
The family basically has no income and care for Annie – whom they love –
as best they can. The little girl now has a mattress to sleep on – it was old
newspapers before – and a few other things. More help is on the way, courtesy
of a small but growing army of people who want to help – including, belatedly,
the authorities.
But there are questions here.
Where was the local Banjar on this? Why wasn’t it helping the family?
Where were the village authorities? Had they been doing anything? What about
the regency social welfare people? Did they care, before the story broke in the
local press? What about the provincial authorities and Governor Pastika’s
programme to assist the very poor? And for that matter, what about the central
government’s duty of care to all Indonesians?
We’ll keep you posted on Annie, who at last report was beginning to
progress. If any reader would like to join Annie’s Army, drop Hector a line at reachme61@yahoo.com and we’ll pass the
details on.
High
Road
And now for some brighter news. We hear
from two impeccable Bali-resident sources – Belgian travel and business adviser
Marc Jacobs and Australian blogger Vyt Karazija – that the new IB Mantra
Highway linking the crowded south with the less crowded east (the road provides
travellers with a good idea of the extent of erosion on the Gianyar and
Klungkung coasts) is now complete. Well, Jacobs told us 99 percent complete,
and all the way to Goa Lawah. It’s long been a work in progress, funded by
Australian aid, muddied by the truly Byzantine politics of this island, and
doubtless bedevilled by the snafu factor and the ongoing belief hereabouts that
making a road is just a matter of slapping a couple of centimetres of blacktop
on some crushed rock.
According to Jacobs it’s now just an hour from Sanur to Padang Bai. That
would be if the trucks and the motorbikes kept left, presumably. We’ve avoided
expeditions to the remote east for several long months, not having a tent in
which to camp out while they made the highway, but we’ll take a look soon. We
certainly need to check out Vincent’s at Candi Dasa again, and we do hope the
Haloumi has been getting through to the restaurant.
Karazija, by the way, was also able to advise us why the traffic signs
telling trucks and motorcycles to keep left are universally ignored, on the new
highway as elsewhere. We’re greatly indebted to him, because we hadn’t realised
that Indonesian traffic signs use subliminal shorthand. Those KEEP LEFT signs
actually say “KEEP doing what you’ve always done or you’ll be LEFT
behind.”
Airport
Alert
The things you see: Angus McCaskill ,the
Melbourne travel industry figure who used to double as Willie Ra’re, Bali party
guy and drug convict, recently told a Facebook friend who posted a picture of
her lunch at Kuta‘s Little Green Cafe (it did look good): “I so miss LGC and
their delicious taste sensations... but I'll be back!”
No
Jumping
The things you don’t see. On July 11 we
noted the presence on Gili Trawangan of a revitalised AJ Hackett private
retreat, Pondok Santi, now open to paying guests, and said AJ had a bungee
operation in Bali.
Oops: For has, read had. A little e-billet-doux from Nigel Hobbs in
Cairns, Australia, where he markets Hackett’s operations, told us the Kuta
venue was closed last year as the land lease was not being renewed. Apparently
the landowner wanted to build a resort on it. So Kuta is down one unique
tourist attraction and up yet another resort property.
So, we’re sorry about that. If only we were into leaps of faith we might
have joined up all the developmental dots and noticed that Hackett’s big
plunger was no more.
Weaving
a Tale
Textile-inclined bookworms at this year’s Ubud Writers and Readers
Festival (October 3-7, don’t miss it)
will have a chance to add another five days to their experience and join a tour
of traditional weavers that UWRF and local not-for-profit outfit Threads of
Life have organised.
Ubud-based
Threads of Life uses culture and conservation to alleviate poverty in rural
Indonesia. The heirloom-quality textiles and baskets are made with local
materials and natural dyes. With the proceeds from the Threads of Life gallery,
they help weavers to form independent cooperatives and to manage their resources
sustainably.
The five-day sojourn takes in homes, studios and cooperatives in the
Seraya area on Bali’s dry north-eastern tip, the lush rice fields of Sideman
and the ancient village of Tenganan Pegeringsingan. Participants will be based
at the rather-better-than-basic Alila Manggis, near Candi Dasa.
That all sounds fun and could be a powerful restorative agent following
the diet of pious platitudes likely to be served up at the writers’ festival
itself by veteran scribbler John Pilger, the Australian-born journalist who has
made a stellar career out of bashing PHIABs (People He’s Identified As
Bastards) and who is the headline attraction this year.
Incidentally, Janet DeNeefe who – when she’s not being determinedly
insouciant about which well-moneyed corporation might agree to part with
substantial readies and be tagged as this year’s UWRF naming sponsor – is
officer in charge of coffee etc at a number of Ubud destinations for
degustation, had a swish knees-up at Casa Luna on July 22 in honour of the
establishment’s 20th birthday. Guests enjoyed fruits of the vine and canapés
from 5pm-11pm.
Ethereal
Tip
Australia Network, the visual voice of Oz
in the region and rated required watching by the Diary, has joined the iPhone
App revolution. Now, wherever you are on regional terra firma, you can get news
updates and all that other gizmo stuff out of the ether as well as programme
information; and you can fool around on Facebook and make a twit of yourself
tweeting on the go.
It also links you to AussieFunk. No, we’re only joking: we mean the
Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s emergency information
service, which is a sensible must for travellers and overseas residents alike.
The free application is available via iPhone download and at the itunes online
store.
Seriously, it’s good news. Perhaps we should get ourselves an iPhone.
Blight
is Right
Poor old Blighty! The London Olympics are
upon us and the Misty Isles’ summer (that’s the northern hemisphere summer, which
is what happens when the important bit of the world is having its winter) is
being its usual self: abominable. We’re
indebted – yet again – to James Jeffrey’s admirable Strewth diary in The
Australian newspaper, which recently found time to report what one exasperated
Brit said about it in the pages of the Guardian, a British newspaper for the
meddling classes.
Charlie Brooker’s tirade – published on July 16 – ended thus: “It's got to the point where pulling back the
curtains each morning feels like waking up in jail. No, worse: like waking up
inside a monochrome Czechoslovakian cartoon about waking up in jail. The
outdoor world is illuminated by a weak, grey, diseased form of light that has
fatally exhausted itself crawling through the gloomy stratospheric miasma
before perishing feebly on your retinas.”
Well, that’s tough on the Brits, but it’s oddly comforting. It precisely
describes the sort of weather that drove your diarist to desert hearth and home
way back in 1969.
Easy,
Now...
Suggestions that Tantric practices were
first thought up by Buddhists – this ephemera surfaced recently in the
chatterverse – prompt the thought that, properly considered, this could have
led to someone writing the Calmer Sutra.
Hector's Diary appears in the Bali Advertiser, published fortnightly, and on the newspaper's website www.baliadvertiser.biz. Hector is on Twitter (@scratchings) and Facebook (Hector McSquawky).
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