The procession does not stop when we reach the end of our village. It passes through two more villages before we reverse the route. On the return route, word has spread and both sides are looking for the turis, but on the return trip I am easier to find. My feet are touching the ground through the holy soles of my flip-flops, and I am walking with a limp on my multiple blisters.
All weekend I participate in the festivities with Budi’s family and I tour the island on the back of Budi’s motorcycle. When I get back to Bali, I’m restless and eager to return to Lombok to take the advanced diving class. I am in Bali for less than a week.
My first morning back on Gili Trawangan, I am drinking coffee on the deck of my thatched-roof bungalow when a great-looking blond guy walks by. He’s tall, blue-eyed and in his mid-thirties.
“Good morning,” I smile, and he stops. An hour later, after we have breakfasted together, his partner passes our way and joins us.
Lars is a chef from Sweden; Nirin is a doctor, the exquisite combination of a Danish mother and a father from Madagascar. They live in Nantes, France, and are staying two cabins away from me. The bonus is that they speak perfect English. Whenever I am not in class, at the bottom of the ocean, or studying, I hang out with them. We walk and talk and laugh a lot. We share life stories, travel stories, books, recipes, and dinners.
Lars and Nirin are foodies . . . and we never run out of food talk. One day we preorder a grilled fish at a restaurant. When we arrive, the owner shows us the barracuda they are about to put on the grill. It’s gorgeous, about two feet long, and it’s been out of the water for two hours. It is served unadorned, moist and sweet, with a touch of soy sauce and lemon and ginger. The three of us sit, moaning in pleasure as we bite into the succulent fish.
My scuba classes are not going well. There are eight in the class and no one else is over twenty-five. A fireman from Australia adopts me and helps me carry my tank. We become buddies in the water.
The first sign that this is not going to be easy is when I completely forget how to use my regulator to achieve buoyancy, which is the essence of diving. Then, after a deep dive, I forget to do the safety stop at the ten-meter depth to prevent the bends. Fortunately, we were not so deep that they have to rush me off to a decompression chamber.
The next day we learn to navigate with compasses. Our instructions are to go out to a spot about forty feet from the boat, then, using our snorkels, swim in a square until we end up back where we started. When I come up, I am nowhere near where I should be.
I have never been very good at navigation. I try again and do no better. Everyone is a little amazed at how totally inept I am at reading the compass. The thing is that you have to hold the compass level or it won’t work. I can’t seem to get mine to stay level. I swim back to the boat and promise that if they pass me, I will never do anything in my entire life that requires compass navigation.
“Night diving is wonderful,” says the scuba teacher the third day. “You’re going to love it. All the nocturnal creatures are out.”
The thought of going down into the black depths with a tank on my back and a regulator in my mouth terrifies me; but I have to do it if I want the advanced certification. Besides, I don’t want to quit. All those under-twenty-fives in my class are rooting for me. I’m the senior mascot. How can I let them down?
As we motor out to the dive spot, my heart is pounding. I cannot remember ever being so frightened. Our teacher informs us that the combination of the full moon and the hour might make the current too strong for us to dive safely. He will send his assistant down first to assess the safety of the current. Please let it be cancelled. Oh, how I do not want to go.
The assistant comes up with his assessment. We can do it.
Now I don’t know how it happens that I go down first, but once we do our over-the-side-backward-into-the-water entry, I am told to descend along the rope and wait for everyone else down there. I do not remember if we have been told at what depth to wait, but I go down into the black water and I keep going down. When I level off, I look around me for the next person and I see nothing but the beam of my flashlight in the water. Where is my buddy? He should have followed me down. There is a strong current and I can feel it pulling me. Why did I let go of the rope?
For what feels like a very long time, I try to stay in one place, moving my flashlight around, hoping someone will see it, but no one arrives, so I swim around searching for another light. I can feel myself floating in the current, my head is light and empty, and I suddenly feel giddy. I know that I am experiencing nitrogen narcosis, but one of the characteristics of this condition is that you don’t care. I don’t. I should be looking at my regulator to see how deep I am, but I’m not. I have no idea how long I have been alone when the teacher’s assistant finds me and pulls me up. I am many meters below where I should be. This is a deep dive (twenty-four meters) and I am well below that.
Once I am at the level of the rest of the class, I look around for my partner, but all I can see are flashlight beams. Everyone looks alike in the dark. I try to stay still and wait for my partner to find me, but the current is pulling me. Don’t panic! This is all about remaining calm. Finally, my partner taps me on the shoulder and we move on together. I cannot bring myself to search for night creatures. I keep my flashlight focused on my partner. We are down for a total of five minutes when we go up. It feels like an hour.
As we ascend, slowly, I repeat over and over, don’t forget the safety stop. I am afraid that I will whiz by and end up at the surface with the bends. But I do it right.
When I am finally on board, I am both relieved and disoriented. It was worse than I imagined. I vow that if he passes me on this dive, I will never, not ever, do another night dive.
I don’t have to. But the teacher, with an apology, informs me the next day that I am not ready to be issued an advanced certification. I agree.
Over the next two days, I do four fun dives, playing, exploring, and enjoying the underwater world. My confidence is restored and when I finally go down for an assessment dive, it’s perfect. We float past a shark on the bottom, giant clams, hundreds of spectacular fish of every possible color, two massive manta rays, and several of the gorgeous tiny sea slugs called nudibranchs, the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen, decorated in ruffles and paisley prints and iridescent colors.
That night Lars, Nirin, and I celebrate my hard-won Advanced Diver card. The next day I return to Bali.
When I am back in Mas, I decide that it is time for me to move on. I have been in Bali, on and off, for eight years. During those years, I have meditated on the beach, prayed in the temples, feted and released the spirits of the dead, and deepened my belief that there are other levels of existence. In Bali I have felt a warm smooth flow inside of me, an ethereal sensation of well-being. Now I feel it is time for me to reconnect with my family for a while.
I say good-bye to my friends in Mas. Then I go to the puri for my last night.
I am sitting at the dining table, which is set for one. All through dinner I can sense Tu Aji’s spirit. He is sitting across the table in the chair where he always sat when we talked into the night. There are tears in his eyes as there are tears in mine. After eight years, I am about to leave him, perhaps never to return. How can I leave this man who was closer to me than my father, who taught me more than any teacher, who told me his secrets and helped me through pain. I’m sorry, Tu Aji. Please forgive me for leaving. He does.
I am still sitting at the table, surrounded by the kindness of Tu Aji and filled with his spirit, when Wayan greets me. “Selamat malam, Bu Rita.”
“Hi,” I say. Wayan senses my sadness.
I don’t want to say good-bye to him either. We have shared so many conversations, so many motorcycle trips and dinners and lunches. It is from the back of Wayan’s motorcycle that I have seen the villages and hills and vistas of the island, done my shopping, visited computer repair people, toured rice fields to see how rice grows, and gone to the coo
l mountains when the heat of the lower lands got to me.
I remember in the beginning, when he used to come over in the evenings after dinner; as we talked, I would give him wonderful words, the kind you don’t learn in school, like serendipity and silhouette. And when he came back the next night, he would somehow manage to slip his newest word into our conversation.
Wayan has remained a good friend. He’s followed me to my various homes in Bali. And even when I’m in the U.S., he stays in touch by e-mail. He’s become a certified guide, and everyone I send to him loves him.
“So what do you want to do on your last night?” he asks.
“Let’s go eeling,” I say.
“Eeling?” He laughs. It’s an odd request.
The first time I saw eeling was one midnight, about a year after I first arrived on the island. I was staying in Ubud, alone, in a thatched-roof bungalow in the middle of rice fields. The air was heavy, the night was dark, and I couldn’t sleep. I walked out onto the small deck that stretched across the second story of the bungalow. There were two balls of fire dancing in the pitch-black fields.
Leyak? I had read that these evil spirits sometimes take the form of fire-balls. Several friends had related stories about the terrifying black nights when they’d encountered them. Now I was staring at a strange fire-ballet in the midnight sawah (rice fields).
Turned out that my balls of fire were not leyak but people with lanterns who were out catching eels. Now, eight years later, I am saying good-bye to Bali, and I realize that I’ve never seen eeling up close.
“I don’t know when I’m going to come back again and I’ve never caught an eel. Will you take me?”
“Sure,” said Wayan. “But we can’t go until after the moon sets. The eels only come up out of the mud if there’s no moon in the sky.”
At about 10:30 Wayan picks me up and we go to his family’s house to get the eeling tools: a pail, a plierlike gadget for gripping the prey, and a lantern, the kind that pumps and throws out blinding light. Wayan’s father and mother and some neighbors are waiting for us. Like everything else in a Balinese village, our activity is no secret.
“We’ll bring you dinner,” I joke as we leave.
Wayan carries the lantern and I carry the pail. The paths between the terraced fields are raised, sometimes three or four feet higher than the cultivated part. As we walk, Wayan explains to me that we are headed toward a group of fields where the seedlings are still tiny.
“If the rice plants are big,” he explains, “You can’t see the eels lying on top of the mud.”
There is no rice season in Bali as there is a corn season or an apple season or a summer growing season in other parts of the world. At all times you can find rice at every stage of development. The folklore says that there was once a giant who came to the island and threatened to eat all the children. “Wait,” said the parents. “We need the children to help in the harvest. You can have them when the harvesting is done.” The giant agreed, but the farmers staggered their planting and the giant never got his feast. And so it is even today. Wayan and I walk through nearly ripe rice on our way to an area with tiny seedlings.
The paths through the sawah are narrow. Wet and narrow. I place one foot in front of the other. Mud oozes into my flip-flops. Now my foot is sliding in the sandals and the sandals are sliding in the mud. From time to time, we have to step wide, from one path across a dip to another path. My legs are short, my feet are slipping, and I am afraid to take the long step.
“Wayan, hold my hand over this part,” I say every time we get to a difficult step, a muddy stretch, or a particularly narrow path. Fortunately this is a culture where young people are very solicitous of their elders. Wayan stays close.
Finally we get to the fields that are newly cultivated. We walk the paths, barefoot, holding the lantern down so we can spot the eels. Every few feet I slip. Every couple of minutes I call out, “Wayan, give me your hand.”
Besides holding my hand, Wayan’s job is to spot the curvy shape of an eel lying on top of the mud, slip down from the relatively solid path into the six-inch-deep mud, nab the eel with the pliers, and put it into the pail with our flip-flops.
“Where are the eels?”
“There’s one.” He points. I don’t see it. Leaning over for a better look, I slip, slide down the two-foot drop, and end up lying in six inches of mud on top of a bunch of unfortunate seedlings. The eel has slithered away.
“Show me another,” I say, laughing, as he puts down the lantern, lifts the pail out of the mud, and pulls me back up to the path.
Finally I see an eel. It’s a little darker than the mud. A shadowy dark “S” on top of the brown bottom. Wayan slips down and grasps the wiggly creature with the pliers and we have an eel in our pail, along with two pair of flip-flops and a muddy straw coinpurse that was in my pocket.
Wayan continues to help me along the paths. He keeps pointing to eels that I can’t see. Only once do I try to snag my own eel and I get squeamish at the last minute and slip again in the mud.
“So how many eels do you usually get?” I ask an hour later as we start back.
“Oh, a hundred, a hundred fifty. Depends on the night.” We have eleven.
Wayan walks me back to the puri. He has been quiet on the way home; it’s always hard for him when I leave. We are standing just off the little patio outside my room, the same room that Tu Aji showed me eight years ago, on my first day in Bali. Wayan cannot see the tears in my eyes.
The sky is black and filled with stars. There are squeaky bats eating the fruit of the sabah tree. The sabah fruit is brown and figlike, and every night when the fruit is ripe the bats squeak and streak around the garden. The buzzing of the cicadas is harsh and endless. The family is sleeping, each room dotted with a light that is keeping away the evil spirits.
Wayan and I are surrounded by the sweet perfume of night-blooming jasmine. He is quiet. Then, after I give him a hug and he turns to go home, he finally speaks.
“You’re not very well balanced are you?”
The next morning I leave for the airport. Tu Biang, Tu Man, Dayu Biang, Jero Made, Wayan, and an assortment of neighbors all accompany me to the car. As soon as the driver starts the engine, everyone begins to wave. As we drive down the street, I stick my head out the window and wave back until they are out of sight. There are tears in my eyes. It is the end of an extraordinary chapter in my life. But Bali will always be with me.
In Bali I have learned to listen to the spirits, the inner one that is a part of me and the ones from the other, invisible, world, who have been such an important part of everyday of my life on this magical island. In Bali I have experienced a serenity deeper than I have ever known.
Canada/United States
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
VANCOUVER AND SEATTLE
It is 1997 when I leave Bali. I first arrived in December of 1988. A lot has happened during those years. My mother, my father, and Tu Aji died. Mitch got married. Jan, Mitch, and Melissa all moved from New York to Seattle to work in Internet journalism. And I’ve gone through a significant spiritual development. Right now I feel that I’d like to be near the kids for a while.
I am still uncomfortable with the idea of moving in on top of them. Ideally I’d like to rent a place for a few months within two or three hours of Seattle, a place that they could come to whenever they wanted, for weekends or vacations. Years ago, when we were a young family living in Manhattan, we had a country house that was three hours away. We all enjoyed the drive and we did it every weekend and all the school holidays. I’d like to offer them a country house again, this time outside of Seattle.
A few days before I leave Bali, I am talking to a friend from Taiwan. Innovette mentions that she is planning to visit a friend of hers in Vancouver.
Vancouver. It’s perfect. Three hours from Seattle. A great place for a country retreat. I’ve never been there, so it’ll be an adventure for me. And I love the idea that there’s a huge ethnic Chinese and ot
her Asian population there. And I even have two Canadian friends in Vancouver that I met in Bali.
When I mention that I might rent in Vancouver for a few months, Innovette says, “Call my friend Sue. I’m sure she’ll be able to help you.”
A new destination is created and a friend is born. When I call Sue from Seattle, she invites me to stay with her while I look.
I ring the doorbell of a suburban Vancouver house and a beautiful Chinese woman welcomes me. Sue is tiny with long shiny black hair and a warm matter-of-fact smile. She makes me feel as though there is nothing special about the fact that she is welcoming a perfect stranger into her home and giving me bed and board. Sue, her partner, Stephen, a Canadian, and her teenage daughters, Vicky and Waylin, take me into their family. For nearly a week I eat Sue’s great Chinese cooking, meet her friends, and tour around Vancouver with her, looking at different neighborhoods and houses. I also take everybody out for dinner several times. Sue picks the restaurants—all of them Chinese—and orders the meals. We eat magnificently.
Each morning I pour through the Vancouver Sun. I want something wonderful, with land and a view, something the kids will love, something big enough for everyone—them, their friends, my friends. It’s a good time for this. My investments are doing well and I’m ready to break my rule: I’m going to sell some stock and splurge.
I call on an ad for a house outside of Vancouver in a community called Belcarra. According to the ad, the house is modern and it has a view, a brook, trees, and wooded land. And dogs, says the ad, are welcome. Mitch and Melissa have two of them; sounds like a place Riley and Abby and all the rest of us will like.
Tales of a Female Nomad Page 28