From Haunted House to Tourist's House

-By A.A. Gede Ngurah Termana

When I think about my childhood, I am reminded of my friends and me happily searching for dragon flies around the banks of a river bordering a hill in my village. Although most of my time was spent in the city for schooling, the promise of these moments are what made me enthusiastic about returning to the village. Vast rolling green hills, the melodic singing of the birds, squirrels jumping between the coconut trees, the trickling of the pure river water, and the pounding current of the waterfall all became unforgettable memories or my childhood. Nevertheless, those days would turn dark and end when my friends and I would hear the shouting of our parents, “Time to come home! It’s already dark, there’s tenget out there!”

Tenget is a word that strikes fear into the hearts of the Balinese. Tenget identifies a place where one is not allowed to be after dark, or where one should not build a house; it is even a place well known for “eating” children. It is indeed a place that incites fear, and a story that I frequently heard in my youth was of children who often disappeared in a tenget area. This is not just an old wives’ tale told to children by their parents to keep them from playing outside too late. It is an actual Balinese belief because the Balinese believe in ghosts, often referred to as bhutakala. Bhutakala balance the natural cosmic life of Bali. The belief goes so far as to see a tenget area as a sort of haunted house. “Don’t play there if you don’t want to disappear,” my grandmother used to say.

Of course, a place referred to as tenget also becomes an “unproductive” place. Don’t expect to find a “For Sale” sign on a piece of land described as tenget; even if there was one it would go unnoticed and collect dust. An area such as this is seldom manicured by its owners, and rarely made into a rice paddy or garden. It is often left to grow naturally fertilized by the wanderings of cows and dogs. Usually this type of land has difficult contours which are not ideal foundations to build upon, such as steep slopes or areas too close to sandy beaches. However, it is not unusual for a place such as this to have amazing panoramic views.

A month ago I invited several American college students to my village for their orientation as part of a summer internship program in Bali. We spent the last day of the orientation swimming in the same river that I used to play in when I was a child. I spoke with them about the many foreigners who had built villas in my village. While noting this my thoughts returned to when I was a child, and I compared my childhood thoughts and impressions of tenget areas with the here and now, where places that were once called tenget have been transformed into large and beautiful buildings. “Oh, that place, it has already become a tourist’s house,” states my neighbor Pak Wayan.

“Villa” is a foreign word for most of the people in my village, one that is not an intimate part of their daily vocabulary. “The tourist’s house” is what they say when referring to a particular villa. “Yup, that’s definitely a tourist’s house. See, the person who lives there is a German tourist,” explains Pak Wayan. Of course, a tourist here means a person from overseas who has come to enjoy the natural beauty and exoticism of Bali. Tourists are often called tamu (guests), but this term is only reserved for foreigners. If an Indonesian arrives in Bali with the same purpose of enjoying the pleasures of the island, s/he will be called Nak Jawa, meaning Javanese, whether s/he is from Sulawesi, Sumatra or Kalimantan. This is because of the bias of tourism; Identification as a non-Indonesian comes first and foremost, and a non-Balinese secondly. Therefore, if you are a foreigner that has already lived in Bali for some time and owns a “tourist’s house” in Bali, it means that you will be called a tourist or tamu. It doesn’t matter if you are already married to a Balinese, can speak high Balinese or have even converted to Hinduism, you will remain a tourist; and of course the service that you receive will always be “different” because you are a tamu.

Agung is a young architect who has just finished his first villa project. He also still refers to villas as tourists’ houses. However his vocabulary is somewhat different from Pak Wayan’s, who defines a villa as a tourist’s house simply because of who inhabits it “Of course, that’s a tourist’s house. See, there is a pool and air conditioning. If it were a Balinese house, it would be full of ukiran (traditional artistic reliefs),” explains Agung. For Agung, and many like him, what is important is his reputation as an architect. He must explore and clarify the many variables that separate modernity and tradition with regard to the differences between a tourist’s house and a Balinese house. “Being able to get a villa project means that one is already an internationally qualified architect,” he explains. Before I could properly think this through, Agung adds enthusiastically: “In Bali, an architect can not be really called an architect if s/he has not yet received a villa project.”

In their own ways Pak Wayan and Agung realize that a modern identity for the Balinese and Bali itself is dependent on tourism. That is to say that if Bali and the Balinese are already involved in tourism, it follows that they can be identified as modern; or borrowing from Agung’s term, it means they have already achieved “international qualification.” On the other hand, from Pak Wayan’s definition of the word “tourist” it can be understood that tourism will always be indistinguishable from the idea of a tamu, meaning that which is not intimate with the Balinese way of life and thought. The culture of tourism is much like a tourist’s house; one can have a house in Bali but one will always be distanced from the life of the Balinese.

I am reminded of a conversation with my late grandmother. “Grandma, have you already seen the tourist’s house above the river in our village?” I asked her. “Damn tourists,” she replied, “they don’t make any sense! How can they build a house on land that’s tenget?” I could only laugh hearing her answer. I wish I could go back and ask her: “If that is so, where do the bhutakala (ghosts) live now?” But, never mind, my grandmother has already passed away to… who knows, maybe even the formerly tenget area that is now a ‘tourist’s house’ in our village.

NOTE:
We would like to thank our good friend and colleague AA Gede Ngurah Termana for contributing this piece. Termana, a native of Kesiman, East Denpasar, studied journalism and English literature in Jogjakarta. He is currently working on several journalism and film projects in Bali and beyond.

A Letter from Pulau Serangan

SERANGAN, BALI-
Ni Made Ariani was born as Edah in this impoverished island of fishermen on Bali’s south-eastern coast. In order to marry her Hindu husband she converted from Islam to Hinduism and adopted a Balinese Hindu name, much as her mother before her converted from Hinduism to Islam in order to marry Ni Made’s father. And if Ni Made’s daughter, now a ten year old honors student at one of the island’s primary schools, should later marry a Muslim, she too will convert to Islam from her native Hinduism.

In an Indonesia and world increasingly concerned with sectarian divisions, Serangan stands as a model of a multi-faith community living in harmony; one of many thousands of similar communities throughout this vast archipelagic nation. Ni Made’s story is not unique. Young people from both the Hindu and Muslim villages of Serangan frequently intermarry, and births, weddings, and funerals are well attended by Hindus and Muslims alike.

To reach Serangan from Denpasar, Bali’s provincial capital, the visitor passes the ancient and important temple of Pura Dalem Sakenan, where Hindus from all over Bali gather for the important religious festival of Kuningan. Beyond the temple lay Serangan’s six Hindu villages and temples, and their neighboring Bugis Muslim village and mosque. The populations of both communities interact, intermingle, observe each other’s festive occaisons, and get along very nicely.

“For a very long time the Hindus and Bugis of Serangan have been very close, just like this,” explains I Nyoman Nener, the husband of Ni Made Ariani, as he holds his two index fingers extended and pressing together. “The Bugis were given their land by Badung centuries ago, and the descendants of Badung still come to the Bugis village to talk and pay their respects.”

A protracted war in the seventeenth century between the Balinese Hindu Kingdoms of Badung and Mengwi saw the Kingdom of Badung request military assistance from seafaring Bugis fishing communities originally from southern Sulawesi. After several decisive battles the Kingdom of Badung triumphed, and the Bugis were given a parcel of land on present day Serangan Island in a token of the Kingdom’s gratitude for their martial assistance.

Those Bugis seafarers who settled on Serangan had until then roamed the archipelagic seas, settling helter-skelter along the coasts of several islands along the routes of their fishing grounds. They built a village and mosque on their given lands, and both continue to stand inhabitted and populated to this day.

The colonial period came and went, and Indonesia achieved independence. With it Bali became a province of the modern Indonesian Republic. Throughout those centuries the population of Serangan enjoyed peace and prosperity on what was an almost idyllic tropical island; they fished in small colorfully painted and hand-carved traditional vessels, known as jukung, and farmed and cultivated small family garden plots.

In the early 1970s tourism became a leading industry in Bali. During the later years of that decade, and throughout the 1980s and early 1990s, jukung would daily ferry up to several hundred foreigners across the thin straight seperating Serangan and the neighboring coastal town of Sanur. With these foreign visitors Serangan prospered; the island was an excellent day-trip, offering sun and golden sand beaches with fine snorkeling.

In 1990 the Province issued a permit intended to promote tourism development on the island. A suitable purchase price per hectare was determined in which to buy land from the islanders. Yet many of the islanders refused to sell their land, describing it as the inheritance of future generations, even as the price was raised incrementally. In response to this local authorities set up a command post on the island and began a campaign, according to local conservationist and activist I Wayan Patut, “of intimidation and extortion in order to encourage the islanders to sell.”

By 1995 several dozens of hectares had been sold, and a consortium of developers was formed. Its stated aims were conservation and tourism development on the island. In order to realize this a plan was formed to enlarge the island by reclaiming land from the sea up to 300 meters from the existing coastline."

Dredging began in July of 1996 and a 2.5 kilometer long breakwater was built circling the area to be reclaimed. The breakwater was then slowly filled with sand and dredged coral. In all, the reclamation enlarged the island from its original 112 to 365 hectares, and the island’s topography and ecology changed profoundly and rapidly.

For the fishermen and women of this island, where schooling is not considered a priority, the many changes wrought by the project catalyzed a vastly different economic living situation. “I’ve never been to school, all I know is the sea,” states local woman Ni Made Lungsur. “Now it is much harder to make a living. Our island has changed.”

In many ways, both of the island’s religious communities felt they had been cheated and manipulated by the project. A proposal to build atop both the Hindu and Muslim cemeteries by the consortium, for example, met with furious local resistance and both communities were united in their outrage. Both communities also experienced a prolonged campaign of intimidation from the command post during the land grab, and, states Mr. Patut: “Occaisonally a community member would be defamed and denounced as a member of the banned Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) when he refused to sell.” Several prominent members of both the Muslim and Hindu communities were even arrested when confronted and pressured to sell their land.

“Yes, it is true that the reclamation project changed our way of life here. But it also diversified the people of Serangan,” explains Bapak Abdul Rahman, a prominent member of Serangan’s Bugis Muslim community. “Everyone is a fishermen here. But because of the project the younger people are now more in touch with the modern world. They go to school and study in order to get jobs. We can not depend on the sea anymore as our principal source of income.”

The Buginese village and its 350 year-old mosque stand nestled between Hindu banjars near the island’s north-eastern coast. As the day’s heat dissipates and the sun begins it evening fall to the western horizon, Serangan’s Muslim community emerges from its dwellings and the young and old mingle in the small alleys of the village. They sit on doorsteps and in the shaded raised pavilions known locally as bale. Hindu and Muslim fishermen return from the sea carrying their catch, their wives navigating the island’s small alleys while balancing on their heads large baskets full of harvested sea weed, or bulung. Children of both faiths play together, cruising up and down the narrow streets on old bicycles, kicking small soccer balls, and carrying around their infant siblings.

“Serangan is a very unique place,” continues Bapak Abdul Rahman. “For centuries now the Hindu banjars and the Bugis village have existed peacefully. This is because we have structures in place, between the elders of both communities, to talk and avoid conflict. If there is a problem between the youth, we quickly settle it. Emotions are not permitted to rise. We take immediate action to ensure that problems are resolved quickly and collaboratively. I learned this as a child while watching my father, and the young will learn it now from us.”

"Indigenous institutions and customary laws are very much alive in Indonesia, and these are very effective outlets of peaceful conflict resolution,” explains A. Ruwindrijarto, the President of Perkumpulan Telapak, a nation-wide network of social and environment activists with its main office in Bogor, West Java. “These people may not be interested in the political debates. The problems of daily living are often more clear and present to them. Yet the politics of these ideas are very connected with indigenous communities and their institutions in a holistic view.”

The sun finally sets over western shores of Serangan. Traditional Balinese Hindu gamelan music begins to drift through the darkening breeze, mixing with the local mosque’s maghrib call to prayer. Ni Made begins to prepare the evening meal in her home. Later she and her youngest child, an energetic boy of two, navigate slowly the many small alleys that make up Serangan en route to her parents’ home in the Bugis village, calling out to friends and waving and smiling at passersby. It is, after all, just another evening in Serangan, where for centuries Hindus and Muslims have lived together peacefully.

(originally published in The Jakarta Post)

Holding Grudges on Sakenan

The World Bank's website contains a feature article which lauds the coming of age of micro finance. Indeed, when the absolutes of the matter are analyzed it would be a very callous individual who would interject and introduce a negative element to the micro finance dialogue. I will bear my teeth however briefly now and introduce one dissenting voice, which like a tropical rain storm will rage for a few moments before subsiding. Again, micro finance and the promotion of micro enterprise in communities who, because of their economic and social standing do not have access to traditional financial services, is a very good thing. This simply draws attention to what can go wrong from an organizational standpoint, and from that, what will go wrong in a community standpoint.

Pura Dalem Sakenan is one of the most important temples in Hindu Bali. The ancient temple sits on an island that was once known as Sire Angin (Bhs. Indonesia: Siapa Kasian) and is home to six Hindu banjars and one Bugis kampung. In the mid-90's the island underwent a privately sponsored land reclamation project, which expanded its mass from approximately 112 to 365 hectares. The project was authored by a consortium of developers and was begun with tourism-related aims. However, the events of 1998 led the project to a complete halt, and since the economic and ecological environments of the island have been made vastly different and left undeveloped and in a vacuum.

The men and women of the island make their living from the sea. Schooling and education traditionally was not considered a priority. Yet the many hundreds of meters of corals dredged from the island's fringing reefs for the land reclamation project made eking a living from the sea an increasingly difficult prospect; and to compound this, when fishing and collection activities did occur, the use of cyanide was widespread. (For those who are unsure of what this means I urge you to take only the most cursory glance at Google Scholar to see the abundance of papers and studies that address the negative effects of cyanide on marine organisms.) Because of Indonesia's prominent place in the marine aquarium trade, a large percentage of collection activities were geared to providing dealers with reef fishes and corals for international export.

Enter a consortium of local NGOs. Their goals are admirable, their commitment unquestioned, their community-based efforts impeccable... So what went wrong?

Development as a key theme of the 21st century necessarily means that many facets of the larger subject are also in vogue. One such fashionable idea is community-based ownership of resources and enterprise; from this micro finance and the development of grass roots business stems.

The consortium of NGOs had already experienced great success in Desa Les, Kecamatan Tejakula, North Bali, where a community of fishermen and women were transformed from destructive exploiters to responsible managers of the marine environment. A private company with full community-ownership (PT. Bahtera LEStari) was formed, and since the community has experienced greater economic and ecological opportunity.

To follow this lead in other areas seemed logical. A program to transfer high-end aquaculture technology from leading western research institutions (among them Florida Institute of Technology) to low-cost community-based applications in Southeast Asia had already been very competitive in The Philippines. This model, along with the Les business plan, was essentially transferred. Construction began (see photograph above) on an aquaculture farm, yet before it could go operational the NGO funding sources dried up. Not only could the farm not be finished, but staff salaries could not be paid for several months.

These difficulties have resulted in a decreased level of trust in the community. Never underestimate the poor, they can hold grudges for a very long time, making elephants appear forgetful. In my eyes the NGO consortium has irreparably damaged itself in the communities' eyes. They are seen as having a less than 100% commitment to this project. How do I know? Because I live in the community and am close with them, and as an outsider they have over several months become comfortable speaking to me because they know that I am an outsider and, what more, a very critical one.

Several months on and the project remains unfinished. The idea and the planning behind it were well done and admirable. The problem was in application. And here's my point: people are not play things, ergo don't play with them. The idea of community ownership and direct linking with international markets (in the Les model) is a very good one; yet speaking and doing are different things, and in this instance I was involved in a 'speaking' project which could not deliver what it promised. And that is inherently wrong. The only reason events like this transpire is because NGOs (many of them) are not held accountable. It is generally assumed that a Samaritan organization can transcend CSR policies. But the very looseness of NGOs is their Achilles Heel, and they will not be competitive unless there is a staked deliverable, and in the Private sector that is money.

End of story: Don't manipulate the poor because an idea is currently in vogue. Don't abandon projects that you haven't thought through, in fact don't even start them unless they've been thought through. And finally: What works theoretically will not always work practically; the difference being that paper and computer screens don't hold grudges.

The Breath of Empo Tang

I remember this day with vivid accuracy; almost frightening to hold the past with such detail. It began as a rainy and windswept morning in the kampung of Pusut, a hamlet of subsistence-level farmers nestled in a valley in the West Manggarai Regency of Flores, Nusa Tenggara Timur. My elder brother, Yeremias Uril, and I had been planning to climb some of the area's peaks for some time. We had already managed Golo Tado - a strategic rise from which the sub-ethnic group take their name, as in: The Tado People - and today we had our sights set on Golo Tara. I remember our father, the supreme traditional leader of the Tado People, Ame Tu'a Golo Beo Tado (his Christian name is Johannes Djehabu) cocking his ancient eyebrows at us as we strapped machetes to our waists and assembled our hats and bags and binoculars and cameras. From Pusut, Yeremias and I began at a brisk pace to the foot of Golo Tara, passing by the neighboring hamlet of Noa.


"Where are you going?" Passers by on the trail called out, their bare feet quickly shifting between rocks and mud. "Up there!" We shouted back.


We left the path in a heavy rain which made the red earth bleed molten clay. The path began to leap upward and finding our footing became difficult. Yeremias unsheathed his machete and quickly hacked a forked stick that we used to hook branches and pull ourselves up particularly steep sections. By mid morning the rain had slowed and we had left the dense vegetation of the river bed. We climbed and toward the top the trees became fewer.


Empo Tang, who by my calculations must have lived in either the seventeenth or eighteenth century, called this peak, Golo Tara, his home. He lived atop the mountain with his wife and dogs, and there raised his only son, Kase. In the mid-sixteenth century the Sultan of Gowa converted to Islam; and he was so enthusiastic about this personal development that he forced his subjects to follow. Many refused to abandon their animism and traditions and so fled from Gowa, central Sulawesi. Many ventured east, to Ngucalale, now known by a name the Portuguese bestowed upon it: Flores.


Among the boats bobbing westward several hundred years ago was one containing Andi Lau and his wife. Not much is known of him, except that he is the starting point of Tado genealogy. Ame Tu'a Golo Beo Tado can trace the lineage of his people orally back thirteen generations (fourteen if he includes Yeremias), from Andi Lau to himself. Tang was, I believe, the great-great grandson of Andi Lau, and atop this mountain he lived and atop it he died; he and his wife are buried not far from the summit on the southern face.


Story has it that some travellers from Rekas ambled by Tang's mountain one day several centuries ago and glimpsed smoke from a cooking fire curling into the air. They moved closer and from a now-famous rock opposite the western face called out to Tang. There was no response. They tried another language, calling out again. And this time Tang hollered back. The details of what they shouted across that steep divide are lost to history, but the fact that Tang did not and could not respond to the Rekas-ians Manggarai language, forcing them to communicate in Bugis language, is significant. Manggarai and Bugis share many similarities; kaba, for example means water buffalo in both languages. However, many modern usages of Manggarai have diverged from older words and meanings, which are of great similarity to the Bugis language. The reasons why this has happened remain unclear, but Manggarai and its many dialects and sub-dialects are still spoken widely throughout western Flores, though many old usages are being abandoned in favour of a youth patois which mixes Manggarai with grammatical and vocabulary elements of Bahasa Indonesia.


Atop the mountain that day my brother, Yeremias, explained many interesting things. Behind us and to the south lay the Plains of Lembor, which descend to Todo and the land of his mother. Beyond lays the Sawu Sea and Flores' southern coast.


We squatted over wet rocks with our machetes and smoked wrinkled kretek cigarettes. The air was thick with the recently passed rains, and the clouds swirled overhead like oil slicks. "Let's hike over to Golo Wesa," Yeremias suggested. We nodded our heads to Tang's grave - after he died his son Kase fled to another area across Wae Rakeng, and the mountain has been uninhabited since - and shouldered our bags.