The Green School, wrapping up

June 27^th, 2013

Yesterday Deborah and I hired a driver to take us to The Green School, 30 minutes NW of Ubud. On the way, we stopped at a coffee plantation where Arabica and Robusta coffee are plants are grown for export, along with exotic spices and herb growing in the midst of a cool and peaceful jungle. This place also specializes in a special Balinese coffee, not for export, that is called Luwat. It is made will the help of four mongoose that live in large cages on the property. They are fed the coffee beans, chew them up, spit out the outer covering, and then swallow the bean. The beans do not digest well in the mongooses’ stomachs and become fermented. Now here’s the amazing part of the story: The mongoose poop is collected and dried. The semi intact beans are separated from the poop, washed, roasted and ground. This Luwat coffee is highly prized here. I was offered a sample and politely declined, not wanting to see if my gut microbes were ready for such a new experience.

Next stop, The Green School. The students are on summer vacation, but there is a summer camp in full swing. Upon entering the large compound, I was struck by the exquisite beauty of the place, especially the structures which were truly works of art, designed by the founders of the school, John Hardy and his wife Cynthia. They had made their fortune in the creation of jewelry which reached an international market. They sold their business just before the market crash of 2008, and used the large amount of money to obtain the land in Bali and start working on the school. John had a vision. After seeing Al Gore’s movie, An inconvenient Truth, John said his life was never the same; he made a commitment to himself and the universe to put all his energy into trying to make a difference on the planet. The school is a model of sustainability. The gorgeous buildings are made completely of locally grown and harvested material, most notable being the bamboo, bent and cut and sliced into many manifestations like flooring, vaulted ceilings, support structures, furniture. The roofs are thatched with palms from the property. Most of the buildings have no walls or windows and are open air. I wish I still had the use of my iPhone camera so I could show you just how exquisite these structures are.

The school has about 300 students and 50 staff members which together represent 50 different countries. The tuition is about $13,00 a year. Eight percent of the students are local Balinese children on full scholarships. The age range is pre-school through high school. There’s a small dormitory for kids who are not able to go home every day with parents living far away.

The curriculum combines a regular program to prepare for college, along with deep immersion into ecology and sustainability. The kids grow much of their own food using permaculture methods, raise their own animals, and even are taught by the locals how to rice farm, with the local priest coming at harvest time to bless the fields.

The kids have initiated quite a few different environmental programs at the school, like their project to protect and breed endangered Balinese starlings, white with distinctive dark markings, that have been captured almost to extinction because of the high price they command on the thriving pet bird market. The kids solicit funds from all over the world, with help from their IT advisor, to keep the project alive.  

The school is 80% off the grid, using mostly solar power. It will soon become 100% off the grid when they harness the big river at the bottom of their valley. Instead of using dams to generate electricity which would have harmful impacts on the pristine river, an Austrian engineer is showing them an innovative and very simple technique that has almost no environmental impact. He has designed a solar powered pump to raise a small amount of water quite a few feet up the slope of the mountain which then runs down a tunnel into some kind of vortex machine which I don’t totally understand, that generates electricity. The water is then returned to the river.

We were told on our tour that the school was voted the most green school in the world.

So, what’s the down side you might ask, since, as we know, there’s the light and the dark, the good and bad to everything. Well, I would have trouble with working in the heat and humidity, although there was a nice breeze and cool shade in the classrooms. But spending long hours tending the vegetable gardens and animals might be challenging unless they were done in the very early morning or after the sun goes down. There are lots of stone steps going up and down from the river, so one needs to have adequate energy and be in fairly good shape. And then there’s the issue of being around international kids who have been raised in wealth with nannies and such. It’s risky to generalize, but if these kids were to have a sense of entitlement, that might be off putting to some. But, I suspect that the school is a great equalizer, providing a common vision for the students of making the world a better place.

Today we’re winding down our trip. Now that I’ve rested up a bit, I can more fully appreciate what an amazing and wondrous trip this has been. Thanks to Gaylon and Zinnia, we have dipped below the surface of Bali and seen what many tourists never get a chance to see, a more intimate view of Bali life and culture. We have been able to experience some of the traditions from close up. We’ve been welcomed into the homes and families of our teachers, eaten meals with them, gone to their relatives’ cremations, weddings, blessings, and dances. We’ve explored temples, villages, and beaches.

There were times when there was turmoil among the OG’s with little explosions now and then, not surprising being in such close quarters for so long with much to process and often associated with exhaustion from the busy schedules of the students with all their classes and activities, along with energy-zapping heat and humidity.

One of the highlights of the trip was watching the students come face to face with a place and culture that was as foreign to them as you can get and watching them open up their minds and hearts to this new experience. I was told that some even shed tears when they parted from their home stay families, having fully embraced the experience. The students are visibly different. I think their parents will wonder who their sons and daughters are when they arrive home. They will feel like different people---because they are indeed different. The kids have already made plans to get together with each other when they are back in Santa Fe so they will be able to have people to talk to who will know what they are talking about.

There were times when I felt sad on this trip with the realization that Bali is rapidly being developed without any obvious controls in place. But it’s still a stunningly beautiful country. And the people are kind and generous and always smiling. I have felt safe during this time in Bali---except while crossing the main street in Ubud.

As I’m pulling out my clothes to start packing, I notice some of the clothes have a layer of mold on them. It will be quite a jolt going back to 100 degree temperatures, parched plants, and smoke in the air. But, I’m also excited about going home and seeing you all again and reestablishing contact.

I'm bracing myself for the two day trip home. It's quite grueling, but will be interrupted by a six hour lay over at Narita airport in Tokyo where we'll be spending that time at a nearby temple in the temple gardens.

I will end this blog with a saying in Bali that one of the OG’s got tattooed on his body while he was here:

Bhineka Tunggal Ika. (“Different, Same, One,” also translated as “I am you and you are me.”)

Peace and serenity in Sidemen

June 23, 2013

Here I am, sitting on the balcony of our $60 a night villa in a peaceful place called Sidemen in the country, far from the bustle and noise of city life, looking out over a lusciously green valley of terraced fields of rice almost ready to harvest, with low lying mountains on each side of the gentle valley, and majestic volcano Agung presiding in the background. At the bottom of the valley is a river we hope to swim in tomorrow. On the mountain ridge top is a temple with hundreds of steps leading up to it. It calls to me to climb up there for a visit.

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Our tropical little villa, built by a Canadian who lives here two months out of the year, is surrounded by flowering trees of jasmine, bougainvillea, frangipani, and trees with exotic orchids attached symbiotically to their bark, blooming in their full glory, unfettered by pots on someone’s coffee table. 

In the garden around our villa are a profusion of edible plants, including rows of peanuts, papaya, coconut, banana and lime trees, mounds of lemongrass, ginger, basil, rosemary, and turmeric and other culinary herbs and spices I’ve never heard of with strange sounding names, all looking happy with their lives free of stress, unlike the plants in my backyard in New Mexico whose lives are about struggle for survival. Our housekeeper harvested some fresh lemon grass , and dug up some ginger and turmeric roots just now for us to put into our meals.

Throughout the house frangipani and other colorful flowers have been placed everywhere to welcome us, including on the pillows of our beds, on the toilet paper holder, and other whimsical places.

I hear the gecko with its demanding call, as though it’s trying to tell me something. And there’s the loud croaking of the frogs. They are abundant and healthy around here. Both creatures, geckos and frogs, can be found attached to people’s walls on the inside of the homes as though they were trying to reclaim their territory. Some of us had geckos on our bungalow walls at Arjana II where we stayed in Ubud as well.

Deborah, a retired social worker and one of the OGs I feel most comfortable with, shares the villa with me. It is a welcome relief to be in silence with each other after many days of continuous social interactions on the trip with many different personality types, some quite a bit more challenging than others. I’ll leave it at that and let you use your imagination.

Our handsome tropical house has two rooms, a spacious downstairs with combined kitchen and sitting area and large balcony that serves as the dining area. The spiral staircase leads to the bedroom with a large adjacent balcony, open aired with an overhanging roof. Deborah will be sleeping out here en plein air. I’ll be in the bedroom which is almost like sleeping on a porch with its unobstructed views and a gentle breeze.

The house is built with old teak wood resistant to termites. It’s a simple, handsome structure with special touches, like hand carved armoire in the bedroom and hand carved mirror frames, a deep and luxurious marble bathtub, and a pale stone and deep green tile shower area that is partly outdoors and looks like an alter to Mother Nature with tropical plants growing out of the walls of the showering area.

The house is airy and feels like we are living out of doors. The large windows are without screens or glass, with wooden shutters that can be closed at night. The glass doors that partition the house from the balcony can be folded all the way to the edge on each side, co-mingling the inside with the outside. The walls are made of woven mats. The floor downstairs is of marble tiles, the upstairs is of teak wood.

On our afternoon walk to reconnoiter our surroundings, we run into a Canadian woman who has lived in Bali for seven years. She came initially with a friend, fell in love with Bali, returned home to Alberta, quit her job as a consultant for the government, and moved permanently to Bali. She began her Bali life in Ubud, but eventually longed for the peace of the countryside as Ubud became increasingly like a big city. She chose Sidemen as her spot and is currently having a house built for her that she designed. She appears to be about my age. I tried to picture myself doing such a thing but the truth is, with age I have become increasingly more appreciative of my community where I have roots. I’ll probably still be in Santa Fe even if it turns into a desert. I used to wonder why some people never left their homeland even when it became clearly uninhabitable. I am starting to understand.

Monday, June 24^th

The light comes at 6:30 am. From my bed I see the grey shapes and outlines filling in with increasingly vibrant colors. The morning air is cool in this highland part of the country. We actually sleep with thin blankets. Deborah is out on the balcony still asleep in her bed with the mosquito netting. It is blissfully peaceful. I feel like I have landed inside myself. I feel grounded and calm and rested, yet at the same time, my heart is bursting with joy and gratitude at being able to quietly commune with the present moment.

Kadek, the housekeeper, knocks on the door. He has come to make us breakfast which is included in our stay. While he skillfully chops, he tells us about his home, his culture, and answers our stream of questions. When asked how he feels about all the tourists who come to his country, he acknowledges his concern that Bali is becoming overdeveloped and his wish that the government would be more active in limiting the amount of development that is happening. He only goes to the city reluctantly to buy supplies. He appreciates the peace of Sidemen. He tells us about the ceremonies, like the “teeth filing” ceremony he had when he was 19 which is done, as he explained, to remove evil, like greed and envy and harmful thoughts, from the body and mind. He said that in traditional Bali way, the men only do the cooking when it’s to prepare for ceremonies, otherwise it’s the women who do the cooking. We tell him we regard his making breakfast for us a kind of ceremony.

After breakfast Deborah and I wend our way down through the rice paddies and irrigation ditches to the river. We walk barefoot like the rice farmers because the sloping ground is slippery with moisture. Our flip flops don’t offer much traction. It feels divine to be connected directly with the earth, soles on soil and plants, good for the soul. We walk slowly and mindfully. We drop all the way down to the bottom of the valley, to the refreshing river with clear water and plenty of it. We see some boys bathing and wait until they leave to enter into the water and soak in this wondrous scene. After resting on some rocks, we continue up the other side of the steep slope of the valley. The path becomes difficult. Both Deborah and I slip into a deep irrigation ditch and become soaked to our waists. My iPhone is in my back pocket and becomes soaked as well. So, after this set of pictures, there won’t be anymore. The phone no longer functions. I feel lost without this great little camera. I’ve placed it in the sun, although there’s so much humidity in the air, it might never dry out thoroughly. I wonder if it will ever work again. I did manage to transfer a few pictures to the computer, but they are of poor quality. I'm sad about that because I so much wanted you to be able to get a sense of what I've been seeing.

Soaking wet, we found a house with some workers who offered us fresh, young coconut water they fetched up in the coconut palm. They had a good laugh when we mimed what happened to us. They showed us a better route to return home on. Tomorrow morning we’ll try to reach the temple on the mountain ridge top.

The last few hours I’ve been reading a book, a real luxury for me since I’m so busy with my medical practice and use free time to mostly read information related to medicine and healing modalities. But now I’m immersed in Natalie Goldberg’s new book, The True Secret of Writing. Her mantra is “Shut up and write.” It’s inspiring and makes me want to figure out how to make time for writing on a regular basis. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a few years, but make excuses, mostly about not having enough time.

Soon, I will walk a few kilometers to the hotel that has wi-fi and send off this post….if their internet is working.

Rows of peanuts growing next to our villa

Bed on the balcony with mosquito netting

Flowers throughout the house welcomed us on our arrival

Our balcony with fields of ripe yellow rice  in the background

Our toilet paper holder

Our villa, a bit of heaven for three days

The front of the house

Another view of the villa

Flowering trees everywhere

Young cow with Bali eyes

Chicken coop

Restaurants are out of doors

Terraced rice fields

Hibiscus flower

Kadek chops the spices and herbs as he tells us about his culture

Deborah lingering over breakfast on the balcony

Agung volcano presiding in the background

Our neighbor's villa

My bed with mosquito netting which I didn't need to use. 

Armoire

Looking up at the ceiling

Walls are made of straw mats

Our outdoor/indoor shower

Bathtub

Rice fields ready for harvest

Our villa on the left

Down by the river at the bottom of the valley

Deborah bathing in the river

Last picture before the camera got soaked in the irrigation ditch. Sigh.

“You must leave your home and go forth from your country. The children of Buddha all practice this way.”

 --------------From the 37 Bodhisattva Practices. 

Our Balinese dance and gamelan performance

June 23, Sunday

Yesterday was a packed day, filled with many events. We began the day by going to our performance center and being dressed up by our teachers in a simplified version of the traditional dance dress for our performance in front of a handful of Balinese students, the teachers’ families, and the Australian family that had a driver bring them all the way from the beach to see us perform. Although our gamelan performance and dance performance were a pitiful version of what the real performers do, we were proud that we had learned so much in a short time.  After the performance, the teachers fed us lunch in their beautiful home. 

Back on main street in Ubud. Jarring transition from the beach

Our Balinese dance performance, kids in front, OGs in back

Yours truly demonstrating one of the hand positions to the Australian family

Gamelan performance

Our kids and OGs doing Warrior dance performance

Marina, Cochiti Pueblo and Johnny, San Juan, perform their traditional corn dance with their traditional music in the background for the Balinese audience.

In the afternoon, we were invited to Nonick’s family compound for a birthday celebration for her three year old nephew. It was not like any birthday celebration you can imagine. It was more a spiritual celebration with the high priest who came to the family temple inside their compound and did a blessing ceremony followed by a big feast with roasted pig with lots of guests of the family, including the director of the Green School which I have heard about in Santa Fe and want to visit, along with several interesting ex-pats who have made Bali their home.

Nonick comes from a Brahmin family, although in Bali, it’s difficult to recognize any caste system here, unlike India where it is more obvious. The little boy who was having the birthday celebration turned three by the Balinese calendar. By the western calendar he was two and a half years old.

Nonick’s family compound was full of handsome buildings for the various parts of the extended family. Much of life in the compound goes on outdoors, or in buildings with just a beautiful roof and no walls. It looks like such a pleasant way to live.

Family compound

Anom, puppet and mask maker, and me

My shadow puppet, the dragon

The kids arrived back from their home stays full of excitement and stories to tell of their adventures in cross cultural living with rice farming families, one student per family, in a rural area. They looked visibly more self-confident and mature. How will they ever be able to convey all these extraordinary experiences to their friends and family back home whose world does not extend much beyond New Mexico? It reminds me of when I was in the Peace Corps in Ecuador. People talked to us volunteers about culture shock when going to a new country. But my culture shock occurred when I came home to my own country. I felt disoriented seeing the familiar with new eyes, and no one to share my emotions with who would really get what I was talking about.

Gaylon and Zinnia have arranged for post trip gatherings for the students so they can share what their re-entry was like. Gaylon and Zinnia say that many students’ lives change dramatically, their goals, their direction, along with the friends they choose to be with. Many come back and break up with their former boyfriends or girlfriends, realizing that the relationship is not supporting them in the direction they want to go.

Today the kids go to the beach for three days while the OGs have time off to do whatever we want. Four of us OGs will go to the country to spend our three days of no schedule, while the other OG’s will be doing something else. While driving around in the country last week, we found two beautiful villas to rent for $60 a night for each. One was built by a Canadian and the other by an American, right in the most lush, tropical vegetation, far from the chaos and noise and congestion of main street Ubud. So, today we’ll hire a driver to take us there and pick us up in three days. We suspect there is no wireless connection, so this might be my last post for a few days.

While it’s been frustrating having such weak internet connection, it’s had a big benefit for me physiologically. No muscle cramps, twitching, spasms. No ringing in the ears. No sensation of my nervous system pulsing and vibrating.

Well, that’s all for now.

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Leaving the Beach

Friday, June 21st

Yesterday afternoon we hired a driver to take us to the water palace where the last king lived until the rule of kings ended in 1920. It is an exquisitely beautiful palace that looks like a temple surrounded with water and overlooking the ocean. The driver was a friendly young man well-versed in English. He had worked at a nearby hotel owned and operated by a Chinese businessman. He said the Chinese bosses are very strict and don’t allow employees to take days off to go to family ceremonies which are such an important and frequent part of Bali life. So he quit his job in the hotel, acquired an SUV and now drives tourists and ex-pats around to wherever they want like to go. This way he is free to take time off for family matters whenever necessary. He has an offering on his dashboard with marigold flowers and other plants placed in the shallow little box made of straw. In fact, all our drivers so far have offerings on their dashboards. They replace them daily. Sometimes the drivers stop their cars in the street, roll down their window, and buy a fresh offering from the woman with the basket on her head, full of freshly made offerings for sale.

Water palace where the last king of Bali lived until 1920 

Water palace

Our lovely bathroom at the beach

A man in our group has a friend in Taos who comes to live here in Bali on the coast for six months out of the year. She is disabled and lives on her $1000 social security check. While she is in Bali, she is able to rent a nice place for $2000 a year, have a driver and a housekeeper, and cover all her expenses with her social security check. I was told there are quite a few ex-pats living in Bali on their social security checks and having a good life. I wonder what they would do if they had serious health problems with a small social security check and no ability to use their Medicare insurance. For anything major, I guess they’d go to Thailand or Singapore where health care is supposed to be of high quality and inexpensive.

While I was eating breakfast in Ubud last week, I met a Russian woman fluent in English from years of living in the States, who told me her story of how she ended up in Bali. She is a mother of two children and an alcoholic. She left the children in the care of relatives and came to Bali to rehabilitate herself in her own particular manner. She eats the healthiest food she can find, goes to yoga and meditation groups on a regular basis, goes to various retreats throughout the area held by ex-pats where she says she does her inner work. She also gets daily massages. She enthusiastically recommended a spa to me where she said there was a male massage therapist from Java who will “do anything you want. I highly recommend you try it out. If you go, ask for Joseph. He will come to your bungalow at night when he gets off work and do whatever you want to make you feel good, including sex. And it only costs $12 for an hour.”

Sex tourism is apparently common in Bali. Most of the sex for hire is with Javanese men. I was told there are special group tours for Australian women who want to come to Bali and have sex with Javanese men as part of their vacation package. The driver assigned to them also serves as their sexual partner while they are here. I was told that HIV is not uncommon in Bali as a result of the sex trade.

Many workers come from the neighboring Muslim island of Java to find jobs in Bali. Their female children are recognizable with their little head scarfs.

Children of workers from Java

So far, I have seen no alcohol consumption among Balinese people. Maybe that’s from Muslim influence since most of Indonesia is Muslim, while Bali is mostly a Hindu culture. It could also be a misperception, since I'm only seeing a tiny fraction of what goes on during our month in Bali.

The pool overlooking the ocean at Amarta. Good-bye beach. I'll miss you.

Saturday, June 22

Last night was uncharacteristically cool. It’s still cool this morning---a great relief from the energy-sapping heat and humidity. Normally a highly energetic person, I’m like a slug in the heat. I suppose I would adapt over time if I lived here. No wonder people move more slowly in the tropics.

We saw a beautiful dance and gamelan performance last night done by our teachers and their troupe of performers. This family has a long tradition of performance. The father of one of our teachers appeared on the Ed Sullivan show, as we saw in a little movie about the troupe’s history before the actual performance began. My pictures don’t do the performance justice. You’ll just have to come over here and see it yourselves in person.

I will sign off here. We’re heading into town this morning to do our own little performance to demonstrate what we’ve learned in our Balinese dancing and gamelan classes. Our audience will be the teachers and their extended family. They’ll get a good laugh I’m sure. We also boldly invited some Australian people we met at the beach who were curious to see what we were up to.

Classical Balinese dance performance

Beautiful Balinese dancers