Galungan Days/Slight Adventure

I think I've reached the point on this trip (conveniently about halfway through my time here in Bali) when things that would probably sound really super exciting, exotic and wild to me three months ago don't really stand out in memory anymore. Like in our latest excursion, we stopped by a Muslim fishing village (cool because Bali is both massively Hindu and land-oriented instead of sea-oriented) and were coerced into dancing to the local orchestra, a group of dudes playing what I'd interpret as Sulawesian gamelan (again, memory fails; I think I remember it described as being from Sulawesi, which is another island in Indonesia, but I'm not sure where the Bugis are from. I probably should have called it a Bugis fishing village, as that's the ethnicity of the people who live there. They so happen to be Muslim. Fun fact: the word bugis is where we get the term "boogey man" from, as the Bugis were feared pirates hired by various people to do dirty work, so bugis man became boogey man. Now back to your original programming). I don't remember where I was before that long paranthetical, so new sentence: the aforementioned dancing was for the amusement of local children, who turned out in droves to gaze at the silly westerners before joining in the dancing. Then we saw their mosque and rolled back out. And right now, looking back, it doesn't really register that these sorts of things don't happen to everyone every day. Adventure has become my middle name. Well, not really at all, but who's counting?

In continuing with the plan of not being able to relate everything that's gone on, maybe I could at least explain the title of this post. Galungan is one of the big Hindu festivals in Bali (it has an Indian counterpart by a different name relating to Durga's defeat of some demon), a time when the ancestral spirits come back to hang out at the family shrine and be honored. It also celebrates the victory of good over evil (only temporarily though, as there must always be evil with the good), but I couldn't really understand my family on that theological point, so let's stick with the rituals. It's kind of like Christmas, but with a heavy dose of Thanksgiving. The entire family starts preparations a good week in advance, but the real madness starts a few days before. Kids get out of school and many people have time off from work so as to be at home and help with the offerings, of which there are many. Most offerings are little palm or banana leaf basket-like objects, filled with flowers and food, but many are really huge, like the piles of fruit for temple ceremonies or baskets with roasted animals. Penjors, however, top all. These are giant bamboo poles, curved at the top, that people decorate and put out in front of their house along the road. A simple one I made with my father for the local temple basically just involved affixing curved palm leaf shapes to the pole, tying a big palm leaf mane around the bottom, and putting a young coconut on it (the penjor is symbolic of life and the universe and a giant snake, all sorts of things that my Indonesian isn't good enough to understand yet). It took us under an hour, and probably didn't cost that much. But the one the family made took three days, involved a few huge store-bought ornaments (intricately cut out of palm leaf, dyed and painted bright colors), felt balls, precisely folded palm leaf shapes, black fabric, a huge bamboo pole, and finally a flag with the "Om" symbol on it. It cost 450,000 rupiah (lots for an offering) and took three days of communal labor. Admittedly, they were showing off a bit, but the process isn't that far removed from decorating a Christmas tree.

Apart from the offerings, there's lots of cooking and family gemutleicheit (did I spell that right? Not many Germans here, only a vague Dutch feeling from their colonial presence). Everyone gets together to help out (even homestay students) and the time after the religious ceremonies (which involve visiting and praying at lots of temples) for visiting with family members. It was cool, and I'm spending way too much time on this, but as a last thought it really made me wish that we had more festivities in the states that involved this much tradition and ritual. I guess that's one challenge of a mostly secular society, but we can't really pull of religion in as low-key a way as the Balinese do, so we might just have to create some traditions of our own. I'm just saying, it's rare that there's ever that much of a good vibe surrounding anything holiday-oriented back home.

As I drone on about random things, I might want to include a summary of the excursion that took us to this fishing village. We were up to the hot and arid North Coast of Bali, a more diverse area in that there are many different religions represented. We saw some cool Buddhist temples and met with a fun group of kids from the university up there. The area really reminded me of home, home being Los Angeles, but that might be because I've been away for a long time. And then we went to try and climb a mountain (a sign near the bottom said "Slight Adventure," which described the excursion perfectly), but some of us happened to get sick the day before and didn't want to climb a mountain to see the sunrise. So instead I skulked and bemoaned my bad luck and resolved to climb it later, and then basked in scenery that legitimately looked like the Eastern Sierras.

In case my readers can't tell, I'm losing coherence, so apologies for what feels like a couple of weak posts. It's hot here. People don't think well when it's hot. People also don't like writing blog posts when there's absolutely zero feedback. So, friends, if you like what you read, say something so I don't feel like I'm all the way on the other side of the world. Which I am. But still, ground me, let me know if I'm actually having an experience or if I need to step my game up. ISP's a-coming, so hopefully I'll have a better experience for y'all next time.