Putting Down Roots

“There are two lasting bequests we can give our children:  one is roots.  The other is wings.”  William Hodding Carter, II. 

I am a rather haphazard gardener.  While I love to be out digging in the dirt, I am likely in my enthusiasm to plant things too close together, or in an inconvenient spot.  This means I often spend much of my gardening time digging things up, dividing, separating, re-planting. There is nothing quite so vulnerable looking as a formerly strong, steady and upright plant that has been dug up and is hanging, roots dangling, from my gloves, waiting to be safely and carefully planted in its new spot.

In Pennsylvania, where winters are cold and the spring is wet, plants need roots that go deep into the ground and hold them steady.  Think Oak trees.  Here in Singapore...well lets just say plants have a few more options.  On my first visit here, I was amazed at the sight of trees whose trunks appeared to start 10 or 15 feet off the ground, roots exposed to the air, sending new tendrils out to find a place to plant themselves away from the main tree.  These trees are also the happy hosts of many epiphytes, plants that live non-parasitically on trees and other plants.  

A couple of months after arriving, I was running through the Botanic Garden here, watching the wind blow some particularly long and dangling roots swinging from the limbs of a tree when it struck me.  These plants are just like us!  Me and my expat compatriots have been dropped into this place, roots forged somewhere else dangling freely, reaching out for something, anything, to hold onto.

I will admit, the months leading up to the move and the first few weeks here are still in many ways a bit of a blur.  The process of uprooting and moving left me literally feeling a sense of vertigo, of spinning wildly through space.  Our roots in Pennsylvania were deep, friends, family, community, we knew who we were.

Here, these things are much less certain, especially for the person in the family known as the “trailing spouse.”  Many people don’t like the implications of this term, arguing that they are equal and enthusiastic partners in this life choice.  However, once the person with the job is digging into work, and the kids are making friends at school, there is a sense of being at loose ends...roots trailing.  

Some jump into volunteer work, others join clubs, or sign up for classes, some (like me) do a little bit of everything.  And do you know what?  It works.  The first connections are the obvious ones, find a grocery store, find a doctor.  I was also lucky early on to find a good friend who is game to tromp all over town and explore.  It is much easier to figure out strange things if you have an equally confused buddy.  Our conversations for the first couple months were frequently punctuated by exclamations of “Oh, I am glad you said that!  I thought I was the only one!”  

I have also been overwhelmed by the generosity of people who seem to really want to help me feel settled:  a mom and nurse who has been here for more than 10 years who gave me thoughtful recommendations for doctors, an acupuncturist and a great Thai restaurant; a friend of a friend back in Pennsylvania who invited me to join her for lunch and introduced me to a group of interesting women; the checkout ladies at the grocery store who made sure I didn’t pay too much for the overpriced imported produce (and who goaded me into finding my local community center so I could get my “Passion” discount card); too many people to count who opened up their address books, iPhones and Blackberrys and asked “what do you need” before sharing phone numbers for hairdressers, tailors, shops, restaurants; and the one or two seasoned expat spouses who looked at me thoughtfully and said “you are doing well, you will be fine.”  

So, here it is, a new community.  Not the firm solid kind built on years of knowing each other and working side by side, but a different one, based on a shared experience and a desire to help each other along.  These roots aren’t deep, they aren’t even planted in the ground anymore, but they are strong.  Combined with the ties to the amazing friends and family back home who never left me feeling alone out here on the other side of the world, I find I feel sure footed and firmly planted, right where I am.

Bali Dreams

Ok, I’ll admit, one of the most obvious selling points for this little adventure on the other side of the world was the fact that we would be in close proximity to places that, at least for me, have long been the stuff of mystery and dreams. Fiji, Tahiti, Borneo, Bali...I know in my head that these are real places, with real people living regular lives (pirates don’t ply these waters anymore, and they sure don’t swashbuckle) but that doesn’t mean I still don’t get a little thrill thinking about seeing them for myself.

So, of course, given our first opportunity to de-camp for a long weekend (and ticket prices that rivaled deals to Detroit and Pittsburgh from Philadelphia) we headed off to Bali, “The Island of the Gods.”  

Stepping off the airplane, we were greeted by the short, pudgy, fierce-yet-cuddly-looking guardian idols that stand watch at all entryways around the island.  Wearing their jaunty sarongs, and sometimes shaded by an umbrella, they keep quiet watch at doorways and bridges.  A little divine protection could come in handy around here we soon discovered as we met up with our driver and set out through the streets of Denpasar on our drive across the island to the tiny fishing town of Amed.

It is an understatement to say that the roads are crowded. Small motorbikes are the transportation of choice, weaving in and out of traffic and slipping between cars, often carrying precarious looking loads of rice bags, multiple passengers, a chicken or two...one guy had SEVEN five gallon water jugs strapped to his bike as he drove up the road.  Then there are the overloaded trucks hauling rocks, rice and other loads around the island, often with several workers perched on top.  Add to these twisty roads that seemed to be perpetually under construction, and traffic laws that seem to be more of a suggestion than a directive, and it was an adventure just getting to our villa.  

But wow, what a ride it was.  Our location in Eastern Bali meant we got to drive across much of the island, through beautiful terraced rice paddies, towns with elaborate woven offerings on bamboo poles lining the streets, and temple after temple.  We also saw the temple builders, groups of three or four stonecutters set up on the sides of the road, carving huge black boulders into demigods, altars and the square black stone blocks used to build the temples.

In Bali, religion is as much a part of everyday life as eating or even breathing.  I can’t claim to know much about the unique form of Hinduism practiced (the more I research, the more I find to learn), but there is clearly a very personal, practical and everyday spirituality here.  In addition to the temples (at least three per village, and often more), altars to the “all-in-one god” Sanghyang Widi Wasa, who is depicted as an empty throne are present in most establishments.  We saw our hotel staff making daily morning offerings at the altar near our room, and saw similar altars in restaurants, shops, at various spots during our climb up Mt.Batur (one of two active volcanos on the island), and even at the airport.  

The offerings are presented in tiny leaf trays, and usually include flowers, food, salt, even cigarettes.  They are meant to be perishable and are replaced frequently, at least three times a day.  When we climbed Mt. Batur, we also found offerings at a crevice near one of the volcano’s craters, where the heat of the lava causes water to condense and drip of the rock.  Next to the offering was an old plastic bottle collecting the water, which our guide told us is considered holy.  Holy water in an old soda bottle, like I said, a very practical spirituality.

Of course, there is a reason for this practicality, people here are intimately connected to the natural world.  It appears that everybody spends much of the time outdoors.  In fact, “indoors” is kind of a loose concept.  In our rooms, the shower in the bathroom was open to the sky, and there was at least as much living space on the porches as there was in the rooms.  The main lobby and restaurant were a large porch with no walls.  Even shopkeepers and seamstresses set up in three sided tent-like structures, doing their work and watching the world go by, keeping track of who is coming and going. 

And everybody takes care of their friends.  No matter what we wanted to do, someone had a friend who could help us out.  Our driver had a friend to help us get the climbing guide, the guide had a friend who ran the coffee hut at the top of the volcano where we took refuge during a downpour and drank hot tea while we waited for the weather to clear, and so on.  

Somehow connected to this “taking care of friends” is an innovative concept of “karma” that was often brought into play by salespeople touting their wares.  We first encountered it on the black sand beach below our villa, resting after a beautiful morning of snorkeling in the amazing under water world of a vibrant coral reef.  A man walked up selling kites and little sail boats made of sticks and colorful fabrics.  They weren’t an unreasonable price, but we weren’t interested.  “Do it for your karma,” he urged, as though somehow buying something we didn’t need (or in the case of a woman selling batiks, paying more than it was worth), just to help the seller out, would be good for our karma.  “Good for you, good for me,” he urged my son.  Who replied, “well actually, it’s not good for me, because I don’t need it.”

However, we did do our best for our karma (and our taste buds) by finding locally owned restaurants to eat in.  One particularly memorable evening we decided to walk into “town” to find a place for dinner.  We settled on a little restaurant, overlooking the ocean, that was really not more than a large, open deck and a small kitchen.  Noticing that, except for a couple of the owner’s buddies, we were the only guests I was a little worried when I saw the wide range of dishes offered on the menu.  I asked the man what he would recommend, and he suggested a fish curry (the kids chose ham.)  All the food was great.  It was only later, after ordering a fried banana dessert, that I realized I didn’t need to worry.  The owner came over and regretfully told us that his son had scoured the village, but could not find any bananas, would we like the coconut dessert instead?  I realized then that the 14 or 15 year old boy who had been zipping in and out on his motor bike was his dad’s gofer, he was going for whatever fresh ingredients were needed for the dishes we ordered.

At the airport on the way home, we ran into some Singapore friends who had also taken advantage of the school break.  Comparing notes, we realized that, there is still a whole other Bali to experience.  So we will have to go back and shop the stalls in Ubud, climb Mt. Agung, have a Balinese creambath, and maybe even check out the scene at Kuta beach (with the infamous Kuta Cowboys) on the other side of the island.  In the meantime, we brought home a bag of Amed salt bought from a woman who spends her days pouring seawater into long hollowed out logs, then letting it evaporate in the hot Bali sun.  Sprinkled on our ordinary food, it tastes a little like a Bali dream.