Switching Hemispheres: Maine to Bali, Part I - By Al Hickey
Goodbye to man-high snowdrifts, ice storms, the deep silence of the northern woods, hundreds of pine-sentinelled boating lakes, big empty highways, high speed broadband, food stamps, free schools, free school buses, subsidized heating and electricity and total free medical and dental health care coverage for the entire family.
Welcome to the land of palm trees, the clanging of gamelan, noxious smoke burning from trash fires, mangy scabrous dogs, jam karet, you’re on your own, rolling blackouts, excruciatingly slow internet speeds, ludicrously low property taxes and labor, garden fresh vegetables, 12-year-old girls driving motorcycles without licenses or helmets and a row of awesome volcanoes right out my window.
In the spring of 2005, after a two-year struggle with contractors, tax authorities and bureaucrats, we finally finished our villa in Tabanan, deep in island’s rice basket in the hills of west Bali. It was time for a well-earned vacation, so why not take the Indonesian wife and kids back to the States to finally meet the family?
We flew to east coast USA in March of that year, planning to visit for only six months, but the second Bali bomb in October changed all that. Why go back now? It would take the island at least two years to recover physically, economically, emotionally and spiritually, so we decided to hunker down awhile in the States in the bosom of the family.
Life in the Maine Woods
We first lived in the dank basement of my cousin’s house in Waltham, Massachusetts – dubbed the “Watch City” as timepieces were mass-produced here for the first time – where I managed his boarding house for free rent and plowed snow from parking lots for a living.
We enjoyed the newness of urban American life and immersed ourselves into the social fabric of the community. We enrolled our daughter in the local elementary school, joined the library and YMCA, my wife took ESL courses, and on weekends fed ducks on the Charles River and took rides into the verdant Berkshires Mountains of Western Massachusetts.
But it wasn’t long before the growling traffic, the exuberant singing from the Baptist church next door and underground life where we could only ever see the tops of trees grew old. So we borrowed $9000 from my little sister and bought a mobile home in Maine, a state that offered the only affordable housing within 200 miles. We lived in a quiet corner of a trailer park under tall stately pine trees.
At the onslaught of that first winter, we lived through nearly arctic conditions. Every week I had to dig us out by first shoveling a bank of snow from in front of the door to open it, and then clear the deck, walkway, car and driveway. Four-foot-long icicles hung from the roof gutters and electric thermal sleeves had to be wrapped around water pipes to keep them from freezing.
Peering through the halo of ice on the windows was a sub-zero scene of surpassing beauty - trees heavy with snow, the steely glint of stars, the profound stillness, white blanketing everything. But after a year, it was time to get back to our long-neglected property in Bali. Leaving behind the excellent schooling was the most difficult part of all.
We sold our mobile for about the same price we paid for it and set out a three-week trip on the Oregon Trail across the USA to California, visiting Niagara Falls, a Mennonite commune in Michigan, Devil’s Tower, Yellowstone and the redwoods of California. It was the trip of a lifetime.
In late September 2009 we flew China Airlines out of San Francisco to Jakarta. As soon as the boarding bridge doors at Soekaro-Hatta opened, thick humidity rushed into the plane. Our family of three Indonesians and one Westerner father stood in the line meant for airline personnel. We were cleared in less than five minutes.
From the arrival terminal we stepped outside into the oppressive, energy sapping, shirt drenching heat, which filled every pore. In Maine I would curse the bone-penetrating cold that seeped into every corner of our home, but as I walked out to the airport parking lot I mumbled to myself “I can never live in this country. There must be a place in between.”
A family friend had driven our car from Bali to pick us up. It had not been enough that my mother-in-law had started the engine every week and moved it back and forth in the garage. Our six-year-old Toyota had basically sat on concrete for two and a half years. The inner tubes were ruined. It had needed new tires, a tune-up and an oil change before the long road trip to Jakarta.
A couple of days later we set out on the nearly 1000-km journey across the island of Java to Bali. At least from the highway, Java must be one of the ugliest, most polluted, congested, noisiest large islands in the world. Billboards, festering canals, derelict half-finished buildings littered the landscape. Clouds of whining coughing motorcycles swooped in from all sides like flies; lumbering trucks spewing black exhaust enveloped our little passenger car. We overnighted in Bondowoso and left early the next morning for the final marathon run to Bali, catching the last ferry from Banyuwangi across the strait.
The Homecoming
In the middle of the morning we arrived back at our long-ignored villa in Tabanan. Our Toyota groaned up the 3-meter-wide driveway that rises almost perpendicularly from an equally narrow country road and entered the parking lot.
The location we chose to build is about as “real Bali” as it gets. Many of the inhabitants of the nearby hamlet don’t even speak Indonesian. During ceremonies you can hear blood-curdling screams issuing from the nearby temple under an immense sacred banyan tree.
Like being in the middle of a nature reserve, the small complex of buildings we call home was built on a ridge completely surrounded by rice fields. The dancing lights of Denpasar airport and all the frenzy of southern Bali lay a cushioned 35 miles away in the distance.
It was the first day of Galungan in the middle of a heat wave. No shops were open and not a tradesman was working within a 50 kilometers radius. Over the coming weeks, our very own House in Bali was to turn into our very own Alamayer’s Folly - a black hole into which we will pour thousands of dollars to bring back to life.
Our villa is an impressive enough structure on the outside, but if you actually live in it, then you are at the mercy of all the elements as it is exposed on all sides to wind, rain, plant life, pests and invading insects. The driveway was covered with moss and overgrown grass, the prize avocado tree was split down the middle, bushes were overgrown, fruit lay rotting on the ground and weeds were growing up through cracks in the parking lot pavement.
The extensive rice fields all around our whole property were immaculately maintained. We left the house in the care of Balinese farmers who had filled every square meter of garden space with sawah. They would grow rice in the living room if they could. But Balinese farmers don’t understand the mechanics of a flush toilet let alone how to take care of a complicated residential complex.
The curtains were mildewed, anthills climbed up the corners, frames of windows had been eaten away by termites and half the lights didn’t work because critters had infested the light sockets. Predatory long-bodied wasps floated menacingly around in the air, dried gecko droppings speckled the floors, clogged and cobwebbed toilets stank, dirty windows obscured the views, curling paint and water stains covered the walls, rusted bicycles rested on flat tires, two big million-rupiah windows were cracked either from earth tremors or the wind roaring down the ridgeline from Batukaru. Ceramic tiles on the counter in the middle of the kitchen were cracked or missing (heavy farm implements?). On top of everything else, an unknown housecat was pregnant.
Among other instances of appallingly shoddy work, our fly-by-night contractor failed to install a Rp75,000 water filter in the well. Now the interior plumping was filled with underground guck and sediment and there was no running water. For the first week long blue hoses led from the water tower into all the windows of the main building, like a mother space ship taking on fuel.
My wife frantically called a professional electrical contractor. When he finally arrived a week later he became visibly angry. “I work for millions of rupiah, not on small jobs like this,” he sniffed. The Rp200,000 she gave him for “gas money” barely consoled him.
As it turned out, a persistent and tireless krupuk-seller from Bandung got every light switch and tap working again. Nandang didn’t quit until he doggedly scraped, poked, banged, gouged, bored and blew out every clogged pipe. The bathtub wouldn’t drain, so he had to hack a hole in the side and dig out and replace the drainage pipe under the bathroom floor. For a week the back of the house looked like a demolition site.
But finally the day came. After a month, an outlay of about $4500 and hundreds of hours of labor, our villa was made livable again. Now in the early morning as I gaze out at mighty Gunung Agung lit fire red by the rising sun, a silver thread of water falling down Batukaru’s jagged broken caldera, bite into an exquisitely crunchy Malang apple, hear the soft dreamy sound of a faraway gamelan, the inexplicable tinkling of bells or look up at the night sky filled with billions of stars, I know we’ve come home and all is right the world.
A Bit of Advice
If you’re contemplating leaving the island for any length of time, don’t even think about leaving your house unattended or poorly attended. A dwelling in the tropics needs constant upkeep. If something’s broken, you have to jump right on it and fix it. The weeds and grass sprouting up through the parking lot’s paving stones could have been prevented had we first covered the whole area with thick plastic, and then laid the stones on top. Second best is to have had the occupants spray it with the Asian equivalent of Round Up, a long-lasting brand of weed killer.
Water needs to be flowing through all the pipes to keep them unobstructed and flowing and hot electrical current needs to be running through the lights and appliances to keep them humming and discourage insect invasion. If you’re going to leave your car behind, jack it up and set it down on blocks so you don’t degrade the tires. Likewise, hang up bicycles so you don’t have to replace the tires. Wrap all electronics, appliances books and paper goods in thick plastic or cardboard. Throw in some fresh pepper kernels. If books are exposed to the air, move them around periodically.
Note: In the upcoming Switching Hemispheres: Part II, read about how this transplanted family adapts to the complete reversal of parent roles, what’s different about driving the big empty roads of Maine and the chaotic roads of Bali, how a ten-year old Indonesian-American girl found religion again, and why living in the countryside of the island of the gods isn’t idyllic as it’s made out to be.
