High in the mountains between Bangli and Kintamani lies a village which is not really called Bintang Kaja. Approaching it, we drive through tidier, more prosperous villages. Bougainvillea and alamanda spill over garden walls, rice dries by the side of the road and the children are chubby. Then as we drive higher, the scenery changes. The fields of crops are behind us now. The villages are poorer and less well-tended. There are few flower gardens, no rice drying. The children and dogs are thinner here.
The faces of these people are very different to those from the south of Bali – lean, weathered, slightly wild. Bintang Kaja straggles along the edge of an ancient caldera. Often a light mist rises from the valleys on either side, giving it an other-worldly, slightly out of focus effect. The eruption of nearby Mt. Agung in 1963 reduced the quality of the soil and changed the course of the river that ran near the village; since then, the people haven’t been able to grow rice or most kinds of vegetables. Many subsist on leaves, what fruit they can grow and ketela, a kind of root vegetable that offers little nourishment. They tend a few straggling coffee and cocoa trees and some salak and jackfruit as cash crops, but these generate pathetically little income. Other than a few who moved to Denpasar for work, most villagers farm the few crops. There are two silversmiths in Bintang Kaja, but since the bombing in Kuta they have nothing to do. The only other activity is wood-carving. Several of the village men are engaged in producing the tall wooden cats one sees everywhere. We visit a couple of carvers and watch them work. Who buys the cats? Well, no one has been around for a long time. They are not filling orders, just building up stock for an agent who may never arrive. The carvers can each make two cats a day. When they can sell them, they earn Rp 6,000 per cat, but half of this goes to pay for the wood. The wood itself is a kind of pine that is cut and brought in from elsewhere. It’s so wet the carvers practically hack the shapes out of it. The cats at the bottom of the pile are already beginning to deteriorate.
The touchstone for this community is a radiant woman named Ibu Jero. She’s a powerful balian, a healer who draws clients from as far away as Java. Jero presides over a neat new compound, provided by grateful clients and friends, where people queue up with baskets of offerings for healing sessions. The small cash and food donations they bring are used to support Jero and the young people who help her and turn to her for both spiritual and physical nourishment. Jero also uses the money she receives to buy rice, and other food and medicines for those villagers who can’t afford it. She is consumed with compassion and despair for her people. They are proud, they want to work. She struggles to support them in many different ways in the face of their bleak future, beaming positivity.
Enter a foreign woman who for the purposes of this narrative shall be called Nyoman Weda. A healer who has lived in Bali for many years, she met Jero just before the October bombings in Kuta. The two women became close friends, and Nyoman began to visit Bintang Kaja several times a week, bringing Balinese and Western friends for healings. Then, when she became aware of Jero’s despair over the dire economic situation in the village, she gave Jero sacks of rice and money for medicine and doctors to help out the villagers, but handouts weren’t the answer. She and Jero spent hours discussing the situation and trying to come up with ideas that would start the village on a path to self-sufficiency, if not actual prosperity.Then… together Jero and Nyoman, herself a vortex of positive energy, began to spin magic out of the clear sky above Bintang Kaja.Two months ago, Nyoman wrote an impassioned letter to her friends and family, who responded with enough seed money to purchase eight sewing machines and some fabric. Two of Jero’s young cousins came from Bangli to live at Jero’s house and teach sewing. A tiny back room in the compound has become an ad hoc workshop. The machines are crammed into that little room and into an alleyway next to the kitchen, and the cloth is cut on the balcony outside. Now the pretty, laughing teenagers who help out in Jero’s compound, yet have much idle time, are learning to assemble simple garments, intently finishing seams and cutting out patterns. Their enthusiasm is boundless; they work hard and learn quickly, thrilled to have real work to do. An established clothing designer has sent her tailors to the village to teach the girls to cut and sew. Nyoman cast about for local sewing projects, then decided to draw on her own past experience in the rag trade. She’s now designing eye-catching garments for export, and is confident that she can keep the orders coming in. Her intention is to guide and train them to run their own sewing business.
The next initiative was born when Nyoman met Kees, a Dutch agronomist who was looking for places in Bali to raise ornamental plants for export. Nyoman took a deep breath and she and Jero contracted 44 are of land adjacent to Jero’s compound. After the water and composting systems are installed, they, along with Kees, will organize working groups among the villagers and teach them to look after the plants until they’re large enough for Kees to buy back. Nyoman and Jero hopes this will inspire villagers to grow these plants on their own land. Some of Nyoman’s and Jero’s new land has been set aside for a building for the sewing group, which now numbers 2 teachers and 9 students, ages 12 to 21. She’s now looking for the money to build them a simple, workshop with enough space and light to work comfortably, and store the cloth and sewing machines securely.On my last visit, Jero is electric with excitement. She leads us onto the land and Nyoman and I follow, laughing, as she points out the new ‘edible’ fence that is made from bamboo and vegetable trees. She shows us where the fruit trees will go, the workshop, the water tank, the flower garden. There are so many ideas in the air now – new concepts for cash crops, value-added designs for the wood carvers, more projects for the tailors, training…"Hopefully more people will join us in what we are doing," says Ibu Jero.
" They can add to the energy with building materials, skills, money, ideas…"
There’s a new dynamism in Bintang Kaja these days. The inspiration of two remarkable women has created the space and potential for something wonderful to grow. What’s happening here is much more than the sum of its parts, and everyone can feel it. There’s excitement in the air. All the people in the little village are moving ahead on its momentum, moving a little higher, a little closer to self-sufficiency.If reading this has touched something in you, get in touch. Maybe you can be part of the magic at Bintang Kaja.
