I’ve crunched the numbers and think Nyoman’s
great-grandmother must be about 100 years old. Family lore
claims she is 130, but I think there have been a few decades
of slippage in the accounting department. My own grandmothers
were over 90 when they fell off the perch, and I can understand
the temptation to exaggerate.
Dadong still has a good appetite although she constantly apologizes
for eating when she can no longer work for the family.
She gets around the compound with a little help and is still
able to do simple tasks. One eye is sightless now and
the other often out of focus, but she is amazingly alert.
One afternoon when Wayan was sick I came into the compound
with a bag of fruit. There was no one around but ancient,
half-blind Dadong, propped up in the bale. Instantly
she figured out who I was and what I wanted, and jerked a
crooked thumb to the room where Wayan was resting. There
are no flies on Dadong.
Life was hard for Dadong. She married young and bore 7 children,
and they were often hungry. Nyoman was driving me to
Lovina once and mentioned casually that Dadong and her husband
had walked all the way from Ubud to Gilimanuk looking for
work. What an incredible journey that must have been,
over the cold mountains and along the dry north coast.
Her husband died when the children were still small. Dadong
became desperate. Depressed and unable to feed her children,
she tried to hang herself in the bale banjar one night.
But her unskillful knot slipped and she fell unhurt to the
floor. She lay there awhile, disappointed, then decided
that God had decided she should live. So she dusted
herself off and went home.
A few months ago I had a big ceremony and their family compound
was full of activity as everyone made offerings. With just
four days until the Big Day, Dadong decided that her time
was up. Neighbours and family gathered around
the old lady, who was lying in state in the bale when my staff
got home from work. Wayan was distraught. Not only was
she very fond of the old lady, but a death in the family meant
that our ceremony would have to be postponed for a month.
The offerings were nearly finished, the padanda had been booked
and the many complex details aleady arranged. Wayan
made her way briskly through the crowd and took hold of Dadong’s
cold hands in hers. “Not yet, Dadong!” she
pleaded. “Don’t die until after the ceremony.
Wait until Wednesday!” A little while later, Dadong
sat up and demanded a cup of tea. She is still with
us.
At some point there had been a little plot of rice land near
the Singakerta police station that belonged to her husband.
After he died, a rich man came and told her to sign a piece
of paper, and took the land. “People were a bit
stupid in those days,” Wayan says sadly. “They
didn’t understand.”
Wayan is only 32 but her own story is hard to listen to.
Her father became chronically ill when she was about five,
and for the next 15 years she had to find the money to pay
her school fees, forage for food for the family and hunt for
healing herbs in the forest and fields. The family lived
on sweet potatoes and leaves, with a handful of rice shared
between them. There was never any meat. By the
age of seven, Wayan was working side by side with her mother
washing clothes for the neighbours and weaving lontar baskets.
Her baskets were popular and sold quickly, but all the money
went for medicine.
She was rarely in bed before midnight and up early to attend
school each morning. Exhausted and malnourished, she
found it hard to learn to read. While the other children
played, she asked the teacher to help her with her work.
The other kids mocked her because she was always too busy
to play… too busy keeping herself and her family alive.
She has a picture of herself taken by tourists, a skinny kid
sleeping on a mat on the ground under a rough atap roof.
Although her father had several brothers that lived nearby,
none of them ever visited or offered to help. Neither
did the neighbours, although they helped themselves to the
coconuts from the family’s trees.
When she was twelve, Wayan started carrying stones from the
river for a local contractor to pay her school fees.
Before school every morning and without breakfast, she would
climb the steep river bank carrying heavy rocks. Often she
fell and hurt herself. After school she would go back
and work until dark. At the end of two months the contractor
sold his stock of stones. But when Wayan asked for money
to pay her school fees, he brushed her aside. She was
never paid.
Her father owned some rice fields but was too weak to work
them, and there was no water for irrigation in those days
because the other farmers didn’t share it fairly.
At one point, the banjar took the land when the family couldn’t
pay for ceremonies or support the temple. By working
day and night they were able to get it back.
A few years later, both parents became sick. Her mother
cracked under the stress of constant poverty. Tears
run down Wayan’s brown cheeks as she tells how her mother
picked up a big knife one afternoon and threatened to stab
her. “She was a little bit crazy,” she recalls.
“I prayed and prayed, and the knife dropped, and Ibu
slept for ten days.” It was a terrible time.
No one came to help.
The story has a happy ending. She met Nyoman when she
was 23, and he started to drop around and fix up the family
compound. Three years later they married and she moved
to his family compound nearby. She’s loved and
respected by his family, and she and Dadong are very close.
The skinny little girl is a curvy woman now who loves to cook.
Tempered by hard times, Wayan is a cheerful and compassionate
spirit. She’s quick to share everything from money
to clothing with others. “Food is more delicious
when you share it,” she smiles. She should know.
