Recently, Mekar Bhuana Conservatory was invited to perform court gamelan in Singapore. This was not only an exciting opportunity for these traditional musicians to travel and present seriously classical Balinese music outside of Indonesia, but also a bit of a cultural lesson. Putu Evie, the director of the conservatory, started by explaining to them that certain Balinese habits are not acceptable in many countries, particularly in Singapore.
Three months before we left, training started by tackling the first issue: smoking. Informing them that passive smoking endangers the health of non-smoking members, especially the kids in the group, didn’t have an effect—it was the threat of the hefty penalties in Singapore that really hit home. After several sessions of gentle coaxing, the smokers got used to spending their coffee breaks squatting on the road outside the gate.
Next was littering—a habit that has cultural roots was the hardest to deal with: I’ll just chuck my crap on the ground—somebody will pick it up for me. We provided numerous bins (complete with signs on them) but it wasn’t until at least a month that 90% of the group would use them. Cigarette butts, however, never seem to qualify as rubbish and constantly ‘decorated’ the entranceway.
In many other parts of the world, you can be arrested and end up in front a court on sexual harassment charges if you whistle or call out to women in pubic. In Bali, it’s just a bit of harmless boyish fun. This was policed regularly by my wife until the guys didn’t even blink an eyelid at the sexiest of female by-passers.
Banning three of the most in-ground Balinese boy habits was not the easiest thing, but by the time they arrived at Changi airport all 26 were the most perfectly behaved Balinese ambassadors—and made us proud.
This experience proved that with a bit of education (and vigilante-like enforcement!), many of these archaic habits can be phased out. One day Bali will catch up—I suppose it’s just a matter of ‘rubber’ time…
