Last time I was in Bali for New Year’s, I ran into some trouble.

This time, I ran into some people at the royal family’s temple near Ubud- I must shamefully admit to having forgotten this lovely place’s name - who were making Hindu icons out of meat.

To wit:

meat!

this is Barong
a cute Balinese Hindu god that represents goodness
this Barong is made of legumes

this man is making more meat sculptures on the temple grounds

and so is this man

the meat, rather surprisingly, didn’t smell much,
even though Bali is staggeringly warm

if you are wondering why there is meat at the Hindu temple,
I am told it is as an offering to the gods
it is, I’m told, good for animals to be sacrificed to the gods
because it helps the sacrificed animals with their karma
i.e., if an animal is sacrificed to the gods in this life
it will come back in better karmic stead in its next life

while this view is not without its detractors that is why, despite cockfighting being officially illegal in Bali
there is still cockfighting at the temples
and everywhere else, too

because it’s good for the chickens’ karma to die in a temple cockfight
I’m guessing that mostly people just like to participate in cockfighting, and the fate of the chickens is not so relevant

I must admit that having lived in Saipan for five years now
cockfighting doesn’t really come as much of a shock
though cockfighting-for-the-gods does still seem like a new twist

I’ve never seen a religious cockfight in Saipan - I have seen cockfight fundraisers for politicians and that sort of thing

I wish you could read the sign in this photo
because it announces Saipan’s annual three-cock Christmas derby
at the local - extremely legal - cockfighting arena

but back to Bali for a second
because I am still trying to puzzle out some of what I saw there*

*these are not well-formed thoughts - just a few observations
I’m trying to make sense of

there is less poverty in Bali than elsewhere in Indonesia and Southeast Asia but wages in Bali are bad - like, full time wages are frequently less than $100USD/month

but not only are Balinese people not leaving Bali - my highly unscientific research suggests they aren’t even leaving their home villages

so the first thing I’m trying to understand is why people in Bali are less prone to leaving home than people elsewhere even though they could earn much more money elsewhere

the second thing that really struck me is how many artists there are in Bali.
there are more artists in Bali than anyplace I’ve ever been in my entire life - even New York

some people paint

some carve wood

some dance

I gather that the Bali arts-and-crafts scene has three main parts to it: things made for tourists, things made for Balinese ritual use, and things made for export

perhaps each of these things fits in differently with Bali as a whole? I don’t know. (Tell me if you do!)

What I do know is that there are a lot of beautiful things being made by a lot of Bali’s population - an unusual number of things being made by an unusually high number of people, in other words

“We’d rather carve wood than make washing machines,”

someone said to my friend Kate,

which seems to suggest is that carving wood is less profitable but more fulfilling than making washing machines.

true! but what I don’t understand is why these sentiments

- the devotions to craft, to tradition, and to staying home -

are so prevalent in Bali, and not elsewhere in the world.

.

What is different about Bali vis-a-vis these things?

any ideas?

to be fair

most young people I talked to

said they really did not want to go work in the rice paddies

even though that would be a very traditional activity

so it’s not like nothing’s changing

but still - doesn’t it seem unusual what’s happening in Bali?

compare it to, for example, the Philippines and China and Pakistan,

which seem more typical for this day and age re: labor and tradition and crafts

just one more thing:Just now, when I was trying to read more about Balinese animal sacrifice, I did a google search for ‘Balinese karma’. My results were bizarre. The first search result was for a company in Ohio that sells cheap junk you see for sale all over Bali: carved dolphins and bright sarongs and silver trinkets and cute little Buddha sculptures. The next results were hotels, hotels, hotels, hotels, crafts, a few articles about the bombings, and something about Margaret Mead. There was nary a hit about Balinese religion on the first couple of pages. Interesting, don’t you think?

posted by Arin at 1:55 am & filed under Uncategorized, bali, bloggy stuff, cockfighting, saipan, travel, wildlife |