ALL IN A DAY
It is almost the end of the day.
A Sunday that has been filled with so many sights, smells and sounds.
No wonder I am feeling so nauseous and overstuffed.
My nude profile in the full-length mirror looks like a woman, nine months pregnant.
Every evening as I sink into bed I say to myself….
‘Tomorrow I will be reasonable with food.
Only eat when I feel hungry.
Small amounts.
A bit of gentle yoga after I wake in the morning.
Nothing too strenuous.
Perhaps lie in bed while I read something soothing and not too intellectually taxing.
Then a slow swim in the pool.
Or even, no swim, just a float, while I listen to the morning chorus of roosters, doves and forest birds.’
But it never happens.
I wake.
Jump out of bed.
Contemplate the day.
And excitement rises.
Will it be the Ubud market again to photograph the women and their piles of vegetables, tables of flowers or suckling pig snacks wrapped in brown paper?
Or perhaps a wander through the Monkey Forest to watch the monkeys and take some close-up shots?
A leisurely breakfast at Bali Buddha?
Last night I drifted off to sleep holding my pillow, thankful that I could sleep in in the morning…nowhere to go, no photos to take, a relaxing day to drift through.
At what had seemed a very early hour, I had heard….
‘Lynne...Lynne’ spoken soothingly, unhurried, softly.
My dream had continued unperturbed.
Finally consciousness had kicked in.
I had opened my eyes and stared at the door.
A faint silhouette that could have been somebody was outlined against the blind covering the door.
‘Yes’
I called faintly.
The silhouette moved.
I jumped out of bed, calling
‘Wait a moment’
threw on my clothes and slid open the door.
There stood Eka, the new household help from the local village.
‘Sorry Ibu’, she murmured,
‘I go to Sukawarti market now. You want come too?’
‘Yes, OK. Give me 5 minutes Eka’.
After a short, completely misunderstood conversation between Eka and myself regarding who would ride the motorbike and who would sit on the back, we finally drove up the cement driveway with Eka on the back and me driving.
I am always surprised to see people already working when I ride early along the dirt road lined with coconut palms that leads from the village out to the main road.
Yesterday, a grey-haired grandmother was half hidden from view among the purple-flowering snake beans hanging from their bamboo trellises. She was picking the arm-length beans and looked up as I passed.
On my return three hours later she had made two large piles of beans on the raised edge next to the bean field and was tying the bundles with a piece of dried grass.
At the edge of a distant rice field a farmer walked slowly, wearing the same yellow shirt I had seen him wearing the day before.
Another farmer crouched in the mud, harvesting kangkung, water spinach, surrounded by cut stalks poking out of the ground.
An old woman, faded sarong tied around her hips, carried a curved machete in one hand, slowly making her way along the road.
I am riding along that same road even earlier this morning with Eka, weight barely noticeable on the back of the bike and it seems as if most of the village people are out in their fields as the sun shines pale yellow through the clouded sky.
We ride on through villages and along stretches of forested road, Eka saying ‘right’ or ‘left’ from time to time.
The morning air feels cool and by the time we arrive at the market town I am feeling almost awake.
The bike is parked and the parking fee of 1,000rp paid to the parking attendant.
We pick our way along the wet street trying to avoid large pools of water, scrounging, skinny dogs and passing motorbikes.
I am not sure if Eka is here to shop or just to show me around so I ask her.
She says that she has some shopping to do for her family.
We walk past women sitting at low tables or squatting next to piles of vegetables or fruit. There is a strong smell of wet farmyard and rotting vegetables in the air and the streets are a lot dirtier than in Ubud.
Piles of discarded vegetables and plastic rubbish vie for space among the huge variety of produce.
Eka stops at one stall and buys a small bunch of kale.
We move on down a narrow alley, past women selling sweet rice in banana leaf parcels, squares of purple coloured sago or green pandan leaf-tinted tiny, round rice flour cakes, sprinkled with grated fresh coconut and palm sugar syrup.
Eka chooses six pieces of the purple sago jelly and I offer to pay for it. She looks surprised but accepts with a gracious nod of the head and a shy smile.
The seafood here at this market is a lot more varied than the cooked mackerel, slices of grey fish, green prawns and tiny eels on offer at the Ubud market.
Although I do not see the bags filled with live snails or the blood pudding and suckling pig snacks that I have noticed in Ubud.
The sate sticks with their half dozen, tiny bits of marinated chicken are being deftly twirled on the coconut shell charcoal braziers and the smoke mingles with the smell of pungent, tiny dried fish and yellow-fleshed jackfruit slices.
My empty stomach is beginning to reel.
After buying some bananas, a bag of mandarins and a small bunch of pink water-lilies, we head back along the road to the bike.
Eka’s shopping for her family has consisted of one small bunch of kale and a brown paper cone filled with the squares of sago jelly.
I wonder if she just wanted to show me the market?
Ten kilometres there and back on a bike for two small purchases doesn’t seem to make much economical sense.
I drop Eka back to her house at the edge of the village.
She told that there are a lot of people living at her family house.
Her mother and father, her grandparents, an auntie, her cousins, her younger sister and herself.
I wonder who will get to eat the six pieces of sago jelly?
A very elderly woman wearing an old sarong and woolly cardigan is walking out of the front gate when we pull up.
‘Your grandmother?’ I ask Eka, suddenly feeling embarrassed in case it is her mother.
‘Yes’ says Eka.
I smile at the old woman as Eka says something to her.
‘Selamat pagi Ibu’ I say and move forward to shake the grandmother’s hand.
She nods her head and gives my hand a very small, gentle shake.
I drive back to the villa and drop my market shopping in my room.
Do I go back to bed or take a leisurely swim in the pool?
No.
It’s back on the bike and off to the food market at Ubud.
I arrive at the food market in Ubud.
Women sit selling fruit, onions, red shallots, chilis, palm sugar, palm leaves for offerings and slices of honeycomb.
The women who sell the take-away food in brown paper cones, have almost emptied their enamel basins of vegetable and chicken curries, bean and coconut salad, sambols and rice.
The young men that sell piles of coloured lace fabric and secondhand clothes have finished packing everything back into huge plastic bags.
One of them recognizes me and calls out a cheery
‘Hello Miss!’.
I move through the darkened passageway, where several stalls sell spices, sauces, carved wooden Buddhas and small round tins of silver clove ointment.
I pass more women selling fruit, baskets of flowers, materials for making offerings and the man with his woven basket filled with day old chickens. Finally I am standing at the top of the stairs leading down to the food market.
I am beginning to recognize some of the women who sit here day after day. They are always in the same spot selling more or less the same thing.
The woman on the stairs with the tray of dark, coiled blood pudding and small plastic packets of green chilli sambol.
The group of women who sit waiting for casual requests to carry loads from here to someplace else. Always watching, sometimes joking, often laughing.
And at the bottom of the stairs on the left, half hidden away, the woman who sells packs of peanuts, cassava and taro chips, soy crisps and rice crackers, all shapes and colours.
The salt woman at the bottom of the stairs, who also recognizes me.
We share a friendly smile as I remember how I had begun to buy a kilo bag of coconut from her the day before, only to discover that it was salt.
Beyond her, in a covered alcove, the tables of freshly butchered meat, beef, pork or chicken, dimly lit, impossible for me to photograph unless I use a flash.
Dogs wander among the tables licking at the blood-soaked empty plastic bags. Flies have a morning sip, as they wander over the bits of chicken or slices of meat, incense curling from flower-decked offering boxes high up on the wall.
Out in the open area sit the women selling vegetables, fish, and flowers. Day in day out.
After buying a wooden coconut grater I stop at the table where the woman sits who sells jackfruit and coconut.
She tells me that it is 7000 rph for a whole coconut cracked and de-shelled or 5000 for a coconut as is.
Moving on to the suckling pig stall, I have accepted a paper cone filled snack where the woman, after originally giving me a 20,000 rph price, has now reduced it down to 10,000.
Not for me, but I want to take it back to the villa for the Balinese kitchen staff, Gede, Wayan and Kadek.
Gede told me yesterday that he liked suckling pig and that the correct price to pay at the market would be 10,000rph.
I leave the food market after buying several small packets of ground spices for my kitchen back at the villa.
A quick ride on the motorbike and I have arrived at Bali Buddha, a café on a small side street off the main road in Ubud.
I am still feeling slightly nauseous so order a soto ayam, or traditional Balinese chicken soup.
The soup arrives and I am very disappointed.
The chicken is chewy, the soup lacking in flavour, with few vegetables and no herbs and the experience not nourishing as I was hoping.
I comfort myself with the dessert, living tropical fruit pie and a delicious drink consisting of dates, bananas and milk, a ‘dosha balancing drink’, an ayurvedic speciality.
I read my book, ‘Arabesques’, by Robert Dessaix, and the time passes, well spent.
I have an urge to photograph monkeys in the wild.
Riding the bike along the streets, taking care in among the buses, cars and motorbikes, I finally reach the sacred monkey forest.
Bike parked, I walk up the road into the forest after paying the 20,000 rph entry fee at the entrance.
There are several monkeys nearby, eating bananas or sweet potato chunks, feeding babies, sleeping or grabbing bananas off tourists.
I walk along until I reach the path that goes down to the sacred spring.
I stand for a moment and watch a male monkey pulling at his penis.
He continues, as several tourists make laughing comments in passing. Finally a creamy drop oozes out of the end of his penis.
He looks at it, wipes it off with his finger and eats it.
On this pathway I spend a wonderful moment getting up close and friendly with a beautiful mother macaque and her tiny, black-haired baby. It is only later that I realize she has given birth very recently, the umbilical cord is still trailing from the baby’s abdomen and the mother’s hind parts are red and swollen.
Down at the bottom of the pathway, after descending a multitude of steps and passing underneath a gigantic strangler fig whose trailing roots hang down to the staircase, a small temple appears.
Two obese female statues sit at the bottom of the stairs leading up to the temple gateway.
Moss-covered, bulging breasts, pendulous stomachs, bulbous noses.
I can well believe that no demon in his right mind would want to cross these two powerful Mamas.
A square stone pool contains sacred water from the spring, watched over by a mossy stone carved ganesha and a statue of a woman pouring water from a vase.
At the corner of the pool sits a carved stone frog holding his very swollen penis.
Tourists pose next to him for a souvenir to take home to St Petersburg, Madrid or Sydney.
I wonder what he is doing there.
Fertility statue?
The penis has no moss growing on it and shines smoothly black.
It’s owner shows the ravages of time. He has a velvety moss coat.
I have photographed enough monkeys now and make my way back to the bike.
Then it’s a short ride up Monkey Forest Road and a left turn towards the restaurant ‘Casa Luna’.
I settle in with an ‘Arak Attack’.
Arak being the local fermented palm wine and therefore much cheaper than a tequila.
The attack consists of a sizeable proportion of arak with lime juice and tonic water.
It is not too bad.
Although I feel the effect very quickly.
I must check what percentage of alcohol is in arak.
I suspect it is way above beer or wine, more like the home-made liqueurs in France.
Lethal.
I have ordered steak with creamy pepper sauce.
It is perfectly cooked, delicious and comes with potatoes and a salad of thinly sliced purple cabbage, tomato and cucumber.
I am on a roll reading ‘Arabesques’.
Robert Dessaix is a brilliant writer.
He is speaking of his posthumous relationship with the French writer Albert Gide.
Several times I laugh out loud…with great joy.
I feel like I am having a conversation with Dessaix.
Perhaps it is the arak, but life is good, FEELS good.
Dessaix is making the most truthful, hilarious and clever remarks about relationship, sexuality and aging that I have ever come across.
I stifle a few more outbursts of genuine hilarity behind my carefully ironed Casa Luna serviette and finish the glass of arak.
I can’t believe it but I have ordered another arak attack.
I hope that the bike ride back to the villa, 8 km, will be a smooth event-free ride.
And now I call the waitress over to order a dessert.
Almond chocolate torte…and a latte.
I am now feeling decidedly full.
Even over full.
Perhaps slightly decadent.
I am sure Robert Dessaix would be clapping his hands with delight.
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