"Good Spirits"
Because the ocean recedes so far at low tide, Nusa Lembongan’s farmers can wade out and tend to ocean-floor seaweed farms twice a day. Strips of pearl white sand separate these shadowy patches of vegetation, visible beneath the crystalline waters. This creates a mottled, checkerboard effect stretching across the ocean strait and up to the fog-shrouded volcanoes on Bali’s shore.
It’s a calming respite from the frenzy of Bali’s mainland. After a two-hour ferry ride (surrounded on all sides by seasick locals transporting melons and diapers), I’m relaxing on the agricultural island of Lembongan. Specifically: on the restaurant deck of Pondok Baruna, a quaint homestay with a staff of five young Indonesian men. Lean and mischievous-looking Kadek suggests that I try the jaffle (two pieces of bread waffle-ironed around ingredients like egg, cheese, and avocado) and Bintang, the local beer. O-kay.
Most of the staff leaves after my order, but one stays behind – he’s roguish, a more Asian and more tan Han Solo. “You are traveling alone?” he asks.
“I am.”
“Then I will sit with you. I am Made Abel.”
Instantly, he talks. Gushes. He tells me about Balinese weddings (three-day long traveling events), his friends who are MBA (‘Married Because of Accident’), that his youngest brother looks after his parents as they grow old and, in turn, receives all the family’s possessions. He talks about religion, elephants, fireworks, Japanese girls, diving, about the incense and flower sacrifices that make the streets smell sweet.
Then my food comes. He says, “Enjoy, Andrew!”
And like that, he’s gone.
But every meal, it’s the same treatment. I eat when I’m not hungry just for the company. I tell him I studied film – he demands I make a movie about a beautiful American actress who visits Bali and falls in love with him. Then declares himself a movie star. He shares plans to open his own homestay on June 8, 2014 – his thirtieth birthday.
I offer to buy him a Bintang, and he says ‘not at work.’ He works from 6 AM to 10 PM, seven days a week, without breaks. I suggest meeting after, and ask where he lives. “I stay here,” he says.
“Which room?”
“No. I stay here.” And he points to the restaurant floor. “Employee quarters burned down six months ago, and destroyed everything. So I sleep here.”
He said this smiling.
“All that lived is my passport, and I have never left the country!” He laughs. “But it is okay. It is sign that some day, I will. Maybe to America, to be movie star!”
That was typical of Bali: that unabashed joie de vivre. Strangers gave me free motorcycle rides, invited me to their family temples, initiated dozens of conversations. Despite such hard living conditions, the people of Bali and Lembongan were the most charming, most selfless people I’d ever met in my entire life. That generosity of spirit isn’t in the brochures. But it’s the reason I’ll be back on June 8, 2014.
