As the election for the next US president enters the final weeks and heats up, more and more American nutcases crawl out of their paranoid cocoons. As an American expatriate who spent the first forty years of my life at home, and the past nineteen over in Asia, I find all of this troubling, irritating, worrisome, and, somehow, vaguely hopeful.

I’ve been alternately amused and horrified by how McCain and Palin have responded to an economic crisis that is rapidly spreading outward from America to the rest of the world. Starting with McCain’s initial grandstanding (I’m suspending my campaign…) to Palin’s inability to demonstrate that she understands anything about the US economy or the rest of the world generally, they have tried to awaken and energize the worst in the American national character – racism, xenophobia, isolationism, and ethnocentrism in order to avoid addressing the most pressing problem throughout the world today. The images coming out of the Republican rallies are beginning to get frightening. That Americans are openly exhibiting this type of behavior publicly is worrisome. That supposedly responsible journalists and politicians continue to justify the McCain/Palin rhetoric that is bordering on the dangerous is irritating to say the least.

But, there are rays of hope in all this. The hope? The hope is that an African-American is so close to becoming the President of the United States. The country has come so far from my days as a Middle School student supporting JFK and then as a High School student working in the Civil Rights and anti-war movement. Will Barack Obama be the leader who can address the many problems still confronting American society? Maybe not (time will only tell), but he offers the hope that he can energize the young people in America to move from the culture of greed and individualism to the culture of service and participation.

I’ve watched the prestige of America drop precipitously over the past eight years as the Bush/Cheney administration has created a rift between America and most of the rest of the world. Even those countries that have traditionally had ties with us have moved away. Most of my colleagues during my years overseas have been non-Americans, and I have watched them take on anti-American attitudes as the US has pushed its own agenda on the rest of the world. Not surprisingly, they are almost completely pro-Obama because, in part, they see him as willing to develop an era of partnership with the rest of the world. I’ve already done my job and voted in this election. If you are an American overseas, make sure that you put your vote in as well. It’s our responsibility to the United States and the rest of the world.

I’m known for the lack of traveling that I do. Usually, I stick to driving one of my daughters to school, going to one of the local stores for shopping, visiting the bank once a week and snorkeling in front of the house. It’s a pretty non-adventurous life. I certainly couldn’t have done this ten years ago – I would have gone stir crazy, but ten years can have a calming effect on a person. My years in Pakistan during the early days of the war in Afghanistan were fairly adventurous, and my nine years of roaming the jungles of New Guinea were exciting and gave me a wealth of tales to tell. I’ve more or less settled into a family-oriented life now – the kids, my wife, and reading and writing keep me satisfied and amused.

However, I still am struck by the occasional need to get out of the house, the neighborhood, and the city and wander around Bali to see what is going on in the other parts of the island. This past weekend, I headed down South to Kuta with two friends to spend a few days just looking around, as I haven’t spent any time there in years.

I was astounded by the amount of money that is evident in all the luxury houses, apartments, commercial buildings, condos and villas. Huge billboards advertising one housing development after the next with prices listed at $150,000 and up and up blighted the view along Sunset Road. We pulled in to Carrefour so that I could check on what items they had for sale there, and again I was amazed at all the imported specialty food items.

One of the characteristics of aging is a tendency to anchor reality somewhere in a past often veiled by the mists of time. I noticed that my comments during the two days we were down south were punctuated with “I remember when this was…” By the end of the second day, I was just getting to accepting the reality of the south as it is now – one continually developing sprawl of malls, housing complexes and businesses catering to the ever increasing expatriate and tourist population.

For me, the trip was useful because it gave me a more realistic idea of what is happening in the south. I feel much more confident now answering the regular email questions that appear in my inbox about where I would live if I had the chance to move again. No question for me that I continue to be a partisan of Buleleng.

Yesterday was Lebaran – the end of the fasting month. Some expat once explained it as Christmas without Jesus – not quite right, but close enough I suppose for those that don’t really get the previous month.

So, we all got up for morning prayers (the family from around the country are all assembled here in our house) and drove in various vehicles to the field where the mass prayers take place in Singaraja. Prayers went on uneventfully. It’s amazing how much of laid-back thing that is here compared to other countries with Muslim majorities. Guys were sitting around smoking before prayers began which is not exactly up to par as once you do wudzu  - ritual cleaning before prayers – you’re not allowed to get dirty again. But, that’s all part of the more relaxed Islam here.

So after prayers, we returned to the house. The kids went to the cemetery where their grandparents are buried, and my wife made breakfast for me. Before I had finished breakfast, the kids returned. 10 children ranging from 18 to 3 filed past, all sneaking a look at me and then hurrying to the back house whispering and giggling. I knew what that was about, but I studiously ignored them and finished up my omlet.

A small head peaked around the corner from the beach house to check on my status. I smiled, it a cigarette and took a sip of coffee. Another head popped up a few minutes later while I continued to have a leisurely smoke.

Another head popped around the corner and some more giggling followed. I finished my coffee and gave my wife the sign. She called the children in who slowly and patiently lined up at my chair. Out came my roll of new banknotes. And one by one, the children collected their Eid money, kissed my hand  and ran off to the back of the house.

And so another Ramadhan finished and another Eid began.

Well, the long month of Ramadan officially ended here in Indonesia tonight, much to my (and many others’ relief). The first and last weeks are always the hardest for me. The first week is difficult because I need to get in the rhythm of waking and eating and then sleeping and waking and then sleeping and waking again. All this because of the kids’ school schedules. Indonesia is a multi-cultural, multi-religious nation, but depending on where you live, customs and school schedules can be quite different.

When we lived in  South Sumbawa which is almost completely Muslim, the kids were given most of the month of Ramadan off for vacation. Here in Bali where most of the population is Hindu, the kids get a couple of days off for Ramadan while their main vacations are planned around the major Hindu religious holidays. And with four children in three different schools, schedules vary from day to day. One child has PE on Tuesdays and needs to get up at 5 AM, another two have PE on Wednesdays and needs to get up early that day, but the other two can sleep until 5:30, and the last has her PE day on Thursdays. Anyway, I think you get the point.

So tonight is Takbiran (the last night of the fasting month) and everyone in the kampung is driving around in vehicles celebrating. I’m on the third floor, as usual, writing. No getting up at 3:15 tomorrow morning. A relief.

The point, though, as I have mentioned before is to control our desires and needs and to remember the less fortunate. In this small kampung where so many exist on a subsistence level, it is impossible to forget the less fortunate. All I need to do is look next door where my neighbor still has half of his roof missing from the storms last January because he doesn’t have the money to replace the tiles. Or a glance at the neighbor to the west, who has a house with the thinnest plywood serving as the walls for his dwelling. The old Christian saying often goes through my mind, there but for the grace of God…

Controlling the desires and needs is something else. That is a lot more difficult. I am a smoker – I’ve quit many times only to begin again once I hit a period of stress. For me, Ramadan is a powerful reminder that I can control those needs and desires if only I have the resolve. Unfortunately, outside of Ramadan, the pleasures of smoking outweigh just about everything else.

Tomorrow morning is the day of community prayers that take place here in Singaraja in the large field just down the street from the police headquarters. Tomorrow, I’ll finish up the month of blogs and videos on Ramadan

Ramadan is coming to a close. Actually, I’m not sure how many more days, but less than a week. It may be Tuesday or it may be Wednesday. Either way, it will be nice to get back to trying to develop a routine again.

My book has been selling again recently after the wonderful review from Dr. Phil in Hawaii. Ah, the writer’s ego. It’s less a question of money than it is knowing that someone is reading it and enjoying reading it. I’m spending most days writing the new book on international education and finding that as I write it, I am developing this incredible urge to get back to teaching again. Age is working against that at this point as I’ll be 60 next June, and most schools are not going to want to hire a new teacher who is 60. But, what I’m finding is that I have been developing new ideas on teaching now that I have the time to reflect. Hmm? Have I said this before? Could be old-timer’s disease setting in.

I’ve started doing a lot of video shooting recently since I began putting videos up on YouTube. I’m not shooting anything in particular at this point, just a lot of scenes of Singaraja. The videos are a break from writing, and I want to see where that takes me.

I asked an expat who lives up here and has just returned after 11 months back in his home country if he found changes. He said no. Understandable as he has just arrived, but another expat who hasn’t been here that long chimed in that there were no changes. I found that irritating when I first read it, because it’s obvious to all of us who have been here for years that everything has changed here. It’s the one constant in conversations that I have with old friends around Buleleng.

But, as I was weaving through traffic this afternoon on my way to Hardy’s to buy a bottle of scotch, it just hit me that it’s about the eye. Actually, a scene from an old episode of Num3ers flashed before my inner eye (hate that when I’m trying to drive), where Larry says that his father was disappointed that Larry couldn’t see things the way that he saw them as an artist.

OK, anthropology now. So we are trained to see things differently, more intensely, to analyse every road sign, every conversation, the placement of a building in a village. I can close my eyes and remember all the houses on the beach in Anturan back almost 20 years ago, who had electricity and who didn’t. Why? Because that was what I was trained to do.

In the case of the new expat who didn’t see anything new, what does he know about the past – as he says he’s interested in real estate prices and the gossip of who attended this party or who got drunk at that party. A timely reminder to stay away from the expat scene because it clouds the vision.

OK, the itch to move. I haven’t been out of Singaraja since June 29, well except for driving my ex around when she was visiting, and that really doesn’t count because I was thinking of her and what she wanted to do.

What I want to do is get out on my own and drive around. Get some new perspective. I used to do these trips by myself a lot years ago when I was working in Irian and living here during my vacations. They were liberating – getting out on the road, going no where in particular. A plan to go to Ubud and hang out for a day or two, or down to Candidasa to see what was going on there. The best part wasn’t the arrival; it was the trip itself. Just being out on the bike alone.

1.     I’ve uploaded two videos to YouTube after watching an interesting video done by an American anthropologist and his students who are doing participant observation on virtual communities. I’m watching to see what happens there.

2.    The YouTube videos are, as I’ve said on the videos, another medium to work with in writing about life over here. It’s nice to get beyond written language for a while.

3.    Now that my children have access to the internet, it’s fascinating to see how quickly they have adapted it to their personal interests. My second daughter is on to the social network scene; my second son uses it to search for science information. Two points to back up my long held belief that if children want to learn, they will figure out ways to do it by themselves if there is no one there to interfere with them. There’s an interesting TED talk about this which I will be reviewing in a few days.

4.    It’s gotten hot here in Singaraja. I forgot about how hot it can actually be here, as June, July and August are nice and cool here on the coast.

5.    I love the freedom that retirement has given me to do things when I want to do them.

6.    I miss teaching and doing something that I’m fairly good at.

7.    Politeness is a trait that isn’t given enough value these days. I’m amazed at how rude people can be on the internet. What happened to civility? One of the things that I love to hear from folks that visit here is how polite my children are.

8.    Why do people build houses with pools when they have a house on the ocean? It seems to be one of the negative things that Westerners bring here. Quite anti-social. Swimming in the ocean with the neighbors is a great way to develop social interaction.

9.    Why do foreigners want to come here and live in these foreigner only gated communities? What’s the point of living in Bali if you’re not involved in the Balinese community?

10.    What do old men (guys my age and older) see in really young women? OK, beyond the obvious? And please, for the sake of the rest of us, don’t wander around the supermarket groping each other.

This is the first month of Ramadan when I haven’t had a job to go to every morning. The trick to Ramadan is developing a rhythm and then staying with that. My rhythm has always centered around work. This year, I’m working around my family’s rhythms. It’s a new experience.

One of the things that I love about Ramadan is the way that it works to bring the family together. We have one of those fusion families that work on an ethos that is a blend of the American and the Indonesian. Generally, we tend towards the Indonesian side of the scale so folks eat when they’re hungry, and family meals aren’t really an issue for anyone but me who would like to have everyone together at some time during the day when I can catch up on what they are all doing.

Curiously enough (well for me anyway), Ramadan has provided the structure for the family meal. My wife has been away a lot recently tending to business in Sumbawa so I have been tending to the children here in Bali. I wake up at 3:30 to make breakfast for all the children who are fasting – all of them except for the youngest.  Everyone is still asleep at this hour of the morning so the meal is eaten in silence. As soon as the children are done eating, they go back to bed for an hour before they have to wake up again to get ready for school.

I do a few dishes while I wait for the last of the children to finish up in the bathroom. No one wants to be alone downstairs because of ghosts. Once the kids are in bed, I make my way up to the third floor to sleep for an hour before I need to arise and wake the children up for school.

The day passes without event usually. The children come home and take naps. I work on  my writing. I come down around three o’clock to prepare dinner – chopping up vegetables, cutting meat, slicing and dicing garlic and chilies and onions.

Around six, as the sun is beginning to set, I come downstairs again to get dinner ready. The children appear out of nowhere. Mercedes cuts some more vegetables, Rebecca starts the water, Sam sets the table. I supervise all of this while doing most of the cooking. It’s a family effort to make dinner. The kids tease each other; one of them asks me to explain how the moon affects tides. I ask all of them about homework.

By the time that the evening prayer call signals that it is time to break the fast, everyone is ready to eat. Dinner is more enak when everyone is involved.

I still get asked by people why I gave up a job that paid so well when I am obviously not living high on the hog (so to speak). This is why. Money can’t buy times like these, and when the kids grow up it will be too late. Like somebody said once, “Love is the thing that money can’t buy.”

As we are in the second week of Ramadan – the holiest month of the year for Muslims, I was interested to hear, no actually the correct word is distressed, about the behavior of at least some of the Muslims in a school where I used to work. The non-Muslim, non-fasting Muslims were told by e-mail that they were not allowed to eat in the faculty room for the rest of the month, and that they could have their lunch in an empty classroom.

I’ve been trying to finish up this blog for days, but have been conflicted about just what it is that I want to say about this. On the one hand, I think that foreigners should be considerate of the local customs, that means don’t make a thing of eating in front of people who are fasting. It’s just not polite. On the other hand, having an edict come down from on high about what has to be done is, at best, autocratic. I would have thought that this is something that should have been discussed in a staff meeting. Something that could have been compromised on. The idea that we are creating a global community means some give and take on all sides. Unfortunately, most people seem intent on only having their own way. I’d love to hear some opinions on this. For those who are not familiar with Ramadan, here’s a little information.

In Arabic, Ramadan means scorching heat. It is the ninth month of the Islamic year which is lunar-based. Muslims all over the world spend the month of Ramadan fasting from dawn until dusk. They give up sexual relations, drinking, eating, and smoking. Muslims are expected also to control their relations with other people and not get angry, avoid immoral behavior, not swear, and show compassion to everyone. Fasting during Ramadan is one of the five pillars of Islam. The other four are making the haj pilgrimage to Kaaba, praying five times a day, giving zaakat to the poor, and making the Announcement of Faith.

All healthy adults and children from the age of 12 or 13 are expected to fast. Children may fast, but they are not generally encouraged to fast for a full day until they reach puberty. Children may do some half-day fasts to emulate their parents and to see what fasting is like. People who are elderly, sick or pregnant do not have to fast, however they should compensate for not fasting by providing a meal for a poor person.

Muslims awake well before dawn to eat their morning meal that is known as sahur. They then fast until dusk at which time the open their fast. This meal is known as iftar. The Prophet Muhammad (salAllahu alayhi wasalam) opened his fast with dates and water, and many Muslims follow that practice. After iftar, families and friends sit down to have dinner, and then many spend the rest of the evening socializing.

Fasting lasts for the entire month of Ramadan culminating in the holiday of Eidul-Fitr (Idul Fitri in Indonesian). On Eid, all Muslims congregate to pray, usually in a large field in Indonesia. Afterwards, they return home to visit neighbors and eat. Children traditionally receive presents on Eidul-Fitr, and everyone wears their best clothes. In Indonesia, there is a mass movement of the Muslim population as people return home for the holiday.

Here are the answers to some frequently asked questions by both Muslims and non-Muslims.

If you forget that you are fasting and eat something, you can continue on fasting. You do not need to make up the day later on for doing this. You may brush your teeth while you are fasting as long as you don’t swallow any water. Likewise you can swim and rinse your mouth out as long as you don’t swallow any water.

Life in Bali isn’t all that you would want; for some people it’s more, and for others it’s a string of one disappointment after another. The last post explained why I came here.  Why do I stay in Bali?

Once, years ago during my first attempt at retirement, I fell into just what I said that I wouldn’t – hanging out with expats, most of whom had one story of disappointment or another: older men with younger wives who found that their true love had a Balinese guy on the side, older women with younger men who found out the same thing, entrepreneurs who wanted to open the latest nightlife spot, guys who wanted to trade stocks on the internet for a living, the occasional lowlife who preyed on anyone who might come up with a buck or two. Why did I do this? Well, it tends to be our nature to want, at some point, to hang out with those who are like us.

singaraja harbor

Hmmm. What does that mean? We want to speak English or French or Spanish, we want someone who can connect with our stories, we want someone who understands our references and jokes and little pleasures and pains.

Moving between two cultures, as I had for many years, I wasn’t prepared (although I was sure that I was both by training and inclination) to live completely inside an Indonesian culture. “Going native” was how anthropologists used to put it, sniffing a bit and looking down their noses at the anthropologist who fell prey to the temptations of living locally on a full time basis. I was sure that I would never do this.

So, like so many others before me, I began hanging out with the local expat crowd. Of course, that included drinks before noon, a few mindless beach games, and a lot of gossip about whomever wasn’t at the bar or restaurant where we happened to meet that day.

I lasted all of six months before I crashed and burned and was looking for any way out of Bali. I found it when a job offer came out of the blue. It took me nine more years of wandering around the world before I was ready to get back to it.

The Balinese have this wonderful philosophy that centers on balance. I needed a little of that in my life which has moved wildly from one extreme to another.

So I wake up in the morning; the sunrise comes through my east windows and wakes me on those mornings when I’m not up before sunrise to wake my children and prepare them for another school day. On school days, I’m up at 5:30 when there is only a glimmer of purple on the eastern horizon. I climb down the steep stairs from the third floor to wake the children who are sleeping on the second floor; then I continue on to the first floor to wake the other children who are sleeping on the first floor.

As they queue up at the bathrooms for their morning ablutions, I gaze out at the sun slowing climbing up through the eastern sky – just a little glint of red now mixed in with the purple. The sounds of water running and mandiing being done.
My wife and I put out bowls of cereal, glasses of juice, plates of toasts for the children to choose from for breakfast. Like a lot of children around the world, there is always at least one who rises late, and still full from a late night snack sneaked from the refrigerator, doesn’t want breakfast. She can buy something to eat at one of the small warungs outside the school grounds.

My wife and I split the children up and drive them to school on our motorbikes. As I leave the kampung (neighborhood), I nod to the traffic cop on the corner. We weave our way through the Singaraja morning traffic as my daughter calls out to classmates, “Aku duluan.”

I return home and check email, then sweep and dust and mop the third floor while my wife makes breakfast for the two of us. We eat together and discuss what we have planned for the day. It’s rarely the same plan; she has her routines located in a lifetime of living in this small, poor neighborhood in North Bali, I have mine based on the internet and my writing. At some point in the day though, we manage to do something together despite our different schedules.

The children return home hot and sweaty and hungry. They’re fed by my wife while I ask about homework and how school went. The Mom and the Teacher-  we’ve lived these roles for so long that they fit like a comfortable skin that we wear on top of our core selves.

In the afternoon, everyone naps at some point. It’s a lovely point of living in the tropics for those of us who aren’t constrained by the rigors of everyday work. Later as the sun goes down, we all meet again for dinner and a little talk about the day. As we finish the dinner dishes, kids wander off to visit friends or finish up homework. I climb the stairs one more time to do some evening writing, my wife moves outside to chat with friends.

Why do I stay in Bali?

A few days ago my middle daughter had her 15th birthday. Her cousins from down in Denpasar came up for a few days to join her for her birthday party. There was an incredible amount of food as my wife spent several days cooking along with a few friends and family members. Now that the kids are older, they’ve decided to go with small parties and larger presents for themselves. It actually costs me just about as much in the long run, but it’s easier on my wife who only has to cook for the family and not for forty kids and the family.

Rebecca on her 15th birthday

The same day as Rebecca’s birthday was the 19th anniversary of my move to Indonesia. I always tend to do a little reflection as the years pass, and I continue to be amazed that I am still here after 19 years. An old friend whom I haven’t talked to in close to 40 years got in touch with me the other day, and the big question was how did I end up in Bali? How indeed… I’ve just finished my first ebook, and despite what I once said about never writing a book about Bali, I ended up doing just that.

How did I get here, and why did I stay?

I came to Bali on my first vacation when I was teaching in Papua, then called Irian Jaya. Bali was relatively close, the island had anthropological connections for me because of Mead and Bateson and Geertz, and I was just looking for some place to have a peaceful vacation and recharge after my first four months of working overseas. I actually didn’t plan on staying in Bali for the whole vacation, I was planning a few weeks here and then a week in Thailand and a few days in Jakarta.

Like many tourists, I ended up in Kuta as my point of entry. Why Kuta? It was close to the airport, and it seemed to be the place where there were a lot of things for a single guy to do.  The Merpati plane from Timika landed just as the sun was setting. I wandered around outside the small domestic terminal until I found a taxi and made my way to Bakungsari Cottages in Kuta which is the first place that I stayed in Bali. After a week of wandering around Denpasar, Kuta, and Legian, I made my way up north via bus.

I boarded the wrong bus and ended up going up north on a beautiful road through Pupan, rather than through the middle of the island through Bedugal like I had planned. By the time that I figured out where I was, I was almost out of the Lovina strip. I jumped off the bus just down the road from the Bali Taman in Anturan. I ended up moving a few days later to a small homestay in Kalibukbuk for the grand price of $2 a day. After a week in Kalibukbuk and Anturan, I cancelled my plans for Thailand and Jakarta. I spent the rest of my time in the north of Bali hanging out with my new Balinese friends.

From there, I was just taken, like so many are for some reason that is actually quite hard to explain completely rationally, with Bali and knew that I wanted to live there on a full-time basis at some point in my life.

The rest of the story follows fairly quickly from there; I built my first house, met the woman whom I married a year later, built another house, started having children, built another house, changed jobs a few times, moved to another island, built another two houses, retired and moved the family back here. That sums up as neatly as possible the past 19 years.

Why am I still here? That’s a good question. Just today one of my correspondents said, “oh, you’re still in Bali, you must really love it.”

I replied, “Yes, I do,” But as I think about this reply. I keep wondering why.

Find out what my answer is