A BALINESE LESSON

Foto Sofi Brabant

Fiorella Connie Carollo

“Back to Nature” shouted Madè as soon as I went past his room on my scooter. That was his mantra, in the spring of  2007. Made was in charge of the small house I rented from his uncle during my six-month staying in Ubud. He was a 23 y.o. boy, not particularly good-looking, got a diploma in Hospitality thanks to his elder brother’s financial support. The elder brother Wayan, while working as a room-boy in his teens, met an Australian donor who paid for his schooling up to University and then Wayan paid for Made’s schooling up to his Diploma. From the beginning, Made impressed me for his destiny as the “ugly duckling” of the family. In fact, while Wayan was indeed a good looking man, tall, with a “Colgate smile”, also smart and lucky, Made wasn’t that good-looking and lucky. He hadn’t found any Australians willing to sponsor him and unlike his elder brother who married his high-school sweetheart, Made’s girlfriend got pregnant with somebody else and  got married to that guy. Thanks to the university degree, Wayan had a very good job in a tamu (foreign) company and every month took home a salary, while Made worked from morning to night in his uncle’s guesthouse and got paid now and then when the house was occasionally rented. Made’s family were like many others you can find  in a Balinese village. They weren’t any rich but neither that poor. Of course to my Western eyes they were very poor, but that isn’t true for their standard. Like most families they lived on their share of rise plus some produce, the garden fruits, some small trade.  Every morning Made’s mum cooked the food for all day, that is a big saucepan full of boiled rise and  little vegetables. It never lasted till the afternoon. Soon I realised that Made was often famished. After a while he told me that the family have just learnt how to grow their own vegetables, thanks to Wayan who had decided to invest on seeds and to grow a vegetable garden. Now was time for Made to do something for the family and he turned to me to achieve that. We started to consider all the available options for someone who wanted to breed animals with little money to invest. What is the most profitable animal? We enquired. Ducks, perhaps. It turned out it was a seasonable trade, not a year-round business, so we discarded the idea. A cow seemed the most desirable animal, very coveted by Made, but I said no when I learnt the cost of it. Eventually we settled on piglets with the aim to get a sow out of them and make our fortunes. Piglets, babi guling, are very popular in Bali, the best meat to eat during the many ceremonies of the Balinese calendar, due to that big consumption, the island has to import them from the nearby Java.

We gathered as much information as we could; we needed to build a shelter, an irrigation canal and above all, choose a suitable place not too far from a source of water. Not that easy, because the family land was on a hilly slope and the river was down the hill. The other option was to build the shelter and breed the piglets in the family compound but what about the smell ? The house was right in the centre of the village and we were worried about complains from the neighbours. After long consultations with the family members a decision was made: the piglets’ shelter would be built in the family land together with the irrigation canal and the pipes to draw water from the river. During all those talks I could see Made’s confidence growing together with his joy to be equally capable as his elder brother to contribute to the family wealth.

I took part to the construction for a while but then I had to come back home. Made has sent me photos of the shelter and then the first piglets investment. He sold them when they were few month old and with that money bought few more. Eventually we got a sow and that settled once for all our fortunes. My friends at home can’t help laughing every time I show photos of the piglets in the shelter. They tease me endlessly and stick a motto on me: “ Need a business adviser? Ask Flora. She’s got the business of your life!”. I don’t care to be teased, actually I feel very proud of myself and I hope to come back to Bali to make a grand-scale business out of breeding babi guling.