Ghosts (Bali)

“Where are you going? Aren’t you afraid?” Wayan waylaid me as I hurried in my sarong and best kebaya down the moonlit dirt road. I was startled not by Wayan, but by his question. What could there be to fear here, in this Balinese village tucked into the hills, so far from the outside world. “Afraid of what?” I asked him. He looked at me seriously, obviously amazed at my stupidity, and answered, “Ghosts.”

“No, no, I’m fine, I’m just going to join Made and the others.” I was hurrying to join my friend Made and other young people who were guarding the area where villagers spent every waking hour preparing for the upcoming village-wide cremation. The preparations were prolonged and complex. Many ceremonies had to be precisely executed before the village dead could be put to rest, about 20 of them, most of whom had been buried in the graveyard for years, awaiting this group cremation. Tourists often see the final fiery cremation ceremonies, but there are weeks and weeks of work and ceremonies that precede the big send-off.

“You can’t go alone. I will walk with you,” insisted Wayan quietly.

I tried not to roll my eyes, Wayan was such a good kid, and I knew there would be no dissuading him. “You should not be out alone at night by yourself. Aren’t you afraid of the leyaks?”

I had actually never felt safer in my life. What were ghosts and the shape-shifting witches called leyaks next to the terrors of the city streets back home in the States? I didn’t know enough to be afraid yet... I didn’t know enough to realize that back in the villages, the magic still swirled through the rice fields and the coconut trees and the family compounds, and skimmed along the surfaces of the rivers.



The late night ceremony had not yet begun when we arrived at Preparation Headquarters, a cleared field where the families had built what I can only describe as sort of bamboo trade show booths. They had built one for each loved one; within each was neatly folded ceremonial clothing for the departed, flower offerings and photographs or artist renderings of their likenesses. The mood was anything but somber. Made had obviously had a few beers, and everyone was sitting around laughing and telling jokes.


Made's mother appeared with other older members of the village. She carried the spray cologne I had brought her from the States. My mother had ordered it from QVC and given it to me; I had thought it smelled like bug spray and regifted it. To my horror, Made's mother sprayed the clothing symbolically laid out for Made's dead aunt, then passed it to other people who sprayed clothing of their loved ones with this awful cologne. I watched helplessly as the cologne made it's way around almost every one of the booths. It's not like the dead would actually be dressed in this clothing, I thought. These people had been bones for awhile, and it was bones that would be cremated. But I couldn't help feeling guilty; it would be my fault if they stunk like cheap cologne for all eternity. Maybe I should start watching out for ghosts after all...

PHOTOS:
1. Wayan
2. Made's sister, Kommi, me and some friends at the "trade show booths"
3. Made's grandfather sitting in the "trade show booth" prepared for Made's deceased cousin

Alwyn's (Jamaica)

I've been to Jamaica a few times, two of them in the early '90's. Before I had been to Jamaica, I had traveled all over Europe and the States, but nowhere in the third world. Jamaica hit me like brick. I loved it; nowhere had ever affected me like Jamaica. By the end of my first trip, I felt like I lived there, and I had a great deal of trouble reintegrating on my return. So I had to go back.

Negril was my base. I always meant to get to Kingston and Spanish Town, but the pull of Negril was strong. It was so laid back there, yet there was always an underlying tension of something about to happen. Maybe it was just the beat of Jamaica, a beat that went beyond the reggae, beyond the house music. I felt it on the streets of Savannah la Mar, Mo Bay,Treasure Beach and even Mandeville, but I felt it most strongly in Negril.

The beach in Negril was wide and white and soft. The water was gentle, warm, and clear blue. I loved the shacks,the chickens, the bars overlooking rocky cliffs, the ganja smell in the air, the sound of patois, the ever-present music. There were many exciting places,some local, some for tourists. But there was one that boiled down the essence of Negril for me, one place I had to take my traveling companion, Dru, on my second trip. I had to have dinner at Alwyn's.

Alwyn had a shack on the beach where he cooked absolute gourmet delights on a Coleman stove. He would cook anything to order, breakfast, lunch and dinner, but he expected you to make reservations. The first time I went to Alwyn's I had failed to make reservations. This meant he had not bought fish or other fresh things especially for my dinner, so my choices were snapper or lobster, made any way I liked, with a variety of sauces. I was not disappointed. Alwyn's prices were great, and if we were still hungry, we needed only yell "Alwyn! More fish!" for one of Alwyn's assistants to appear with another steaming plate, all included in the price.

Alwyn's was primarily a locals hang-out. If you walked by Alwyn's and didn't know better, you might have thought it was a large group of friends sitting around visiting, and not even realize you were passing by a wonderful restaurant. But, of course, the smell of Alwyn's spicy sauces filling the air gave it away for what it was.

I remembered evenings at Alwyn's sitting at a table on the beach after sundown, or even better, the built-up hill of sand with shells packed into the sides that Alwyn called the "balcony". (The hill was destroyed years ago by Hurricane Gilbert.) We would listen to the waves roll in, faces lit only by candles while we talked with Jamaican friends, or sometimes an adventurous tourist.

Alwyn's was equally pleasant in the heat of the day. I would lay in a hammock in the balcony, after the breakfast crowd left (indeed,he had a breakfast crowd that couldn't get enough of his ackee and saltfish), and talk to whoever else was around about rastafarianism, or music, or the latest gossip. (Negril's a small town, and everybody knows everybody.) Alwyn would bring me a papaya juice on a tray, as I lay in my hammock, and tell me formally, "Thank you. Come again." Eventually most anybody I had met who lived or had relatives in Negril would come by to buy a beer or a Ting from Alwyn. I anticipated all this on my return trip.


Dely was sort of the Maitre D' at Alwyn's. He also sold items to tourists, like hats or rafts, and even brownies and ganja for those so inclined, hence Dely's nickname, "Happy Time". Dely, at the time,was probably in his late 30's and a self-styled Rasta, usually wearing a Rasta-type hat, but occasionally setting his medium length dreadlocks free, or ensconcing them in a bright pink baseball cap that said "Jamaica" on the front. There was always something a little incongruous about seeing Dely take his daily jog on the beach in his Rasta cap. Conversations with Dely about the meaning of life had been a focal point of my prior visit, and I looked forward to seeing him again, as well as introducing my traveling companion, Dru, to Alwyn's down-home Jamaican cooking.

When I awoke the morning after arriving on my return trip, I wanted to make reservations immediately. I hadn't yet seen anybody I knew that I wanted to see, and I knew one trip to Alwyn's would solve that. Alwyn's was more than a restaurant; it was a vital Beach nerve center. Dru, however, wanted to set out first thing to Booby Cay, a very small island off Negril known for the Hedonism Crowd's antics. I reluctantly agreed. It was very early, and since nobody I knew was at the Water Sports shack, we wandered down the beach, and made a good deal with Henry, a pleasant, rather heavy set fellow to take us over for a few hours on his glass bottom boat, the African Star. Henry and his assistant, "All Right" (was the blond tint on those dreadlocks real?), took Dru and I over along with a middle-aged German couple. It was about as expected, the Hedonism crowd self-consciously indulging in structured drinking games in an effort to shed clothing so casually discarded on the main beach in Negril.

After a very short while, the Hedonism crowd was getting on my nerves, blaring rock from a boom box was giving me a headache, and I was yearning to hear some mellow reggae. When Henry stopped back to check on Dru and me a little early, I nearly fell into his boat in my effort to board it quickly. The middle-aged German couple climbed aboard too. Instead of dropping us on the beach in front of our hotel, I asked Henry to drop us at Alwyn's, so I could make reservations for the evening.

As the boat pulled up to Alwyn's, Dely waded out into the water when he saw us approach. He yelled, "Alwyn is not here! The restaurant is closed!" Then we drew closer. I said, "Happy Time!" He said "Every time!" I said, "All the Time!" Then he really looked at me, did a double take, smiled broadly, shook my hand, and said, "Oh! It's you!" So Dely jumped in the boat and rode back to our end of the beach with us.

I told Dely I hadn't seen anybody I knew except Trevor, who I could do without. Dely said, "Rasta?" I nodded. Anyway, Dely asked, "You haven't seen Dr. Quality?" Before I could answer, we passed a speed boat at the dock, and Dely said, "There he is in the green shorts!" and pointed to Quality standing in his unmoving parasailing boat. Dely signaled Quality with a circular, Arsenio Hall- like arm movement. Negril was filled with personalities, and certainly Quality was one of the best known. Whether this was because of his status as a competitive wind-surfing champion, or his formidable ability to throw a lot of tourist business to other participants in the local (often black-market) economy, or a bit of both, I don't know, and I'm not likely to ever find out.


Our boat continued onward, but a few seconds later, Dru yelled, "He's following us!" And there was Quality, speeding behind us toward the beach. Henry dropped us at the beach by our hotel; Quality arrived shortly thereafter, after docking his boat. By that time, thanks to the nearby beach bar, Dru and I were drinking rum punch. A few of Quality's friends wandered over, as well as some Italian tourists Dru and I had met the evening before. Since it was Quality's birthday, the crowd made plans to help him celebrate it that evening. Which brought us to the topic of dinner again. Where were we going to eat? We all bemoaned the fact that Alwyn was still in the country, and his restaurant was closed, for that left the party with a definite hole around dinner time.

Of course, we managed to have dinner, and went from there to dance to reggae and drink flaming tropical concoctions. The next morning, I pulled on my swim suit, and still feeling the rum hurricanes from the night before, I walked down the beach to see if Alwyn had returned. I found Dely beside himself because Alwyn was still absent. Dely said Alwyn was in the hills, "chasing the girls." This was a little hard for me to imagine, as Alwyn was an extremely mild sort. I think Dely was just trying to malign Alwyn, but, who knows, maybe still waters ran deep.

I began to give up hope when on the following day Alwyn had still not returned. Dely was in even more of a snit. "No respect! No respect!" Dely muttered, as he angrily swept the sand in front of the "balcony". (I had no idea why sand needed to be swept, and I had to suppress a giggle. He really should have been managing a five star restaurant in Miami or New York.) "I am just going to quit and go back to the country for six months, maybe a year!" Dely continued, sweeping furiously. Then, he stopped sweeping, leaned on his broom, looked at me and demanded, "Is this any way to run a business?!!"

I carried on my vacation, and I had the expected great time, but I regretted that Dru would miss Alwyn's cooking. The day before I left Negril I was lying on a lounge chair reading a book, listening to the soft waves roll in and trying to soak up the last rays before heading back to the land of ice fishing. (I lived in Minnesota at the time, which goes a long way toward explaining my infatuation with Jamaica.) Several yards away, the beach bar was playing Ziggy Marley's "Tomorrow People," and the smell of ganja floated in and out of my consciousness. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dely jogging past me on the beach. As he jogged by, he called, "Yo! Alwyn's back!"

Dru had already gone home, but the Italians and I dined grandly that night.

PHOTOS: 1. Dely ("Happy Time") in front of Alwyn's
2. The Italians

Shampoo (Jamaica)

In 1991 De Bus was my favorite open-air reggae club in Negril; it was not the more polished DeBus that exists today. It had restrooms that should have been condemned, and it was almost impossible to get a beer at the crowded bar. But the talent that played at De Bus was phenomenal, and Tuesday was the night to see reggae legend Gregory Isaacs in an intimate setting. The air always pulsated with energy, a lot of which was generated by the beach soap operas played out there.

It was my last night in Jamaica; I had been there for 10 days, and I was about as wired in as a tourist can be in a place in such a short time, with lots of new friends both local and tourist. After dinner at Alwyn's (a couple tables on the beach outside a shack just big enough for Alwyn to fit a couple pots), a few friends and I headed to DeBus. Marcia, who had accompanied me from Minnesota, was there, as was Dr. Quality, a parasail driver and wind surfing instructor. Dely (also known as Happy Time), a Rasta with a philosophical bent who worked at Alwyn’s, came along, an unusual occurrence, as he rarely went to the clubs. You could get to DeBus by taking a taxi down the road and then tromping back through the high weeds and past the multi-colored, decrepit double-decker bus that had been used in a movie. But that night we decided to enjoy the long, moonlit walk down the beach, and along the way we picked up Howard and Natalie, friends of Qulaity’s from L.A. we had met earlier.

I was dressed up for the occasion of my last evening in Negril. Dressed up in Negril in 1991 was white tights and a sequined t-shirt. When we entered on the beach side, through the rickety fence put in place to help enforce the $5 cover, the first person I saw was Nicodemus, a singer with a lovely voice who had little tiny braids all over his head. He had been one of the first people I had met in Negril, and I hugged him hello. Quality gave me a raised eyebrow and wandered off. Rasta Trevor was also there, looking his usual fierce self with thick dreadlocks and a 6'4" frame, the fierceness somewhat alleviated by his fluorescent pink t-shirt that proclaimed "Black by Popular Demand". (I don't know why, but a lot of the locals called him "Rasta", even though there were plenty of other Rastafarians around.)

We stood around drinking beers, and checked out the scene. The whole beach was there, as were a lot of people in from the country. The scent of ganja drifted by every once in awhile. Some people didn't even bother to go out to the beach to smoke. Howard had drunk some mushroom tea, and it kicked in after we arrived at De Bus. When I went to the bar to get a beer, I found him sitting on a stool at the bar. He became inordinately upset when it took him a half hour to finally get the bartender's attention (it always took that long... no worries), then remembered to order drinks for everyone but himself.

If a hotter band has ever played in Jamaica than the one that played that night, I haven't seen it. I think I danced with most of the people I had met in Negril. I spent most of the evening dancing with Delroy, a very easy-to-look-at guy who worked on the boat with Quality. Sweet-natured and a natural born teacher, Delroy gave me vital choreography tips. "Ten days, I show you everything there is about reggae dancing."

I had been dancing for awhile before I just had to take a break to recover my breath. For a few moments I stood slightly apart, already nostalgic that this was the end of my time in Negril. A really young Rasta in from the country came up and asked me to dance. Actually, he didn't so much ask me as take my hand and indicate he would like to dance. He looked about 16 to me, I found out later he was 19. He was very dark, not very tall, and had exceptionally long dreadlocks. He was obviously harmless, it was my last night in Negril, and I had nearly recovered from Delroy's aerobic dance style, so I accepted.

He led me by the hand right up to the front, for he was a big fan of Gregory Isaacs. He said his name was Shampoo, (a name I had to ask about at least twice), and he told me about the meaning of some of the music. After the song, I thanked him for the dance, we shook hands, and I went to go look for my friends.

Marcia and I stayed at De Bus for awhile, dancing, socializing, and listening to Gregory. I went back in a cab with my original party (plus Nicodemus who needed a ride back up to that end of the beach). Back at the hotel, we had a drink or two, and there was talk of going swimming. I decided to leave the group and head to Compulsion, an R&B bar with a late liquor license, and meet with some other friends. Compulsion was about halfway down the beach road, and as I walked purposefully toward Compulsion, mosquitoes bit at my ankles, and the wet grass ruined my stylish leather sandals. I hoped I wouldn't step on one of those huge red land crabs that skittered across the road. Finally, I accepted a ride offered by an American guy and a Jamaican guy on a mini-bike. They dropped me off at the turn-around, I walked up to Compulsion, and it wasn't open. So I caught a cab back.

On the way to the hotel, the cab driver told me, "A Rasta guy got killed tonight. Ran his motorcycle into a tree." Negril is a small town, and the Beach News is amazingly fast and efficient.

I didn't know many Rastafarians, and I couldn't imagine Dely on a motorcycle. But I hadn't seen Dely for close to an hour, and perhaps I envisioned him borrowing a mini-bike and looking for me, worried that I had left alone so late. Also, Rasta Trevor, although not my favorite person, was an acquaintance who had been at De Bus that night. I felt a chill. A lot of people came in from the country when Gregory Isaacs played, including a lot of Rastas, I told myself, and it was unlikely to be anyone I knew. But I heard the urgency in my voice when I asked, "Who?"

"Shampoo," the cab driver answered.

My heart stopped, and then I was screaming, "Shampoo?!! I was just dancing with Shampoo. Are you sure?"

"Yeah, mon."

"I just met Shampoo a couple hours ago, and now he's dead? My god, he's a kid! Are you sure he's not just hurt?"

"Shampoo dead, mon."

"Are you sure?"

"Shampoo dead, mon."

When I got back to the hotel, I was very upset. Dely had reappeared from the darkness outside the hotel. We stood on the beach, the tide coming in around our feet, the moon hanging over the water in front of us, and I told him about Shampoo. (For those of you who are wondering, no, there was no romantic relationship between Dely and me.)

Dely said, "Calm down. There is nothing you can do. Forget about it." I imagine Dely was just trying to be soothing, for he saw I was agitated. But I was still shocked by his fatalistic attitude. I said, "Don't you understand? I just met him, and now he's dead! He was still practically a child, and he's dead!"

The next day Marcia went down the beach to Alwyn's to say good-bye to Alwyn, Dely and everyone. As she walked down the beach, she saw Quality, who was busy repairing a windsurfboard at the water sports concession. She told Quality about Shampoo; she had become part of the Beach News. Quality had not heard, and she said he just looked down at the sand.

As Marcia and I ate breakfast amid tropical plants at the hotel's outdoor restaurant, Rasta Trevor joined us briefly. He said he had been among the first to reach the accident scene. He started to describe the details, and I had to beg him to stop.

For months afterward, I felt the touch of Shampoo's hand.

Two Worlds (Bali and San Francisco)

It has been awhile now. I have been going back and forth to Bali for years, and there was a time I spent nine months out of the year there. But now I have been gone for five months. It's a classic love/hate relationship (much like my typical relationships with men), and now that I have been away so long, I think of it constantly.

I live in San Francisco. They say everthing not screwed on quite tight eventually slides to California, and San Francisco is a time-honored magnet to the far-out, the edgy, the out-there and the weird. (This used to be more true before San Francisco turned into Palo Alto.) We have wiccans and buddhists and vegans and green earth advocates and consultants and all sorts of groups that are more common here than in middle America. But, like the rest of America, San Francisco is devoid of magic. It is the magic of Bali that calls to me. In Bali, witches and spirits and gods are real; black magic is to be feared and balians hold more sway than medical doctors. Villagers carry out ancient ceremonies to the beat of gamelan music and the swirl of dancing maidens, ceremonies that can go on for days, nights and weeks, ceremonies that surge through the villages and sweep up their inhabitants in mystical trances, all far from tourist eyes. Anything is possible...



But it is also the every day living of Bali I dream of. Five months out of Bali, I long for the wind in my face as I ride my motorbike on the road through the rice fields near Ubud. Riding past the temples of Bali, multitudes of terra cotta temples with walls covered in ancient scripts and ancient secrets; avoiding the monkeys as I negotiate the narrow footpath bridge through the Monkey Forest in Padang Tegal; hearing a friend call to me from a warung and stopping to visit and have a beer or a cup of coffee. I crave deng deng, the dried beef delight at the Sumatran-style Padang restaurants, pisang goreng, the fried bananas so readily available from vendors along the side of the road. I crave the sudden rains, the kids climbing coconut trees, the surprise of turning down a street only to meet a large procession of laughing teen-agers and children clanging musical instruments to accompany a barong, that mythical, lion-like, dragon creature who brings good luck. For in Bali, the mundane and the magical are forever intermingled.

But I live in San Francisco now. Maybe I can go back to Bali in a month or two, but not now. So I go to work and I go home and I get ready for a date, because I feel like I should be dating, ready to go to a restaurant or a movie or whatever... but there is no magic.

Rains in the Distance

For as long as I can remember,I have longed for far-away places. As a child, my friends played with Barbies while I read War and Peace. This yearning has been both a blessing and curse. It has led me to hire boatmen and travel rivers where I was accompanied by the cries of macaques, entertained by proboscis monkeys and awed by wild organgutans building their nests in the trees. It has driven me to dance and drink tuak with longhouse dwellers in the jungles of Kalimantan, hike the mountains of Vietnam in the company of the "blue" Mung and live in a cave in Crete. It has prevented me from working 9 to 5 in the same place for 20 years... if you only get two weeks off a year, it's hard to make it to Bali for Galangun. It has changed me and turned me inside out, ripped out my heart and stuffed it back in again,leaving me not quite the same, never the same. But always eager for the next awakening.

But this same yearning too many times has hindered me from living in the now, from establishing the roots my friends have put down. For always I have one eye cast to the horizon, on the rains in the distance. When I can, I follow the rains, golden rain dripping from lush tropical foliage to the forest floors of Borneo. Blue rain sweeping across the mesa from Albuquerque to Santa Fe, lightening splitting the sky. And the green, life-giving rain falling on the rice fields and villages of Bali, the mystical island where I will never quite belong, but where I will always return.