There was some adventurous part of me that was not at all intimidated by the fact that I knew no one, didn't speak the language and had never done any gardening in a tropical region. That first day in Ubud I made my way from my guesthouse to the near by village where I would start teaching gardening the following month. A friend I made at the guest house gave me a ride on the back of his motor bike through the pouring rain to Penestanan. The monsoon rains came and went with very little warning. The warm rain and humid air gave me a needed sense of freedom as we raced through town. I met with Linda the director of BCP who would be leaving the next day and Kadek, a beautiful Balinese woman who was running the organization and grew up in Penestanan. I walked through the rice fields past the pigs and chickens and came to a beautiful house. Linda and Kadek sat chatting on the porch. I immediately loved Kadek, it was as if we were sisters in a very recent past life. She showed me one of the schools where we would be planting a garden.
During the next month I traveled with my dear friend Caty and explored Bali and neighboring islands. We couldn't leave immediately though because I arrived right after the Balinese New Year when everything shuts down, even the airport, you aren't supposed to leave the house and the entire island is silent, you cannot cook and the dogs that generally bark and howl are silent. This all follows days of parades and large paper mache sculptures, which are chasing away the evil spirits. The Balinese believe that if everyone is silent the bad spirits will move on to the next island. During this day of absolute silence Caty and I realized just how committed the Balinese are to ceremony.
The food culture in Ubud, Bali is really advanced. This smallish village has cuisine comparable to San Francisco. Amazing food from all around the world. There is even organic restaurants and a small health food store. It is interesting, because according to many locals, the farms all used to be organic. I always marvel at the way the Western world finds trends in indigenous wisdom that has been around for centuries.
The use of pesticides in rice farming seems to be even more detrimental than pesticides in standard agriculture. This is because all the rice farmer's share the water that travels through beautiful canals from village to village. Pesticides have spread from farm to farm and even the farmers who have never used pesticides or herbicides have been exposed. Prior to the 1970's the Balinese rice farmer produced rice at a very high level of productivity that few pre-mechanized agricultural societies have achieved. As the population grew the demand also grew and a government program was introduced that offered pesticides, petrochemical fertilizers, tractors, rice mills and hybrid seeds. Credit was extended to farmers and because farmers saw these new seed strains able to mature in almost half the time and produce greater income many family rice farmers could not resist the government offered assistance. Along with this new technology came many problems that the farmers did not experience within the traditional wet farming system. As I was told these new seed strains have spread and somewhat contaminated the traditional Balinese strains.
I wish I had learned more about rice farming while I was there. What I know is a brief history, the immense aesthetic beauty and what tremendous hard work it is. Rice is a huge part of the community. Many of the kids at the school where I volunteers had parents and grandparents who spent their day working in the rice fields. Because my ability to speak Balinese is almost non-existent and my Bahasa Indonesian is not great either it was difficult to discuss complicated matter such as agriculture. Though I will say I learned so much from the kids in the village, as I had the children in San Francisco. These kids were so much more connected to nature and also so much more willing to work then most of the kids I had worked with. When I arrived at the school called Kumara Dewata the first day and realized just how difficult it was going to be to teach organic gardening in Bahasa Indonesian, I figured we might as well get right to work. Kumara means child and Dewata means Goddess, what a beautiful name for a school The school yard was mostly concrete, however there was a big beautiful tree right in the center of the courtyard and my friend Kadek said that when she attended that school 20 something years prior the same tree was there and everything else was different. Behind the small school building was a narrow dirt patch covered in weeds, which would soon be transformed into a beautiful garden. I started my first day with the kindergarten class doing a yoga exercise where the children start out as small seeds and slowly while learning that a plants needs food, water and air to grow move and strech into a vibrant healthy plant of their choice. We then got right to work digging up the bed behind the school. I was excited and impressed to learn that these children wanted to help. The soil was full of rocks, enough rocks to build a small house. There were little stones and gigantic bricks, much to the children's delight they were able to pull bricks the size of a shoebox right out of the dirt and we started a pile on the far side of the school. I began to wonder if we would be able to prep this bed before I left; I had never seen so many rocks in such healthy soil.
One afternoon when I wasn't doing art with the children I decided to visit a local organic farm owned by an expat. Currently several expats have started organic farms there. Permaculture is taking off in the international community and people from all over the world have moved there to raise their children in a progressive place. There are green schools, green festivals and yoga studios. In some ways the Balinese culture has been untouched by the Western world in a way that many other popular tourist destinations are so sadly affected. In fact it is hard to tell where the local inspiration began and how much of Ubud is a melting pot for so many folks who felt disenchanted by the the typical Western disconnection from the land and spirit world. This particular farm was lovely, a permaculture inspired farm with a restaurant, healthy compost pile and methane run electric system. I knew immediately that I had to bring the kids on a field trip here. The manager of the farm generously donated organic seeds that I would start with the children as we continued to pull weeds and dig rocks.
One Friday we started bean seeds. The kids knew to mark them with small bamboo pieces, as bamboo is a staple that grows so prevalently. By Monday the beans were 2-3 inches tall, I couldn't believe it! It really taught me the importance of good soil. That was my first experience witnessing the fertility of the soil. The volcanic soil is remarkable. The children were also impressed and excited to see the progress of their work. The whole school began to take notice of the changes behind the school building and we were offered a bed in the front and a bed on the side. It was no longer just the kindergarten that we were working with, but many of the older kids joined in as well. There were limited resources, if we wanted to do grafting there was one knife, borrowed from Kadek's family. Pots for starting seeds were difficult to find, but this lack of resources seemed to have no effect on the rapid plant growth and enthusiasm of the children. Kids would come cultivate the soil while they were on recess and on afternoons when we are not there they would stop by to water the plants.
One weekend Kadek and I decided to take a weekend trip. I was concerned about all the seeds we had started in pots on the side of the school and the possibility of things drying up in the hot sun while we were gone. When we came back I was surprised and delighted to find village children that I had never seen before caring for the plants.
I loved my time in the village, I felt strangely at home walking around with plants, a shovel, a pitchfork or my camera. It felt like a different world, but a world where I was able to slow down and connect with nature in a way that increased my ability to see and change. I began my day at daybreak with a very vocal rooster outside of my thatched roof house, I practiced yoga over the river canyon as the sun came up and then I walked through rice fields for twenty minutes to get to the school. After ten minutes of gardening surrounded by children I would be covered in sweat and dirt. A morning just doesn't get much better than that.
This lovely connection to the natural world is a part of the Balinese culture that is very unlike the United States, however food wrappers littered the school ground and often blew into the garden. Most of the children and adults have no awareness about littering. It was often that I would get a headache from the smell of burning plastic. Trash fills river valleys. I was told that prior to so much Western influence all food was served in bio-gradable wrappers, such a banana leaf and so it made sense to throw it on the ground...compost, right?
The rest of my exploration in Bali was full of strange dichotomies like moneys walking down the street in front of the Prada store...really there is a Prada store there..weird! The integration of modern society with tradition seems to have a way of evading me. How do we preserve age old wisdom and assimilate as change naturally occurs. When is the change too much that it negatively impacts a society? One belief that I have developed after years of working in environmental education is that the more time people spend in nature and observing the natural world the more likely we are to want to preserve it and care for it. The way the Balinese took time to notice the smallest details, particularly within ceremony permeated through much of the culture.
When it came time for me to leave I couldn't make myself leave this glorious island. If I stayed two weeks longer I could attend a village ceremony that only happens one every fifty years. I had already seen the village begin to transform in preparation for this large ceremony. Whole structures were being built, huge bamboo and palm frods lined the road and everywhere you went you could just feel beauty and celebration. I knew I couldn't leave. I stayed long enough to attend this amazing ceremony and also to witness a tremendous amount of growth in our garden. 
