Dear Peeps,
Every day, it is the responsibility of the waitresses to purify the restaurant and leave offerings all over the place. Much of the first half of their day is devoted to this activity. They go around laying out little leafy baskets full of different items for the gods, spirits and whatever else happens to be flitting about all around us. It's a Bali thing and happens not just in the restaurant but all over. As I type this, the lady at the front desk of the internet place is going around and putting baskets of flower petals, fern tips and a cracker on all the computers. She is also burning some foul kind of incense.
It is fun to arrive at the restaurant in the morning and have to step over a half-moon of Frangipani flowers set by the entrance. It is not fun to reach for something on a high shelf and accidentally grab an old, ant filled offering that had been forgotten about. It cracks me up that though we spend a good amount of time cleaning the kitchen, we then invite creatures inside by leaving little bits of food and rice out in the open for days and days.
Often, while trying to cook, a waitress will barge past with a pile of incense that she will then place nearly everywhere there is a nook or flat surface throughout the entire kitchen. The air then fills with smoke for a while and everyone either pretends that it isn't awful or is so used to it they don't think twice about it. We even have an offering basket placed between the burners on the stove every day. I can't imagine how it hasn't burst into flames yet.
These little leafy baskets usually contain flowers, rice, some kind of cracker or food item. Sometimes, they have special additions though. Occasionally they give the gods some wine or moonshine(Arak) but yesterday a waitress took me off the stove for a minute and used the burner to light literally forty or fifty cigarettes, which she then added to the pile of baskets she was about to place all around. Apparently the gods like to smoke from time to time. I guess that though the Balinese believe that ice-water makes you fat, the dangers of second hand smoke have yet to reach these shores.
Speaking of cigarettes, they are endemic. Everyone and their monkey's uncle smokes here. Consequently, smoking is prohibited in only one or two places, such as big westernized supermarkets. It was such a shock to me when, while typing one of my first emails from Bali, the guy next to me lit up and started puffing large clouds of smoke pretty much directly in my face.
For the first month I was repulsed by this and tried hard to get away. Recently though, it hasn't been bothering me all that much. The island is conspiring to get me addicted to nicotine. Two weeks ago, I saw a baby monkey pick up a discarded cigarette and though it was unlit, he started pretending to smoke it. I caught myself thinking "awww, isn't that cute?" failing to snap a photo in time. Then I realized what I was looking at and felt weird.
I talked to one Balinese guy at his tooth-filing ceremony and he had an interesting theory about the importance of smoke to the Balinese. He said that smoke is used to send messages to the gods. This is why incense is so widely used and also why Hindus are cremated. With incense, the prayer is sent up to the gods on fragrant clouds of smoke. In a cremation, the smoke allows the soul to rise up to the heavens. I'm not sure where cigarettes fit into this except that they emit smoke and the waitresses assure me that this pleases the gods. I wonder what prayer they are sending up with the cigarette. "Please god, give me cancer and make Alex have strange cravings for a Marlboro."
I guess the gods answer prayers after all.
Love,
Alex
Eluh and her offerings. (FYI-She is 22 or 24 years old)
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