Alex in Bali: The Future is later- Sun 1/18/09

Dear Y'all,

This e-mail is about near-death, thinking you are near death when you actually aren't, thinking you are near death when you actually are, and of course celebrating not dying by swimming naked. It is also about other things, like going up and down steps, but that sounds less catchy.

The other day while I was on my way out of my jungle abode and on the way up my rather steep and slippery steps, I came face to face with a beautiful, slender, bright green snake. It had a triangular head that ended in a pointy snout.

Flashing back a month to a conversation I had with my host's brother-in-law, he told me that the only really dangerous animal in Bali is a bright green snake with a pointy nose. If it bites you you experience about an hour of agonizing pain before dropping dead of respiratory paralysis and cardiac arrest. The anti-venom only works 20% of the time and that is only if you can get to medical facilities that keep it stocked.

My response was to run away like a frightened kitten yelling, "GREEN SNAKE!!!! BRIGHT FUCKING GREEN SNAKE!!!!! RIGHT THERE!!! OH CRAP! OH SHIT! OH etc. etc."

Once I found my balls (which were lodged far, far up my abdomen), I went back to see if it was still there. Mercifully it had gone off into the woods to ruin the day of some innocent marsupial and I was able to continue on my way.

This reminded me of when I was in India during college and our Yoga guru was talking to us about the nature of human understanding(or misunderstanding) of the world. He used a classic example to illustrate his point. You walk into a dimly lit room and see a cobra coiled in the corner. You become highly agitated. When the light is turned on, it reveals that what you had at first thought was a cobra was actually just some rope left in the corner. Thus, your misapprehension of the true nature of reality caused you to be quite upset. He went on to say that much of our understanding of the world is like this.

I find this quite profound. I also think that when you live in India (or apparently, Indonesia) and there is actually a good chance the rope is a cobra, it makes it a little more rational to have a fear response. I know that sidesteps the bigger lesson but there is a reason.

My destination that day was an island off the coast of Bali called Nusa Penida. A friend of a friend of my mother has hosted a group of Oberlin students there for the last two years. They stay with host families for a month and learn what they can about agriculture, culture, crafts, and a number of other topics. He suggested I come out and teach them a little about the cuisine of Bali.

After a drive to the coast and a half-hour ferry, I found myself in an undeveloped green place with nothing but little villages. Tiny, barely paved roads wind down jungle valleys and up grassy hills to ridges with epic views at all points.

The host Mark, has a beautiful but fairly modest house(by western standards) on the second highest point on the island. The view from his porch covers the entire western half of the island and the ocean, with mount Agung on Bali rising in the distance.

I spent the next few days learning about Nusa Penida with the students and teaching them some basic Balinese dishes in the evenings.

Nusa Penida has a reputation on Bali for some seriously powerful black magic. Mark told me that this is probably because they not only practice a highly animistic form of Hinduism, but also because it was used as a penal colony for the Gelgel dynasty many years ago, which gave it a bad rap.

We toured the alternative energy facilities on the island. Bali had hosted a conference on global warming last year and to prove to the world how green they were, the government had turned Nusa Penida into a haven for alternative energy. To that end, they had built 9 giant wind turbines, a $300,000 solar panel grid, a solar powered seawater purifier, a dung-methane seperator, and large waterworks to pull freshwater runoff from the cliffs back up to the villages for drinking. It was kind of an heroic effort on the part of the government. Inspirational even. The problem is that very little works.

Right after the conference, the government promptly stopped caring about their backwater little island and the machinery is slowly falling into disrepair. Only two of the wind generators work and their operation has not been authorized in Jakarta because someone forgot to grease the political wheels. The solar panels provide light for a few temple shrines, and the big solar grid is enough to provide everyone on the entire island with 7 watts of electricity. The seawater purifier seems to work, but the family that was supposed to use the methane separator has decided that rather than shovel tons of poop for a tiny amount of methane gas, they would rather just buy kerosene at the local shop.

One gets the feeling that the green revolution has come too soon to this island. It requires education and ongoing support from a government that is a little less corrupt. It is sad to see but also kind of predictable. What you end up with is a kind of defunct shrine to a potentially more sustainable future. One with adequate drinking water and energy for the poor despite drought and isolation.

On my last day, I took a hike to one of the freshwater runoff sites on the eastern side of the island. This side is all steep cliffs that plunge 400 feet or more to the sea. Most of the rain that falls on the island sinks directly through the limestone. This speedy runoff has historically produced persistent drought conditions. The water drains down until it hits denser rock and then makes its way towards the cliffs, eventually coming out in freshwater springs that eject directly into the ocean. The government found that if this water was collected and piped back to the villages, it would end all drought on the island. They built sketchy ladder/stairways down the cliffs to the runoff points and then installed pump houses and holding tanks to receive the water and bring it up to the top via massive steel pipes.

I started down the blue metal staircase. I should say that it wasn't really a staircase in the traditional sense. That is, the stairs were just 4 inch rectangular pipes welded at 2-foot intervals to the frame. It was really more of a ladder, which worked well when the stairs went nearly vertical, but not so well when they were less steep and there were huge gaps for you to slip into or through. It didn't help that everything was soaked from the recent thunderstorm. Along the whole staircase was a 12 inch round blue pipe as well as electrical cables. These acted at times like an additional handrail.

After a few minutes, the stairs opened out on a vista from which I could see up the coast and down to the water. I caught my breath. The sky was clearing. The surf crashed far below like a giant breathing. I felt that I was all alone in another world.

I continued down for a while and near the end, the metal stairs turned into wooden planks. They were sturdy...but they were wood, and they were situated in such a way that any error in engineering or even a rotten support beam would result in a 150ft death plunge onto the rocks.

Things were going alright until I reached a section that had partially collapsed. The rail was gone, there were no support beams underneath, and the whole 8ft section was tilted at a 10 degree angle towards the sea. I got weak in the knees but I could see the end, the wood felt fairly secure, and I thought perhaps that I would regret it if I didn't go all the way. Plus, I could always cling to the pipe if the stairs gave way.

I would love to say that I took out my whip, threw it around an overhanging branch, and swung to safety, but let's face facts...I didn't have a whip. Instead, I sat on the pipe with one leg on the broken stairs and shimmied across on my ass to the stronger planks at the other side. From there it was a quick trip to the waterworks and the falls at the bottom.

To celebrate my continued existence, I stripped down and swam around in the freshwater pools. I also left an offering at the shrines down there to ensure a safe return.

This brings us back to the snake. When I got back to Ubud the next day, I checked online to find more information about the deadly green serpent. As it turns out, there are deadly green snakes in Bali but mine was not one of them. Instead of the Blue Temple Viper (which is really, really bad news), what I saw was a Long-Nosed Whip Snake. The latter is a member of the cobra family but it is rear-fanged and reportedly not dangerous to humans. I guess my guru in India was right about misunderstanding but wrong about the cobra.

I'm not saying you shouldn't be careful, especially when taking risks, but why freak out? The snake might not be dangerous, the collapsing staircase might not be ready to give way yet. Things are not always what they seem.

Are any of you nodding your heads in agreement? You are so wrong.

The Blue Temple Viper could be in the next tree, the collapsing cliff-side stairs of death could easily have picked that moment to drop. The fact that we are alive at any given moment is never something to be taken lightly. I think what I'm trying to say is that (sensible or not) we are lucky and should all get naked and go swimming.

Love,
Alex

The View from Mark's Porch (Mt. Agung faintly visible)