Carpetblogger

Indonesian Textile Class: Five dollars. New Obsession: Priceless

So the one thing you probably already know about 40+ year old divorcees is that we take classes. Whether it's at the Learning Annex in Ann Arbor (amirite?) or for a real estate license in San Berdu, that's what we do to make ourselves appear well-rounded or open new income generating opportunities. Or, in our case, explore new income dispersal opportunities.

We took an Introduction to Indonesian Textiles today at Threads of Life, an Ubud-based textile arts center. It was, in two words, top-to-bottom fucking awesome. Not only are the textiles beautiful and their variety fascinating, this is an NGO that is actually doing something useful! SHUT UP! Total win!

Longtime readers know that we have a textile habit that goes back a long way. It started with kilims, moved into Caucasian carpets and diversified into so many different items that we have a giant plastic crate we call the "random textile box" hidden under the stairs. When a textile is under consideration for purchase, asking the purchaser, "what are you going to do with that?" is not constructive. Wise people never ask it because the answer is "put it in the random textile box or store it under the bed and take it out sometimes to pet it."  Our heart beats faster when we feel a fine weave. Textiles make us happy. We have never been chased away from museum exhibits by angry guards, not even that one time in Ashgabat.

A good textile is like a book. If you learn how to read it, you learn history, anthropology, the environment, geography and the stories of rural women in cultures that offer few avenues for women to express themselves. It also helps map out how this big old complicated world of ours fits together. Plus, they are purrrty and nice to touch!

We started learning today how to read Indonesia's Ikat.  Did you know that one of our favorite Central Asian textiles are known as Ikat? They aren't the same but maybe they both came from the Chinese? We don't know! We also learned a bit about Batik, and while we no longer think "monkeys could make batik," it isn't really our bag.

We think the thing that totally blew our mind about these textiles is that they are woven primarily by Indonesian Christians, followed by Balinese Hindus and Muslims, to a much lesser degree (most Indonesians are Muslim). Of all the things we rely on Christians to do (make booze and cook pork come to mind first), weaving doesn't even make the list. We usually trust Muslims for high quality textiles (as well as for thorough hair removal techniques). In the production of most Indonesian textiles, culture is much more important that religion and each piece serves a very particular cultural purpose. The same is largely true for tribal or nomadic carpets.

The other thing we liked about Ikat? The smell. Take a deep breath of a Caucasian Kazak and you'll breath eau d'assfat. Sniff an Ikat and you smell spices used to keep bugs away.

After the class, we watched a documentary of a big meeting the group organized, bringing 150 women from different communities in Indonesia (Indonesia has 16,000+ islands but only ten or 11 of them produce much in the way of textiles) together so they could share weaving and coloring techniques. This was an enormous logistical undertaking because Islands such as Flores aren't very accessible and many of these women had never left their communities.

As a sharp-eyed NGO observer, we immediately noticed capacity being built, engagement of local partners and even some cross-cutting programming (the women learned bookkeeping, management skills and budgeting) and possibly, some sustainability. We had to know more.

"This looks effective! Who funded it?" we asked the teacher.

"The World Bank," he answered.

"Shut up! Are you sure?"

This, it seems, is a project we can really support. While we probably learned more sitting in Ruslan, Carpetdealer to the Stars', shop in Baku over two years, we feel better that our purchases at Threads of Life will help preserve traditional weaving techniques in Indonesia, instead of, say, send Ruslan's kids to college or improve the sales techniques of native Daghestanis.

We have not yet made any purchases, but oh yes, there will be blood. Having lost a number of textile children in the recent divorce, replenishment seems like the responsible thing to do. When you buy at ToL, they give you a photo of the weaver who made it, a detailed description of the textile and a DVD explaining how it was made and how it fits in to the overall culture. How fucking awesome is that marketing? We know ourselves well enough to know we will be victimized by it.

We have spent five dollars on a lot of things in life, and this was by far the best five dollars we have ever spent. In fact, we misunderstood when we signed up for the class, thinking it was the Rupiah equivalent of $50 which means we have $45 in unallocated resources that can be devoted to textile acquisition.

Island Delicacy or Random, Unidentifiable Pig Parts on Rice?

 

Always on the lookout for new ways to enjoy the pig, we were excited to try Babi Guling, or spit-roasted young pig, in Bali. A couple of recommended restaurants in Ubud specialize in it, but we thought we’d avoid any dumbing down of the dish for the touristic palate and try it in a less-frequently-visited town.

 

After our homestay family produced its weekly feast Sunday night for the compound’s guests, it occurred to us that much Indonesian food has been dumbed down for the touristic palate. Most of the food we’ve eaten in warung (restaurants) has been tasty but unremarkable. Mother Wayan’s huge meal was varied and spicy! Memo to self: sambal (spicy chili paste) should be applied to one’s food sparingly.  Your Turkish intestines thank you.

 

This lesson must always be re-learnt: before arriving at conclusions about the appeal of a country’s cuisine, eat a home cooked meal. We never knew tapioca leaves and young papaya could be so very delicious. And we have fallen in love with duck all over again.

 

So, after this meal, we were particularly curious about Babi Guling. It’s a ceremonial dish that involves roasting a whole suckling pig, its stomach filled with spices like turmeric, chilis, ginger, coriander and other stuff. Sounds promising!

 

We did not go to this Babi Guling-famous town, Gianyar, on purpose. In fact, it was nowhere near we thought we were, off by kilometers in the low-to-mid-double digits. But our guiding principle for scooter excursions is “you can’t be lost if you don’t have a destination in the first place.” Some may suggest this has been the guiding principle of our entire life, to date. But since we were there anyway, we decided to find a busy place to stop for lunch.

 

Having located a market stall with a dirty picnic table, a gelatinous mass of meat sitting on a cutting board and hungry market workers gnawing away, we sat down and ordered a plate. When the plate of pork arrived, we were first distracted by the print around the plate’s edges, which included text in Chinese characters, Bahasa Indonesia and the word “halal.” Nothing about that made any sense at all.

 

Carpetblog readers know we, like them, respect the pig and appreciate the different ways it can be prepared. And, we will eat just about anything. But we’re not going to lie: this collection of unidentifiable pig parts, in uncomfortable shapes, colors and textures, was not delicious. The word regrettable also comes to mind. We ate the whole thing, though. When we invest $2 on a meal, we’re not inclined to let it go to waste.

 

We had better luck the following day, on our early-morning rice paddy walk. A rice farmer with a scythe shouted,  “Hey! You want coconut?” Who wouldn’t? He shucked off his pants (shorts underneath, oh phew), shimmied up a coconut palm, thwacked a coconut and threw it down. He hacked off the top and passed it over so we could drink the juice, which cooled the already-sweating morning measurably. Then he carved out the meat from inside, which tasted more like nutty jello than any coconut we’d ever tasted. We walked home with breakfast on the half shell.

 

Not pork, but also not regrettable.

 

 

 

 

Ask Carpetblogger: What the f*ck do you do all day?

Many have asked! Some may be surprised to hear that our life is not all that different than it is in Istanbul, only it's warmer, cheaper and the Muslims have been replaced by hippies from Marin.

Here is an illustrated Carpetblogger Day in Ubud:

Morning: Rise early! Things must be done before it's ridiculously hot. These things might include:

Cultural Activities. Our guesthouse is a family compound with its own temple. The temple was blessed this week by "the Big Priest." Three generations scurried around all day, making offerings to demons and gods. These offerings included elaborate banana leaf sculptures, piles of fruit and ducks' heads. Foreign guests hung around wondering what, exactly, was happening until they got bored and went to yoga. This took pretty much all day and was completely inscrutable. It rained, which apparently was a good omen. We interpreted it differently but we aren't Balinese Hindu and hadn't been thoroughly briefed.

Excursions: Did you know rice paddies can get UNESCO designation? Yes they can! These were pretty awesome ride paddies. It took us three hours to find them, all stuck up there on the side of a volcano like that, on our Slurpee-colored scooter, but only 90 minutes to get back to Ubud. We often take the scenic route.

Watching wildlife: Have you ever heard the phrase "like a pig in shit?" These pigs might only have been happier if this guy was flinging shit on them instead of water, and if they had not been stacked like cordwood in a pickup headed toward some unpleasant demise. We cracked up listening to them giggle and croak like old ladies. 

 

Afternoon. Did we mention it's hot? That means it's time for a swim in the guesthouse pool. Alternatively, we might plant ourselves in a cafe with some lime juice and "work." Or we might work on the assdent in our hammock. Or we might ask the help throw buckets of water on us.

Late afternoon: Going to an ordinary yoga class here (if you can find one that doesn't involve ecstatic dancing or vaginal ozone treatments ) is so mainstream as to be embarrassing. That said, we spend a lot of yoga hours in this studio overlooking the rice paddies and it, enhanced by the view of the yomosexuals in the front of the class, is not at all unpleasant.

Evening: Ubud rocks HARD. Would you expect something different from a population of 50+ women wearing sensible shoes, natural fibers and dangling earrings? Kbai! It's chakra realignment time! Gotta go!

Happy Nyepi!

Balinese New Years celebrations (Nyepi) take place this week. We drove our spectacular pink scooter through the villages around Ubud today, photographing "Ogah Ogah." These bamboo and papier mache figures will be burnt tomorrow evening after a parade to village crossroads and cemeteries (the places evil spirits are most likely to be found) around the island in an effort to vanquish the spirits from Bali for the coming year.

Each village builds an Ogah Ogah from donations. For the last week, young men have been designing and building them beneath roadside bamboo scaffolding, saving the head for last, lest their most creative ideas get stolen by neighboring villages. They are more than happy to have their creations, which represent evil spirits or Hindu gods kicking some evil ass, photographed.

There's some debate among local expats whether there is an Ogah Ogah competition. Some argue that the peace loving, compassionate and spiritually present Balinese would never compete over who had the coolest Ogah Ogah. Skeptical of this theory, we found the competitive urge thriving in the countryside when we showed building teams photos of other villages' work or told them their Ogah Ogah was the best one we'd seen yet.

Monday morning, Nyepi starts and the Island literally shuts down until sunup Tuesday. No one leaves their homes (including tourists), no one talks, cooks, works, uses electricity or travels (imagine what a burden this will be for us). Even the international airport is shut for the day. Apparently this is to persuade the demons that the island is uninhabited, so they'll go elsewhere. With motor-scooters and buses shut off, the silence is reported to be impressive. People meditate or spend the day in quiet reflection, then on Wednesday, they'll go visit all the people they've offended in the last year and apologize.

We've often said that while we appreciate the institutionalized myths around which people structure their lives, we certainly don't participate in them even if they are colorful and foreign, so don't go holding your breath for any Carpetblog Nyepi apologies. As our list of grievances is long, however, we'll certainly accept some apologies.

These are just a few of our Ogah Ogah photos. Check out more on our Demotix page.