the path thru the forest

the tide was out, the sea was still, i had already snorkeled in the morning, enjoying the varied and beautiful corals and fishes, so it seemed a good time to go on a discovery walk to see what lies further west of where i had gone until now...

so off i went, watching the fishermen and the influence the tide has on the shoreline each time. the sky started looking dark and i wondered if that meant rain already, or just in the mountains...and then i felt the raindrops begin...where to go? maybe inland into the forest and stand under a banana tree (i know they are not trees, but they sure are as tall as tall trees here!)...so as i just turned and started walking towards the forest, i saw a little path with a woman coming towards me, to gather up her laundry that had dried on the rocks, before it is wet from the rain...i decided to just walk on it and hopefully it was not just going to lead me to the entrance to her house, but would eventually lead me back into the village.

while it rained, i noticed everyone continued as usual, non pulsed by it, no one running under cover or offering me to come under their roof, just walking and carrying on. when it got harder i looked around to find a spot where the palm and banana leaves were wide enough up above me to keep me dry. it was funny, standing in the forest with rain dripping down the long leaves of the palms, but exactly where i stood i was dry.

the rain continued for about 1/2 an hour and got really hard, so i was carefully covering my camera and trying to stay as dry as i could. just then i noticed how the path that was dry had been turned into a stream already. and when i looked in the other direction i saw two girls hugging and giggling and soaking wet from head to toe, coming home from school through the stream of a path. i grabbed my camera to catch them, and they giggled and ran off down the path to their house. we waved, and after a few minutes they were peeking out from behind the trees to see if i was still standing there in the rain..which i was...

we kept waving to each other, and i thought that they might make a hand gesture to invite me to their home somewhere in the forest, but no...a little while later they again peeked out to see if the lady in red was still standing in the rain, which i was, and this time they had brought their older brother, about 11, who was very assertive and confident, and after verifying that there really was a woman standing under a tree in the middle of the forest, soaking wet, (by now) they all returned home...i had hoped that maybe HE knew english, or would invite me in...but no.

then their mother yelled to them to come home, and coming after them with an umbrella...they showed me to her, and she motioned from 50 meters away, that i should come over. and she just continued to stand there under her umbrella...i was happy to be invited, but a bit baffled why she didn't come with the umbrella to meet me instead of watching me walk in the pouring rain until we both smiled and giggled and she covered us both with the umbrella. she was as tall as my shoulders, which made me feel like a giant next to her, and we walked another 50 meters in the mud (which had been a path 1/2 hour beforehand.), she barefoot, me sloping around in my tongs...

we entered a little compound made up of 4 palm shacks and she pointed to her little porch with a bench where an old thin woman was sitting, and so i sat down next to her, on the well used bench which already had a comfortable slope in it after all the hours of people sitting on it (including the dog). and there i sat as the kids kept coming out from the other shack giggling to look at me, covering their heads with a bamboo tray, and all hugged together. the mother who had invited me over, was busy giggling and imitating to her mother (in law?) how i had been standing all cowered over under the tree and how she had invited me...they both giggled and giggled again and again as she continued to imitate how i looked there in the forest...

it is very interesting that this is typical conversation and behavior....they love making fun, and repeating things again and again and giggling together...it really is like little children and the way they communicate. and i began to wonder if i was ever like that, or maybe my childhood did not include that...and i continued to sit there, taking photos of them all and showing them to them. the complex had 2 shacks for sleeping, and one for cooking and another one for eating, and a well and outhouse. the neighbor (sister-in-law?) came over too, and knew how to ask me where i come from, but that was the extent of her engrish, (that's how they say english) and my non existent balinese or indonesian, left us all just staring out at the rain for about 1/2 an hour.

it was actually quite interesting to see that this is what people do here when it rains...they sit on the porch and watch it. period. and that can be very enlightening...time to reflect, to look around, to visit, to watch nature, to just be. as i watched it i slowly understood why there are "gutters" in the world...since their little entrance had a piece of tin that collected the rainwater from the tin roof, but since it was so old it had holes in it and was filling up buckets of rainwater for...? (when the kids threw the umbrella on the muddy ground, she later picked it up and even though it looked clean to me, she dipped her hand into the bucket of rainwater and rinsed it off, which always surprises me to see a need for cleanliness in spite of the poverty and dilapidation).

after about 1/2 an hour of looking at the rain, and the kids busy hugging each other and giggling, the rain pretty much stopped and the old woman went, and the mother went, and i just sat there, waiting for it to really finish...if i already have a place to stay dry now...
and then i saw the mother kept peeking to see if i was still sitting on the bench, and i realized that my visit had ended, and it was time to thank her and get on my way. which i did, and left...passing along the way the grandmother, sitting in the bale (a covered platform) with her machete knife cutting thin thin slices of banana trunk to make soup from.

and now back on the path, and why not take it through the forest and see what i discover, instead of just returning to the sea again... i had often seen children or adults walking off the main path in the village, into the forest, and i always wondered how they live? where they live? what does it look like? and here god heard my desire and gave me the opportunity to see it up close! and now...lets just get back on that path turned stream, and figure out how to get home...if i thought that there is a grid in the forest....i was wrong...paths went in all directions, and so i tried to listen to the direction of the faint trucks and motorbikes, thinking that would head me in the right direction...but i ended up just wandering through the forest, enjoying it and eventually coming out one of those little entrances that i had until now seen the people disappearing into...