mutual guarantee - "arvut hadadi"

today i was speaking again with my friend about the cremation for the babies. i was telling her how in the evening i asked my landlord how it felt now, 20 years later, to finally do the cremation? finally have closure...and she smiled and waved her hands into the air and said that now she feels her babys' soul is happy and with god and can continue on, and she is light at heart. i asked my friend; "why would someone wait 20 years to do a cremation? if it costs $10 to do a group one, or $200 to do a communal one, and they have the money, why would someone choose to have such a heavy weight on them for 20 years?"

her answered surprised me. "when i married my husband 16 years ago and he brought me here to his village, he explained to me that i must know that the cremations here are done communally, not like in my village where if you have money, you make a cremation. here the village wants to insure that everyone care about each other till the end. so no one can make a cremation on their own just because they have money. only once there are enough people that have enough money and all need a cremation, then they make it." so this was the first time in 20 years that there were enough people that had lost babies, to make the cremation.

it suddenly clarified for me why there can be 3 kiosks one next to the other, and one of the neighbors goes and opens up a 4th one right next to the others! i wondered if the other people are jealous or fearful that it will effect their business and how will they make a living. and when i ask the balinese, they always look at me surprised by my strange thought that someone wants to profit more than his neighbor. they are even happy for the one that opens the 4th one and purposely buy from him to help him his start his new business. even my friend who is building the house, purposely hired his neighbor, who was unemployed, and not a builder but capable of building with the team of 8 other workers, in order to help him get more experience and to enable him to get an income to support his family. he knew that it would be better to give him work, than to risk any jealousy. harmony first. in the end, we all need to make enough money to have a cremation! so what difference does it make?!