FOOL'S JOURNEY

After 20 years in Hawaii, Phil & I sold everything we owned and moved to Bali, Indonesia. The reasons we gave ourselves were: 1) To scale down our cost of living, 2) Get back to basics, and 3) Reinvent ourselves. Little did we know how extreme Bali would be for us. Every day brings something new to learn, observe, digest, or be thoroughly confounded by. I’ve had brilliant Aha moments and I’ve dangled at the end of my rope, sure I was going to die. Clueless as I am most of the time, I now figure I may as well surrender to whatever is.

My original intent was to keep a journal of our experiences and put it together in a monthly e-newsletter, forgetting that even writing a yearly newsletter often fell by the wayside. I did manage to put out one Bali Update, I think back in March ’09, and I do regularly post short notes and photos on Facebook. This blog is an attempt to share more than is possible on Facebook and yet keep myself from overwhelm.

Some background info: I was born in Jakarta, Java three months before the Japanese invaded and occupied Indonesia in WWII and while it was still a colony of the Dutch. My mother comes from Manado, North Sulawesi, a predominantly Christian area with loyalties to the Dutch. It’s because of my mother that we spoke Dutch at home and attended Dutch schools, which explains why, even though I grew up in Indonesia and look Indonesian, I’m not particularly fluent in the language. A definite drawback. As an excuse I tell people I’m from Hawaii.

In 1949 Indonesia gained its independence and in 1957 those with the Dutch nationality were forced to leave and “repatriate” to The Netherlands. I was 16, attending the Dutch Lyceum in Jakarta. My family was in East Kalimantan, Borneo and could not get transport out. I left on the SS. Wilhelm Ruys for the 3-week journey to Rotterdam and arrived the day after a snowstorm. I had never seen snow before and never been so cold in my life. I was the only brown-skinned student at the Lyceum in Vlaardingen. By age 20 I was married, had a baby, and talked my husband into immigrating to America. I spent the 60’s and 70’s in Bible Belt Oklahoma City, OK, straining and chomping at the bit. A life-threatening incident helped me break free and I left to go south, to Houston, TX where I did not know anyone but had once spied a live palm tree. I met Phil and within 10 years talked him into moving to Hawaii. So I know something about moving from place to place, country to country, about discarding your roots, and stepping into the unknown. I thought coming to Bali would be a piece of cake.

Phil and I had visited Bali for a week in 1981, much too long ago and too short a time to claim any reasonable knowledge of it. To drop everything, leave the beauty of Hawaii, our family and friends, our comforts… to do what? Start over again? At our age? In a third world country with mediocre healthcare? Are you insane? This blog may prove that the Fools’ Journey can be undertaken at any age to any place, even if it’s only to the bathroom. But what do I know?