Family in Indonesia

Well, the foot is better, and I can walk without much pain. So I decided to dig all of the weeds and dirt out of the ...hmm, not sure what to call it. It's this area around the balcony that acts kind of like a flower box, and for me, living in the kampung, it's as close as I'll get to my gardens back in Sumbawa. I dropped all the dirt off the third floor balcony down on to the little patio we have just off the kitchen. Su was rather irritated as it was mud and splashed all over the walls and windows. She calls it the landslide. I told her that I would clean it tomorrow when it dries. It was lots of fun.

Now a link to a blog a few days ago about family. As I was in the process of dropping big mud balls and weeds down to the ground, one of my brothers-in-law saw me mucking around and came up to see what I was doing.

“What are you doing?” he says somewhat obtusely.

“Cleaning the flower box.” (I know where this conversation is going.)

“OK, I'll help.” (He starts looking around for tools.)

“That's ok you don't really need to help.” (I'm hoping that he won't so I can slip into a work/meditation state.)

“Oh, I want to.” (Rude of me to tell him no.)

So he set off to find some tools (I was doing this with bare hands.) While he was gone, one of our neighbors from Sumbawa who dropped in on their way back to Sumbawa from a visit to his wife's parents in Java appeared suddenly from the stairway, and we went through the same conversation. So it ended up that the three of us were digging all the weeds and dirt and cigarette butts out of the flower box and dropping them downstairs.

So here's the point, and I'm writing this so that I remember it in the future when the family irritates me over one thing or the other. Family members and neighbors will drop what they're doing and come and help you if they see you starting in on a project. They don't make a big deal out of it, they just do it. Sometimes it's really hard, dirty work, but they cheerfully do it anyway. They don't expect something for it, it's just part of being a family member or a neighbor. I don't know how many times this has happened over the last 18 years. (There are good and bad points about this actually, but I'll get to them tomorrow.)

The main point today is to remind myself that when I do something like take all of them to the Treetop Adventure and pay for all of them and they don't thank me, it's just part of being a family member or a friend. They just expect me to pay because I have money and they don't. The reciprocity (that good old word from Anthro160 with Stevie Garbarino) is that they do stuff for me where they provide what they can – their labor or local knowledge (my brother-in-law from Denpasar who constantly drives me there from Singaraja) or their time (running to shops doing errands for me).

'Nuff said for today.