(Published in the Bali Daily Newspaper, March 2014)
Nowhere in the developing world do expatriates
bang their own drums like they do in Bali. In Goa, Kathmandu or Tangiers they
would be humanely culled and deported for racism.
A glance through Facebook’s Bali Expatriate page
reveals the full horror of the situation. Imagine if Sydney’s considerable
Balinese population started an expat page with postings such as: “Never employ
a local: they start drinking beer at 4 p.m. and have appalling punctuation.” The
Balinese would be beaten up on the buses!
Ten years ago I wrote an article for a Balinese
magazine about the “Rise of the Super-bule”.
I identified a rabid new sub-species of expat who drive S.U.V. aggressively,
honk at temple processions if they get in the way and complain bitterly about
the Balinese treatment of their dogs.
It was a satirical piece and I never imagined
that the movement would grow to evangelical cult proportions. Super-bules now control great swathes of
Seminyak, Lembongan and Canggu. They frequent restaurants with ex-pat maitre d’ and only eat cup cakes formed
with white hands. For the most part they seem completely uninterested in
Balinese culture.
They have their own magazines whose ads only
portray Balinese as either masseurs or drinks waiters.
Expats used to settle in Bali to learn from the
Balinese — many now only want to teach them. Bali now attracts more investors than
artists.
To be fair, the Balinese are partly to blame for this
weird mutation of the guest population. For decades they have allowed expat
investors to run rampant through the rice fields, and to enter the small scale
business market traditionally run by the Balinese. The Balinese tolerance has
been interpreted as weakness and the guests are turning on their hosts. Plus
the Balinese tolerance is straining at the seams.
The situation is exacerbated by the Balinese doing
things to annoy their nature-loving expatriates. Some villages have recently started
chopping down trees, for example, to fill in the sky with giant billboard-size
photographs of politicians in pious attitudes. And they litter. ‘They litter’
is the most quoted phrase on FB’s Bali expat page. Followed by ‘They don’t look
after their orphans/dogs/greenbelts/restaurant hygiene/homicides/break-ins.
It’s not that all the FB banging on is without
results: the expat community’s Bali crime page (30,000 members!) has been
partly instrumental in the placement of two new (empty) traffic police kiosks
on Kuta’s Bemo Corner, for example.
Some funny paradoxes emerge when comparing the parallel
universes. Mention odalan festival
and expats froth at the mouth — “waste of money” many scream — but mention Ubud
Spirit Festival and their hips start to sway. Expats think green while the
Balinese think greenbacks — for too long all development has been good. The
Balinese are embracing consumerism and urban sprawl with their trademark creative
zeal while expats are embracing bamboo.
The giant red-brick Banjar Tuban complex — a
masterpiece of Majapahit modern — now has the island’s largest digital
advertisement display screen slapped onto its façade. Expats fear that the
Balinese are fiddling while Bali turns into a cheap urban tourism paradise.
The expat community seems to be more concerned
with environmental issues than the government. It is the expats who are leading
the Balinese surfing community in a much needed clean-up of Kuta Beach, and spear-heading
many environmental conservation education programmes, many sponsored by
long-term expat companies.
There is no doubt that
the expat community feels the need to empower itself in order to deal with the
recent appalling spike in violent crimes directed at tourists and expats, and
the perceived lack of efficiency by the tourist police. Social media hubs like
Facebook Bali Expat page now provide a help center.
• • •
Balinese, many of whom have day-jobs within the
expat universe, are not affected by the cultural shift taking place and the
universes rarely collide. Bali keeps up its culture, between the megamalls and
budget hotels, and the expats have invented a full raft of amusements that just
don’t involve the Balinese, except as masseuse, maids, drinks waiters and
pedicurists. There are of course many notable exceptions, particularly in Ubud
where the traditional and the expat community share many interests and cultural
pursuits. But, still, you can count the numbers of expats who regularly attend
their adopted villages’ temple festival on one hand.
The BBC Travel page on-line recently listed
Bali’s up-coming Melasti processions
of the gods to the sea as one of world’s top ten festivals to visit in March.
Let’s see if the number of expat participants can rise to rival the usual two
tourists in g-strings.
The expat’s spiritual needs are catered to by cakra-buffers flown in from California
but their dietary desires have spawned a generation of Asian-confusion gastronomic
excellence.
Meanwhile the Balinese have embraced Pizza Hut
with a passion and are starting to worship at the altar of the Mall Mamon. The
irrepressible creative energy of the Balinese perhaps needs a bit of
re-direction, from community leaders committed to positive environment-friendly
change.
And the more rabid expats need to put a lid on it
— they are giving a bad name to the many who love the island.
