The Lady That Had No Time

December 17, 2016

Mad Dogs & Englishmen

Englishmen detest a siesta.
In the Philippines
There are lovely screens
To protect you from the glare.
In the Malay States
There are hats like plates
Which the Britishers won’t wear.

At twelve noon
The natives’ swoon
And no further work is done.
But mad dogs and Englishmen
Go out in the midday sun.

-Noel Coward & Joe Cocker

We’d been slogging across Bali for three days already. Out in the perilous mid-day sun like a bunch of mad dogs and Englishmen.

My skin was a nice medium rare and my legs were functioning like spaghetti al dente. Awesome if you’re having an Italian meal. Not so good for hiking.

As it turns out, we were on a quest with a group of intrepid souls to cross Bali on foot.

Thus far, we’d entered a temple where cheeky monkeys roam while eagerly awaiting to pounce on your snack food and get up to all sorts of thievery and buggery. Over the years they’d become habituated to the sound of Oreo sleeves being cracked open and in Pavlovian fashion spring into action and spread chaos and controversy of the highest rank.

A troupe of chaotic-neutral long-tailed macaques pilfering and perfecting the art of misdirection is anarchy at its finest. Goes together like peanut butter and bacon! It somehow works but leaves you puzzled as to why.

We’d also recently passed through a Gateway to the Gods that peaks out over sacred mountains, valleys, and verdant rice fields. The staff of life. At least in Asia.

We’d passed through the original Balinese Thousand-Year-Old village where traditionally, the girls, once they start menstruating, mount a gigantic wooden Ferris Wheel on which they are rotated around and nervously wait to be chosen by the eager boys and men below.

In that same village, pre-pubescent boys beat each other to a bloody pulp with blades of meter-long grass studded with thorns on their sharp edges to prove their worthiness for said perched lasses and the right to be first to choose their soon to be mate.

We’d even seen the coffee that a cat-like mammal called a civet poops out its anus once it has digested the coffee beans it ate the day before for lunch. During which, the digestive enzymes somehow enhance the flavor and increase the value of the coffee fifty-fold.

Apparently, by passing through the intestinal tract of a civet, a coffee bean becomes infinitely more valuable, which makes civet coffee the most expensive cuppa joe in the world at about $15–20 per cup or several hundred dollars per kilo (which is how they measure the weight of things in the rest of the world- for my American friends).

But nothing would compare to what was coming next.

On this glorious morning, we turned inland after tracing the coastline for the last couple of days and started traipsing through rice fields and irrigation ditches heading toward the Tirtagangga Water Palace.

More than a few of us had slipped and busted our butts that morning. Whoever falls first has to buy the beer. That’s our mantra. Every day someone different had to spring for the night’s big Bintang in a bottle.

The conversation seemed to keep drifting back to how many snakes might be lurking about. There were no snakes but we did see a bunch of munia, egrets and meet a few crouching rice farmers along the way.

After lunch, we set out across the final rice field. The last stream crossing and the Water Palace would be in sight.

We staggered towards our goal with the sun at that magical place in the sky where everything bathes in golden light. A testament to the beauty of Nature that we often fail to take time to notice.

An unassuming lady with a basket on her head laden with various grasses and plants walked toward us. She stopped and asked the usual questions.

We answered nicely even though we’d had the same conversation many times before.

It’s a sad state of affairs but so often true. Once you’ve been traveling and living overseas for a spell you become cynical and jaded. You’ve had the same bloody small talk conversations at least seven thousand times.

How are you? Where do you come from? Where do you live? Do you speak Bahasa? Thai? Vietnamese? Malay? Singlish? (name the language for whichever country you are in).

No, I don’t want to buy a t-shirt. No, I don’t want a taxi. I know your friend has a nice shop.

And so it goes.

The sad part is that we really, truly shouldn’t be that way. But we are. Even the most gregarious and outgoing of us succumb to the travel-weary conversations.

But there is a danger in that. A real and present danger.

We end up shutting ourselves off. Not truly getting to know The Other. Making assumptions and judgments on an infinitesimally small amount of information about The Other.

We oft forget that everyone has a story. A fascinating or cruel story. An enlightening or frightening story. But nonetheless, a deeply personal story.

If we go into auto-pilot and shut ourselves off we lose. We pay the price. We miss an opportunity.

However, once in a great while. If we’re open and curious and lucky and can speak the language or have a translator nearby we can bust through that barrier and magic happens. We can Walk Between the Worlds and learn something about The Other and ultimately ourselves.

That my friends is what it’s all about.

Luckily, I do speak Bahasa Indonesia. So the stars were aligned and it was our Fate to gain insight into this lady's life governed by biological clocks and Circadian rhythms.

So, we continued chatting with this lady, albeit reluctantly at the time.

“Good morning!”, she exclaimed for no apparent reason.

There was a bit of a spark in her eyes. Some sort of intrinsic happiness. Weird. Bizarre. Why would she be so happy trudging through a muddy rice field burdened by a basket of grassy earthy stuff on her head?

“Good morning!”, we replied.

“How are you?”, she quipped.

“We are fine. And you?”

“I’m fine.”, she replied.

“Where do you come from?”, she inquired.

“We are from the USA, Canada and Australia.”

“What are you doing today? Where do you want to go?” She was persistent and curious.

“We are just walking around and exploring.” We explained.

We didn’t tell her our plan to walk across the island because it’s weird for people to walk just for fun or recreation. Walking is for work and utility. Pragmatic. To get somewhere for a reason.

As ya know, only mad dogs and Englishmen would walk around for no apparent reason in the mid-day sun during the hottest part of the day.

But for some reason, the conversation took a turn. We started to quiz her about her life in rural parts of The Island.

“How old are you?”, we asked?

“I don’t know.”

“What do you mean you don’t know? When were you born?”

“I don’t know. I am an orphan and I am not sure when I was born. My mom and dad died when I was a baby.”

“Oh, who raised you?”

“The village. I grew up in the village.”

Wait a minute. I’ve heard the saying that it takes a village to raise a kid. But here it was personified. Real. In your face.

“You don’t know what year you were born?”

“No.” We could tell she was being honest. It was in her demeanor and in her eyes. There was no shame or remorse. It was just the way it was.

“Do you know what year it is now?”

“Nope.”

What? How could she not know the year or the time?!

We showed her a watch. You know. The kind with hands. An analog.

“I can’t read that. I don’t know how.” She let us know.

We showed her a phone with a digital clock. Nope. Couldn’t read that either.

“So, you can’t read a watch?”

“No.”

“Do you know what time it is?”

She looks up at the sky. “It’s time for me to go home after I finish my work.”

“So you don’t know what time it is or what year it is?”

“No.”

“Where do you work?”

“At the Water Palace.”

“What do you do there?”

“I sweep the parking lot.”

“What time do you go to work?”

“Of course, when it’s time to go to work.” As she replied she looked at us strangely. We were asking such silly and obvious questions.

She continued to explain to help us understand.

“Well, when is it time to go to work? After I feed the cows and do my morning chores at home.” I think she was truly perplexed by our simpleton questions.

“Well, when do you finish work?” We asked

“When my work is done.”

“So when you finish sweeping the parking lot?”

“Yes.”

“How long do you work each day?”

“Until I finish my work sweeping.”

The idea of having a set time escaped her. Wasn’t it obvious that you go home after your work is done?

“How much do you get paid to do your work?”, we asked.

“About 10,000 or 20,000 rupiah each day.”, She exclaimed

Just to double-check we asked again.

“So you can’t read a watch?”

“No.”

“What time do you wake up every morning?”

“When the sun comes up, of course”.

More silly questions from us. When else would you get up aside from then the sun rises?

“When do you sleep?”

“When the sun goes down and it’s time to sleep.”

Once again. More silliness from us. When else would you sleep?

She could not tell time! She had no concept of mechanical time or calendars.

What a different world she lived in. She’d somehow escaped our modern Mechanistic Paradigm influenced by Decartes and Newton. The world in which everything lives and dies by the mechanical clock and measured time blocks.

In our world, we had clocks, set times to work and not work. Times to eat. Times to sleep. All pre-determined and dictated by the mechanical tick of a clock.

Her world was so completely opposite to ours.

She was deeply connected to the natural flows and rhythms of sunrise, sunset, and a different order of things.

Her world was influenced and governed by Circadian Rhythms. The ebb and flow as time as it naturally spills out onto the fabric of village life measured by the sunrise, sunset and phases of the moon.

My mind wandered and pondered this for quite a while. So many questions. Riddles.

And me with my biology degree wishing I was as connected to nature as this uneducated lady that couldn’t read, tell time, and had no idea how old she was.

Wow.

It was 2016 and there we were on the most touristy island in The Archipelago and we had met a lady that was living in a time before clocks were invented.