A day helping preparing for ceremony in Bali. (Not written by me but I know every detail inside and out and if I was good at writing, this is how it would be. Thanks Michael Priday for taking your time to write this) I get up at 5am, put on an old batik sarong, t-shirt, udeng and knife and wander bleary eyed down to the Bale. 60 other men are already there, what time do I have to get up not to be one of the last? Ah! my brother-in-law is behind me, sweet! I get called over to one of the small groups chopping the pig up for lawar. I sit cross legged next to an old man I know well, Pak Tourist. Yes that is his name though he is about 60, so not sure how that came about. Pull out the knife, immediately checked out by the man sitting next to me, a thumb ran down the blade, a quiet Humpf and handed back to me. The hour I spent polishing and sharpening has paid off. Slice up the lump of fat and meat in front of me, trying to avoid cutting the ends of my fingers off, and proceed to chop it fine. The degree of fineness required is an art that can only be learnt by experience. Scoop it up into the communal bowl and take another lump. Trying, unsuccessfully, to keep up with those around me, hand and arm starting to throb as I bang the knife down on to the meat. Going to be aching all night. At last a break. Damn! Its nangka. Sweet as a fruit, delicious as a vegetable, the juices produced when cutting young nangka are an early form of superglue. Not too bad in the home when you are just slicing a small piece, but I have about 50Kg in front of me. No good worrying about it, we are going to be here all day. Working through the pile and listening to the group talking around me. They know my Balinese is not that good so they chat to me in Indonesian, asking about the outside world. Explain the concept of the British National Health Service, creating surprise and disbelief. Continue on to the tax system and inevitably on to the local economy and corruption. Finish the nangka and spend 5 minutes trying to clean knife and hands with coconut hair. No more slicing to be done so the group breaks up and finds other work. I head for the coconuts, carefully avoiding the bamboo. I have made enough blood sacrifices cutting bamboo for the time being. Sit down, flip the knife over to the thick edge and crack the coconut open, lever out the flesh with the point and chuck it in the pile. Very therapeutic, dont need meditation when there are coconuts to crack. If you are doing this for a small ceremony in the house you will have to grate it too, another good way of adding fresh blood to the mix. Thankfully the banjar use a machine to work through the huge pile of coconut flesh, my fingers are safe. Now for the sate. First big globs of fat, some with meat, and other unidentifiable chunks of pig pushed onto the bamboo sticks. There is an order to this, alternating fat and meat with a chunk of what may be liver on the end. Some of it is straight off the fire and the unwary find themselves waving their fingers in the air to cool them. I am not caught out and dont rush to pick anything up. Most of the men here have skin twice as thick as mine, so I am even more careful. The fat runs down your fingers, no point in wiping it off though, there are another five trays of meat waiting. Meanwhile over in the corner they are making the lawar, mixing the chopped fat, vegetables, spices and blood. The master chef with a cigarette in his mouth, churning the mixture in a giant bowl with a yellow fingered hand. They are making three kinds white mostly fat and spices, green with addition of vegetables and red like the white with fresh blood, I prefer the red myself. Time for a break, rice and lawar served on a banana leaf. Some like to sit together while others prefer to eat by themselves, everyone looking for a bit of shade. Scoop up the rice and lawar together with your fingers and push it into your mouth. Seems difficult at first but can be quickly mastered. Like everything else with the banjar you need to learn quickly. Not finished yet. Making sate lilit, the ground coconut and meat mixture turned into a fine and sticky paste. Pick up stick, make sure it is the right way up, glob of mixture in right hand, rotate it round the stick. Not quite right, do it again. After a few false starts get into the rhythm, not quite as fast as the old man sitting next to me but a respectable turn around. Get a few nods from those around me. Being able to make sate lilit being one of the standards you are measured by. Start off with the big ones for eating, then on to the smaller ones for the offerings. The smaller they get the more difficult to get the shape right. Those made from duck being one of the smallest and hardest to make. Now knocking them out whilst chatting and hardly looking at what I am doing. Finish one bunch of sticks and another appears, break open the bunch and pass them round the group. A couple more kilos of mixture lands in front of me and off we go again. I am about 5 metres away from where the sate is being cooked but still feel the heat washing across me. Sate done, help fan the red hot coconut shell to finish cooking them. Enough of that as I start to melt in the heat. Squares of banana leaf are laid out in a series of long lines in the Bale. Each the base for an offering, this colour lawar here, that sate there, a pattern folllowed down the line, dont get it wrong. One set finished, another laid out. That finished another line laid out, not for offerings this time but food to take home, rice, lawar and sate. One for each member of the banjar. Take a break with some of the others, winding down now as the last jobs are completed. Start to tidy up. The leftover bones, still with meat on them, are being auctioned off. I dont think I will make an offer. Finished for the day but dont rush off, dont want to be the first to leave. Pick up my bag of food and head off home. Besok lagi. Nyoman Astawa aka Michael Priday
Posted on: Sun, 24 Nov 2013 02:13:03 +0000