No water and no cutlery
Today
again I get the question from our guests. How did I end up here in the remote heart
of Bali?
For
the third time this week the electricity goes out without any announcement. And
there is no running water either, because the water pump in the village is
broken.
And
today of all days there is a ceremony again: the celebration of the first
anniversary of one of the twenty temples in the village.
This
has the painful side effect that half of the staff is off. In the meantime, I
try to maintain our 5-star status that we received from our guests on
Tripadvisor.
For
me the toilets, kitchen and café must always be contamination-proof.
This
is incomprehensible to the villagers, and therefore also to the staff at my
Farm & Café.
Not
all of them have a toilet at home and they do everything in the river.
Toilet
paper is unnecessary, that's what they have their left hand for. This makes the
left hand unclean, which means that almost everything else is done with the
right, such as taking a tip, shaking someone's hand and eating.
You
will not find any cutlery in the home of a Balinese. Extremely sharp knives and
at most a few spoons, but these are mainly used for stirring a pan or their coffee.
Most
local eateries are not equipped with a knife and fork either.
In
my village they cook at home on a wood fire in a blackened kitchen with woven
bamboo walls.
The
staff keeps wondering why everything has to be so spotless and what I'm so
concerned about.