zaterdag 2 september 2023

No water & no cutlery

 

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.

 They think that it is an absolute waste of their time

dinsdag 15 augustus 2023

The Adventures of a new life in the Bali Mountains

 


My deeper then a suntan life in the Bali Mountains.

 

What makes your home your own? Is it knowing when you’ll hear the squeak in the bathroom door? What about the kitchen floor? Or is it more? Does it include the memories that happened inside its walls? All the days and nights of the winters, springs, summers and falls? Or is it even more? What about the nouns of the town? The people, places and things that all have been around? I believe that it is all these things that make you want to sing. Your home is your own because you make it so. Your home is your home because it’s the best thing you’ve ever known.

Jess Sauerhoff

 

Being from Amsterdam and today exactly 22 happy years living in Bali. 

Our guests visiting The Organic Farm & Café ask me daily how this  Amsterdam city girl ended up being a farmer in a remote agriculture area in Bali?

This is my story..

Growing up in Holland my life was full of rules and many limits. Priority was not what makes you happy. Instead I should be the perfect copy kid by following everybody else’s life path. Study, followed by getting married and having perfect kids. Living in a perfect home with the perfect car on the drive way, At 67 I could finally live my own dream of golden years.

A life in which every day is a new adventure.

Faith tapped me on the shoulders and is my guiding force on the Island of the Gods.