Yesterday Wayan (aka: Spiritual Teacher / Taxi Driver) arrived at my hotel at 10am to pick me up for a tour of Bali.
“Where you want to go, Kristeen? You want to see the rice fields? You want to see the mountain? Where you want to go today?”
“I want to go to your village first. I want to meet your cows and see where you live.”
“Okay. I take you to my village. You see my cows. You meet my family. We start there.”
It’s hot in his taxi. I could have hired a driver with air-con (there are hundreds of taxi drivers in Bali with air-con) but they wouldn’t have been Wayan.
And I wanted Wayan.
Even if choosing him meant I would be sweating like a pig for the day.
“Why do you have a flower on your ear, Wayan?” I ask, eyeing the blue flower petal crumpled over the top of his left ear as he navigates the busy road out of Ubud.
“Flower on the ear is prayer to gods. It’s offering. In the morning I wake up, I make an offering. Put flower there. Thank God to waking up. Reminder. Reminder to thankful.”
“Yesterday you had a yellow one there,” I say.
“You go to garden, not always the red flower. If always red, you think: ‘I no like this garden’ but if all different color: red, yellow, blue then the garden is very beautiful.
Every person different color too, their character different color. Is good. Not same.”
“What color am I?” I ask.
He eyes my skin and smiles and says, “You white flower.”
We laugh.
“People sometimes say, ‘Wayan, you handsome man.’ Sometimes I look in mirror and see the handsome. Othertimes not so handsome. Not so confident me.”
“I think you are handsome, Wayan,” I say.
“Thank you, Kristeen.”
“Don’t get a big head, okay, Wayan? You won’t be able to walk through the door.”
He laughs. “I no big head. Too much thinking I handsome not good, Kristeen. Not higher or lower than any other peoples. Same. The higher not good. The lower not good. Creates the mental illness. No connection with the other peoples from the heart if higher or lower than the other peoples.”
He changes the subject: “You want the suckling pig? If you want the suckling pig we stop. Have the lunch.”
“Sure, I’ll have the suckling pig.”
We stop at a village roadside stand where he orders both of us a plate of pig with spices and a scoop of rice.
After we eat we drive to his village.
“I have simple house, Kristeen. No fancy. Someday I build nice house with the Balinese architecture. I design house in my mind already. Now, it’s the simple house. You see it.”
He parks and kids come out and stare at me as we walk through a gate.
“This my cows. My chickens. You no like the chickens. I like the chickens,” he smiles at me.
“Use chickens for the cockfighting. You no have the cockfighting in America. In Bali we have the cockfighting. Here, you want to hold my chicken?” he lifts the basket covering the white rooster and plops the chicken in my hands.
It clucks nervously. I pet the soft white feathers.
“Nice chicken, Wayan. Very beautiful.”
“Yeah, but you no like the chicken. The noise. I take you away from chicken to hotel with no chicken. Too noisy for you. You see my cows? I cut the grass for my cows. Now they eating.”
His roosters and his cows look incredibly healthy and glossy.
“You want to meet my how-you-say-it? My brother wife?” he asks.
“Sister-in-law,” I say.
“Oh, yeah, the sister-in-law. You meet the sister-in-law and the kids.”
We walk past the cows and roosters and he stops at a little hut.
“This my kitchen. I have stove here,” he points to a brick oven. “Wood go underneath and I cook. It’s my more fancy stove. This my old stove,” he points to a hibachi-type stove.
“Come, we meet my sister-in-law and kids.”
We walk beyond his kitchen to a house where a woman and her two daughters are sitting.
Wayan speaks to her and she smiles to me.
“Hallo,” she says.
“Hello,” I say.
We smile shyly at one another.
She has such a familiar, sweet face.
“You travel alone?” she asks.
I nod.
“How old you are?”
“Forty one.”
“Forty one!” She speaks something to Wayan and they laugh.
“You travel alone? You single?”
“Yes,” I say.
“I double,” Wayan says.
His sister-in-law and I crack up.
“You are a funny man, Wayan,” I say.
He smiles at me.
His nieces are playing with a kitten and he says, “See my dog?” he points to a dog sleeping sideways on the floor.
“Before I bring kitten here I talk with my dog. I say: you be nice to kitten. Dog usually run after the cat but if you talk to the animals they listen and so I talk to my dog and he listen to me. No fighting with the kitten. Very peaceful. No problem. Only time problem when the kitten eat the dog food then the dog make a noise and kitten know not to eat the food. That’s only problem. Otherwise peaceful.”
We spend a couple of hours talking: me, Wayan and his sister-in-law.
The view of ricefields behind the house:
At one point he turns to me and says, “Saturday we go to temple ceremony in Denpasar. My sister-in-law, the kids, me. You want to come?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, I pick you up at the hotel at 4:00 on Saturday. You must wear the sarong. For the temple. No sarong, no go into temple.”
“Okay.”
“What you want to do now?” he asks.
“I want to go meet your priest.”
“You want to meet my priest? We go. He no have the road to his house. Only walking through the nature. No driving there. This okay?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, we go now. He maybe working in the rice fields. We see.”
He goes into the house and comes out with a small laptop computer.
“You know how to use, Kristeen?” he asks, handing the computer to me.
“Yes.” I say.
“I don’t know how to use. Maybe you teach me sometime.”
“Sure,” I say.
“My brother, husband of sister-in-law, in Alabama. Working, making money in America. Send money to wife in Bali. My brother on the Facebook. We try to get the Facebook now?”
I click on the Firefox browser but nothing happens.
“You don’t have an internet connection, Wayan.”
“Okay, we try later.”
“My brother’s wife very sad husband in America. Cry sometimes. Very sad. Sometimes I think ‘ I will go to America’ but I stay to help her with kids. I think the money not good. I don’t want to leave my family for the money. Better to be with family than so much money.”
We look at each other and nod in agreement.
“We go to visit my priest now, Kristeen.”
About Me: 
