Take Off Your Shoes Read online

  We turned off the lights and went to bed, cocooned in the mosquito netting. I slept fitfully.

  The next morning, I woke ahead of everyone else. Bright sunlight shone through the glass patio doors. I shuffled out of our bedroom, careful not to wake Victoria. I heard the trill and warble of birdsong. I stepped outside and saw a lush green backyard that shimmered in the sunlight. A rooster crowed in the distance. The faint sound of running water gurgled from just outside the walled border of the backyard. A small swimming pool sparkled, and a hardwood gazebo invited quiet conversation. Beyond the walls of the property, in perfect view, curved terraces of emerald-green rice fields were carved into a round hill.

  I glimpsed Nyoman in a pale-yellow polo shirt, batik sarong, and sandals. He was doing the rounds on the property, lighting incense and setting out little pallets of rattan and banana leaf filled with flower petals and bits of food. I thought he was checking the property and feeding the birds.

  He smiled at me and waved. “I’m laying out morning offerings.” When he was done, he put his hands together in prayer, smiled slightly, and bowed gently forward.

  Victoria emerged from the bedroom just as Nyoman finished his last offering. I could see a wave of relief wash over her. With a soaring feeling of arrival, we both breathed in the beauty of what would be our home for six months. I let the bright tropical sun melt away the tensions I had felt the night before.

  Nyoman introduced us to Putu, a young mother of one who cleaned the house, and then to Made, the gardener and handyman. Neither spoke any English, but they smiled and bowed in a friendly if somewhat reverential way. Putu set out some toast and cut fruit.

  The kids didn’t wake until late morning. One by one they emerged from their jet-lagged slumber. We introduced them to Putu and Made, but there was no time to linger. We were already late for a tour of their school, which we had arranged through Ben McCrory, the school’s head of admissions. Victoria and I rushed them through a quick meal and herded them into the rental car Nyoman would drive.

  On the ride to school, Nyoman drove aggressively, leaving only inches between our car and the one ahead. It didn’t matter how fast he or other drivers were traveling. The braking distance on this island was obviously shorter than anywhere else on the planet because everyone drove the same way. The vehicular twerk seemed to excite local drivers.

  I choked on truck exhaust and smoke that wafted in from all sides. I saw farmers burning rice chaff in their fields and villagers incinerating their household garbage by the curb. I covered my mouth and nose, lifting the collar of my T-shirt to the bridge of my nose. We passed through the center of Ubud, where a large open-air market housed merchants selling local food and tourist bric-a-brac out of individual stalls. We passed the tony village of Nyuh Kuning and through the aptly named Monkey Forest. We drove mostly in silence, Victoria and I taking in the scenery, the children paralyzed by the terror of attending a new school in a foreign country.

  At last, Nyoman edged out of the tailgating competition. The ride to school, which was supposed to take twenty minutes, clocked in at forty. We were staring at a New York–style commute.

  As we entered the campus, asphalt gave way to a dirt road so broken that it felt as if we were back in Africa, bouncing in a Land Rover through the rough outback of the Serengeti. We pulled up to the entrance of the school and the child drop-off zone. Two Indonesian men, dressed in orange sarongs and Balinese headdress, greeted us with expansive smiles, slight bows, and hands in prayer position at their chests. We signed in and waited to join a group of visitors about to start the tour.

  John Hardy led the school tour. He and his wife, Cynthia, had founded the school a few years earlier. John, in his sixties, was a formidable creative force. He stood in front of us and told us his story. He was dyslexic, he said, and recounted how, in the Ontario town where he grew up, the disorder was poorly understood, and as a result, his dyslexia went undiagnosed and untreated. Despite his obvious intelligence and talent, he was treated like the village idiot. His school experience, as he described it, was nothing short of misery.

  Almost as soon as he could, John escaped to Bali. When he arrived, he became interested in the island’s jewelry-making traditions and learned the techniques of the local artisans. He developed his first pieces by applying new designs to traditional Balinese methods. He began selling his jewelry to tourists on the beaches and expanded it from there to a global operation. He and Cynthia grew their business and brand dramatically, ultimately selling his products to high-end US retailers like Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. When he sold his business to a private equity firm, he and Cynthia used the proceeds to found Green School. John was a born salesman, magnetic, and unwavering to the core in his conviction about what he was doing and its ultimate impact on the educational experience. I wasn’t sure I was buying his story.

  John walked us past a new kitchen structure being built in the shape of a dragon, whose final design would be determined by a student sketch competition. He contrasted Green School with his own school experience: “The people who built the school I went to were the same people who built the prison and the insane asylum, and they built all three institutions out of the same materials. We built this school to inspire students and educators, and we built it almost entirely of renewable resources.”

  He pointed to an array of vegetable gardens in the near distance. “All the food we serve at Green School is grown right here, and students are responsible for its production.” The place was gorgeous. But whether there was any real education going on was an open question. He made precious little mention of core subjects like math, science, or humanities.

  We walked by some classrooms. There were no angles in any of the structures. Everything, including the student desks, was organically shaped. While they learned, students could hear the rush of the Ayung River in the ravine just behind the school. They could feel the tropical breeze that blew in from the nearby Indian Ocean. As we passed the Heart of School’s grand curved staircase leading to the second floor, we saw children’s flip-flops haphazardly piled at its base. “Green School is a barefoot environment,” John said. “What we’re trying to do here is to teach our kids not only the core subjects, like math, science, and English, but also to be global citizens.” What he said resonated with Victoria and me. Over the years, we had debated endlessly about how to provide our children with a Jewish education, which involved a certain amount of indoctrination, and simultaneously engage their creative, explorative spirits. We struggled with the best way to prepare them to be involved in the world while maintaining their traditions.

  As we walked we came upon an open well with a turbine in the center. “Our gravitation water vortex,” John said. The focus of Green School’s curriculum that year was water and its role in the environment. Water would be the core theme too for the way science and the humanities were taught. The water vortex, a microhydropower plant designed to provide electricity to the campus, was the school’s attempt to put into practice some water-centered learning. “We want to be completely self-sufficient,” John said. Then he added, without being defensive, “We’re still trying to get it to work.”

  As we ambled along a pebble path, a tall girl with straight blond hair and blushed cheeks ran over with a friend and stopped us in our tracks. Carina’s neon-green tutu matched her bright demeanor. “Are you Sam?” She exploded in a giant grin. Sam was taken aback by her exuberance. “We’ve been waiting for you! We’ve been checking you out on Facebook, and now you’re here.”

  Her classmate Pim was from Bangkok. Green School classes were a United Nations of students. Pim tied her long, dark hair in a ponytail and smiled at Sam. “There’re only four other boys in our class of thirteen.” Sam turned beet red.

  We ended our tour at a bamboo sign, “Healing Circle.” At the circle’s center was a giant smoky quartz crystal planted heavily in the ground. It stopped one of the women on the tour in her tracks.

  “Wow!” She turned to me, her pa
lms open to the crystal as if to a campfire. “Do you feel that?”

  “Not really.”

  “I can’t get any closer.”

  I looked at her blankly.

  When the tour was over, Victoria asked the kids, “So what do you think?” No answer. By the look on their faces, we could tell that they were struck dumb by the massive differences between Green School and the education they were used to.

  The next day, we woke the kids at seven. Putu had arranged breakfast for us, a cocktail of fruit we were beginning to recognize: rambutan, salak, and dragon fruit. Rita and Oliver begged for another day to recover from all the travel, but Victoria was adamant. The quicker they got started, the quicker they would acclimate. By eight o’clock, we were all in the car again on our way back to school. Unlike the previous day, when we’d arrived after the school day had started, morning drop-off was a busy scene at the school’s entrance. In front of us, Western-looking schoolchildren popped out of SUVs and minivans driven by Balinese drivers. Their sandals clacking away, the kids streamed through the entrance like farmed fish. Sam looked blank. Nava appeared panicked. Oliver was screwing up his courage. Rita seemed almost paralyzed with dread.

  “You guys will do great,” Victoria said. “Just be yourselves.”

  “Would you like us to come in with you?” I asked. Oliver grimaced as if that would be worse than death. But the girls were open to the idea. Oliver slid back the side door of our rented Toyota Avanza minivan. He and Sam said their good-byes and joined the flow of kids. We gave them a minute. Then Victoria and I took the girls by the hand and led them to their classrooms, leaving Nyoman to park the car.

  Rita and Nava were each assigned a buddy to show them around. Rita’s buddy was eager to educate her about Green School toilets. Since they were self-composting, no toilet paper was allowed. “When you finish with your business, you take a scoop of sawdust from a bucket and dump it down the toilet hole.” Rita made a face. Her buddy said, “Or you can hold it in till you get home. That’s what I do.”

  Once classes were under way, Victoria and I hung back at the warung, an open bamboo restaurant that served snacks and coffee and offered free Wi-Fi, a welcome amenity because broadband internet access was hard to come by and expensive. We overheard a heated discussion among some parents.

  Ben McCrory bounced over. “May I introduce you to someone?”

  Ben brought us over to Michelle, a nurse who was married to Andy, one of the teachers at Green School. I asked Michelle why she’d moved to Bali from Oregon. I could tell by the way she responded that, like me, she didn’t have a simple answer. She was there for a host of reasons, not all of which she could or would easily articulate. But one thing was clear: even expats on modest incomes were free to enjoy a life that they otherwise couldn’t afford.

  “Back home,” she said, “I’d spend my weekends washing laundry and cleaning house. Here, I’m free to be with friends and family and pursue my passions.” Chief among these passions was mountain biking through the hills and terraced rice paddies of Bali. “Hey, do you guys cycle?” Of course we cycled, mostly road bikes, though. “It’s all mountain bikes here,” she said, citing the poor roads but great trails.

  Green School had an informal but active mountain biking club that was always looking for new recruits. We got the full lowdown, including weekly scheduled rides (men, women, and mixed), as well as directions to the bike shop with which she had arranged a discount for Green School parents. We could be there and back by the time school let out. Then she officially inducted us into the Green School Cycling Club.

  We headed to Denpasar to buy our mountain bikes. On the way, I thought about the Dutch family who never wanted to leave. Just as Sam had finished reading the Odyssey for school the previous semester, we had landed in our very own version of Homer’s land of the lotus-eaters. I searched on my phone’s browser for Homer’s description and thought it could apply as easily to Bali’s expats. Wayfarers who landed there “left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened to them, but were for staying and munching lotus with the lotus-eaters without thinking further of their return.”

  We returned to Green School in time for pickup. Victoria asked how school went. “It’s more like camp,” Oliver said. “There’s no homework, hardly any tests, and lots of time outside.”

  Sam put on some New York swagger. “It’s a total slacker school.” Good, he could use the break.

  Rita and I talked about “friend groups” at the school, and I could tell they reminded her of the cliques back home and made her anxious. But she also told us how she exchanged one of her Silly Bandz with a girl for a seashell from Thailand and that they were now friends. That gave us hope.

  The following week, Nyoman invited us to his family compound in Junjugan and from there to a local performance of a Hindu dance drama called the Kecak, or “Monkey Chant.” Typically, three and sometimes four generations lived together as one family unit within these compounds, which were often the only assets the families possessed.

  The walls that surrounded Nyoman’s family compound were ornate Balinese masonry. We passed through the front entrance, a split in the wall, and through a guest pavilion that opened up into the rest of the compound. The entranceway had a backing wall that created corners, which according to Balinese legend were impassible to demons. The complex included a few living quarters, a temple, and a separate kitchen. The ground was simple, level dirt. We smelled the stench of the pig being raised in the back. They lived humbly compared to the home we rented, and I saw Nava’s face fall at the sight of it. It was unexpected because of the way Nyoman showed up for work, with pressed shirt and pants and neatly combed hair.

  Nyoman’s wife placed her hands in a prayer position to welcome us. Outside the main building, she motioned to us to be seated on the floor, cross-legged, the way we had observed the locals eat their meals. Nyoman’s parents joined us, his father’s face so weathered, it looked like fissures in jagged rock, his mother’s bright with an expansive grin.

  With Nyoman translating, we chitchatted. They welcomed us, total strangers, with warmth and sincerity. I commented that they all seemed to wear perpetual smiles. Nyoman explained that because canine teeth projected aggression, Balinese traditionally filed them down as part of a ceremony initiating children into adulthood. To me, it made their countenances irresistible and inviting.

  From Nyoman’s family compound, it was a short walk to the village center where the Kecak was being performed. We all had trouble following the storyline, but when 150 shirtless male performers, all wearing identical checkered sarongs, started to sway and chant “Kecak” as if in a nighttime trance, we were taken by the rhythm. The primeval chant sounded as if the men were beating themselves into a frenzy to prepare for a special offering to the gods. When the few female dancers arrived resplendent in gold-and-red costumes, we were hooked.

  When we returned home from the Kecak, Nava grew tearful. She was shaken by our visit to Nyoman’s family compound and broke down in heaves. “I hate being rich in front of other people!” For all the relative privilege she enjoyed in New York, she had never felt different from others in such a stark way. I was glad she was aware of the different ways people live. Her tears spoke to feelings of guilt I had felt in New York, swaddled in the soft underbelly of Manhattan privilege.

  “You know,” I said, “a person’s happiness has little to do with how much she actually has. Does Nyoman look unhappy to you?”

  Nava sniffled.

  “He has his family,” I said, “and his community. Happiness is love. And one of the reasons we’re here is because I love you and want to spend more time with you.”

  Nava calmed down, but while she understood the goals of our sabbatical, how long would my motivational speech divert her attention from the real inequity?

  six |

  Asher stood at the coffee concession counter in the Green School warung. About fifty years old, he was thin, sported a
graying goatee, and wore a tank top, baggy shorts, and a hipster straw hat over his long, curly hair. His mobile coffee roaster stood by his side. He happily engaged parents in any conversation, provided it had something to do with coffee or mountain biking. “I’ve been on a ten-year quest for the perfect cup of joe,” he said. “I want to recapture the mystical and spiritual effects of coffee.” He offered me a special brew of locally grown and freshly roasted coffee.

  “I’m off coffee,” I said. “Keeps me awake at night.”

  “C’mon, man. Coffee has powerful medicinal benefits. Plus, it’ll be the best coffee you’ve ever tasted. Guaranteed.”

  “What the hell. I’m weak.” The coffee was, as promised, magic in a cup.

  Asher was the Green School dude, always ready with a Zen response, always at peace and the picture of equanimity. He was on a spiritual journey that started in New York and Connecticut. From the East Coast, he had moved to Oregon before making his way to Bali. Now in his early fifties, he was soaking in the magic of the local culture.

  “Everything here is spiritual,” he said. “The trees, the people, the food. Everything.” I didn’t really know what he meant, but I didn’t dismiss him. I was open to taking in some of this. Having striven for success for so long, I was suddenly finding achievement to be empty and lonely. I’d never understood what spiritual meant outside the context of organized religion, which sometimes was more about observance than spirituality. And yet here was a man who seemed, at least on the surface, full of joy and love. I’d like some of that.

  Asher also belonged to an entrepreneurial class that somehow had disappeared from the entrepreneurialism that I knew in the United States, where scale and disruptive innovation were everything. Whether it was technology businesses that could grow rapidly over a very short time period or consumer ideas that needed to be national or global to attract any attention, businesses had to dominate their sectors quickly in order to succeed. In Bali there was a kind of artisanal entrepreneurial spirit that was refreshing. Asher roasted and sold local coffee. Ben was a farmer who bought or leased land in order to bring organic food to the region. Charles built and sourced furniture to be sold in the United States and elsewhere. John Hardy designed, created, and sold jewelry. I was told that at one point, he was so successful that his company was the largest private employer in Bali.