Balinese tradition rests as much upon fooling the spirits as appeasing them. All the guests at our homestay can rest easy.

The next morning, Jim and I sit under a small thatched pavilion on the edge of the homestay eating a leisurely breakfast. Made is running behind on breakfast orders. He’s an unusually nice kid, about eighteen or nineteen. Keeping up with managing, cooking, room-cleaning, errand-running, generally making fourteen demanding guests happy twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, pays two hundred thousand rupia a month, less than twenty dollars. Wages include housing, if you call sleeping on a grungy mattress rolled out on the office floor a room.

Our French neighbors, Louis and Antoinette (real names) and American and Venezuelan expat friends, Mellissa and Gorge, join us at the table. Made delivers our egg jaffles—a waffle-type dough filled with egg—fruit and Balinese coffee, and sits down with us. We discuss the wall-closing, wall-opening ceremony of the day before.

“Very important!” Made tells us, about paying homage and performing a proper ceremony. “See restaurant there?” We follow his gaze to our side; the restaurant appears to be closed. He lowers his voice and leans in. “The restaurant go on top rice paddy before the harvest. Not making the offering.” He lets that settle in, sitting back. “And see? No business!” He waves his hand with a glint in his eye that makes us believe him.

I look again as if to find something barely perceptible loaming there. It is odd; the restaurant next door seems to be doing perfectly well. Please, that’s ridiculous, I tell myself. As warm and humid as the day has become, I feel a chill and cross my legs. Everyone eats in silence.  

From Indonesia: The Stories We Tell        Ourselves

As Hindu as Bali appears, you quickly realize that it’s only nominally Hindu. The visible pantheon of deities imported from Java in the tenth century provide a rich cultural folklore, but the Balinese brand of Hinduism is largely animist. As Wayan confirmed, supplicants are very much focused on appeasing evil spirits or eliciting help from the gods. Everything the Balinese do—the offerings, plays, festivals and funerals—are an elaboration of protection.

Spirits have apparently found Bali to their liking for centuries. The night writhes with forms of questionable intent. People enjoy a kind of night vision, seeing things the rest of us don’t. Or perhaps can’t. The only recourse if you’re Balinese is to make the spirits happy or confuse them into going elsewhere. And to be safe, this means regular offerings.

Since today is an auspicious day, the new moon, the owner of our homestay plans a special ceremony.  The matter of sealing off an “unprotected” doorway and consecrating a new one is what the fuss is about in the  courtyard. One of our family’s entrances lacks the all-important inner wall. In a properly designed, traditional Balinese house, if you’re a spirit, you enter the exterior doorway and come smack up against another wall. Since you can’t navigate right angles, the inner wall stops you. Being of lower intelligence, presumably because you’re dead, you become confused and leave.  

A stone mason has readied the new doorway for days. The extended family gathers now in their best dress. The old entrance is closed off with a low masonry wall. Spirits are apparently short and not good jumpers either. The women make offerings at the family shrine and burn incense. The young cousins play some kind of leapfrog game on the grass. Dressed in white, the priest rings a bell, says prayers, makes incantations and places chalk marks at key spots upon the new entrance wall.