Ibu Rucina: falling in love with a Balinese man.

Faling In Love With A Balinese Man.

BY RAHIMA SAIKAL

“I don’t know why he married me. He knew he was marrying a strong Western woman.”

Falling in love with a ‘beautiful brown man’ in Bali in the 1980s wasn’t in Ibu Rucina’s life plan. Nor was living a life full of challenges, suppressed within a patriarchal society and an unhappy marriage to boot. But when she tells me about her career, her family and her thoughts on Balinese culture and society, I can see this absolute powerhouse of a woman has decided that it was all worth it.

Her love of traditional dance brought her to Bali in the 1970s. Young, naïve and with stars in her eyes, she arrived on the island of the Gods at 11.30 pm one night.

“When I stepped off the plane, I thought, I’m home,” Rucina said, rolling her eyes. “I could smell the kretek in the air, it was all very romantic.”

The then-21-year-old immersed herself in the world of Balinese dance at KOKAR, the High School of Performing Arts in Denpasar before moving to the village of Batuan to study with one of the great masters.

“I studied 4 hours a day –when my teacher was there. Sometimes he’d be at a cock fight or would be feeding his cows in the field, but I’d just wait. In those days, waiting was much more a part of the culture than it is now.”

For the next decade, Rucina went back and forth between Bali and her home country, the US. It wasn’t until 1985, when she came back to Peliatan, Ubud to start up a program called the Experiment in International Living that a new chapter of her life began.

The American met her soon-to-be husband, Agung, who was teaching Bahasa Indonesia in the program. The pair married the following year and moved to the States so that Rucina could give birth to their first son and Agung could experience life elsewhere.

“He hated it. He had to work in construction and because of his caste in Bali, he thought the work was beneath him. It was a really tough year.”

This was only the beginning. At the age of 35, Rucina had committed herself to a life of eternal compromise.

“Balinese culture is extremely patriarchal and misogynistic. It’s just the way it is. It was so difficult for me. When we would go to family ceremonies and rituals, I would put on my smiling mask. I would sit with the other women and chat, finding solace and meaningful conversations amongst the dancers of the family.”

When the couple’s second son was born, Rucina breathed a sigh of relief that he wasn’t a girl.

“I honestly thought he was going to be a girl the whole time I was pregnant and I didn’t want to know, even though in those days you could find out. When he was born, I thought ok, good, I don’t have to worry about him facing discrimination and he will be allowed to go abroad to study.”

Rucina believes that, much like herself, many foreign women are naïve. They simply don’t know what they are signing up for.

“You have a love affair with a Balinese man and it’s sexy and fun or whatever you want to call it and then you get serious about it, decide to get married and many women don’t realise that once you get married, the fun and games change and you now have to be a good Balinese woman” says Rucina. “ I mean, are you willing to spend at least 30% of your time in the village making offerings? And keeping silent when the menfolk want their say? Can you handle this? Traditionally women do not go out of the house one-on-one with another male, so your social life will also change”.

“Balinese culture is extremely patriarchal and misogynistic. It’s just the way it is”.

Often fighting and arguing, Rucina constantly found herself being silenced within her marriage. She had many ideas and thoughts on how she wanted to raise her children but her husband always had the last say. The two didn’t agree on the big issues in life and she often felt neglected and unheard. “Gung made the rules” Rucina shrugs.

“There are three big things –God, sex and money – that you’re supposed to talk about before you get married. Balinese don’t like to talk about any of those issues and it’s only when it comes up during the marriage that they are addressed.”

During her marriage to Agung, Rucina continued to excel in being a human bridge between Bali and the West throughout the 1990s. She remained director of the study abroad program for five years before she began working for Elderhostel, an organisation that made it possible for older people to participate in an immersive Balinese cultural program.

This proved to be a successful and lucrative venture, until the Asian financial crisis transpired in 1997. This resulted in thousands of expats leaving the island, few tourists arriving and Elderhostel shutting down in Indonesia. Rucina and her family nearly went bankrupt and as they were slowly building their financial life again, the Bali bombings in 2002 occurred.

After the tragedy, Rucina worked hard to find a way to help the survivors of the bombings, their families and the people of Bali. She was recruited by the foundation Yayasan Kemanusiaan Ibu Pertiwi (YKIP), and then helped create the Annika Linden Centre in Denpasar dedicated to one of the bomb victims in the spirit of helping those who were economically disadvantaged.

Back on the home front, she and her husband were asked to become the klian adat, aka the traditional heads of their village in Abianbase, Kapal. This was a huge honour and responsibility, making Rucina the first foreign woman in Bali to take up this position. Ibu Rucina accepted, hoping she could make positive changes.

“It didn’t work. I tried to implement small changes, like let’s stop using imported fruit and lower the carbon footprint, let’s support local fruit. The women told me: “It’s too expensive”. I would say, if you grow a tree now, in five years you’ll have fruit. They just thought I was crazy. It was beyond frustrating. But, it’s hard to instigate changes, to create a ripple effect, especially in a patriarchal culture. No one wants to be the hero here because the Balinese are taught from a young age not to stand out or call attention to themselves as this makes their families ‘malu’ –embarrassed. It is more important to just go along with the status quo.”

However nowadays, more and more Balinese women are forging ahead with a career and for some, gone are the days of sitting around the banjar, making offerings day in and day out.

“I have actually heard of a Balinese woman who is now head of her village, which is amazing. More choice for women is good, of course, but sadly, they are also losing touch with that part of their culture. In my family, if we have a big ceremony or a cremation, we buy everything now instead of making it –not just the two foreign women in the family – but everyone. I applaud it, but there is sadness in it too” sighs Rucina. “I don’t know how to make it balanced. Gender roles within the banjar are so proscribed and women have very little agency. We are not consulted on matters that require a vote and the daily offerings and religious rituals fall heavily on the women – when do they get time to work or build up their capacity to change and go forward into the world? I’ve always said to my kids: if you feel repressed from the banjar system, it’s up to you to change it and figure out what’s good.

“...many foreign women are native. They simply don’t know what they are signing up for”.

Despite the fact that Rucina thinks certain elements of Balinese culture are unfair towards women, on the whole, she enjoys living in Balinese society and believes her life has been enriched by the many friends and family members she has on the island. This is also perhaps, one of the reasons she didn’t choose to divorce her husband. While it is something she certainly contemplated at various points, she, like most women, always had the children at the forefront of her mind.

In Bali, divorce isn’t common (although increasing more every year) and many women are not allowed to see their children for years if they get divorced.

“Our family would have been totally obliterated and it would have been ugly for everybody… I know some Balinese women who have left their husbands and gone back to their families and their brothers have said: what are you doing here? You’re taking my rice because now I have to feed you. There is a disincentive to leave.”

Rucina gained back her sense of self-independence in 2014, the year her husband passed away.

“He had been sick for a long time and I had spent years caring for him. There was sadness and grief, of course, but there was also a feeling of freedom, I can’t deny that”.

And now?

Ibu Rucina is happy. She is living the life she wants to lead. Half of her week is spent in the quiet mountains of north Bali working as the director for the Amisewaka-Desa Les Community Center by day and listening to the sound of the ocean swells by night, and the rest of the week is spent in chaotic Ubud, surrounded by her grandchildren. Her work is satisfying. She loves helping people rise out of poverty.

“Our staff can feed themselves and their families. The students now have self-confidence and they feel worthy and that is amazing! That is success for me.”

And she always has dance and her comedy group Grup Gedebong Goyang, which she regularly turns to in times of stress and frustration. It has been her anchor, grounding her firmly and reminding her of why she moved to Bali in the first place all those decades ago.

Reflecting on her life and her marriage, Rucina acknowledges that a harmonious partnership is difficult to come by in any culture. During her 50 years of life in Bali, she has some advice for foreign women who are thinking about marrying a Balinese man.

“First and foremost, learn Indonesian, if not Balinese. How else will you communicate with his family? And read as much as you can about Balinese culture.

Make sure you do a prenuptial and be very clear that any wealth you bring to the relationship is not to be divided 50/50 in case of divorce. Figure out what citizenship your children will be before they are born, as after they turn 18 years old, the child has to choose one citizenship. Decide where they will go to school: will they be brought up as Balinese, expat or somewhere in between? Be proactive in making friends with Balinese, but know that in this culture, friendships across genders are not considered appropriate. Perhaps your partner is enlightened, but is his family? Talk to people, interact. Take up a cause and work with Indonesians on it. Try and see the world through a Balinese’s eyes – it will expand your worldview.”

Change has been a word that has been a big part of Rucina’s vocabulary and whether she knows it or not, she has been one of the brave women who have created ripples of change. She will always be remembered for speaking up when others would not and paving the way for women to find their voice within a society when women are often the most quiet.

“Try and see the world through a Balinese’s eyes – it will expand your worldview”.