Reflective Essay

Context

In the summer of 2018 I had the opportunity to travel to Bali, Indonesia. Long before I was born, my Aunt Therese married my Uncle Putra who is half Balinese/half Chinese. Sadly, in the December of 2014, my Uncle Putra passed away from pancreatic cancer. As a way to celebrate his life and legacy, my family traveled to his home land.

The following ICR reflects on how my family previously experienced Indonesian food and how that literacy changed within the context of Bali.

My family in Ubud.

Food as Family

Before traveling to Bali, my aunt and uncle would come to Montana every two years. During those trips we would spend hours making sauté, peanut sauce, krupuck, and sambal. They brought Indonesia to us through the shared experience of food. The names of dishes, the ability to make the food, and eating together created a shared literacy. However, during my trip to Bali I became aware of how literacy is shaped by community and cultural practices and the power of embodied learning.

Rachael (sister), Me, Ketut, and My Mom

From the Ground Up

Growing up in Montana I am not a stranger to hunting and gathering. In our community we exchange deer meat for pickles, smoked salmon for snow plows, and cookies for childcare. These interactions have shaped my understanding of people and community values. Observing how preparing food from the ground up in Bali provided a greater understanding of religion and connection to the land.

Where Does Balinese Food Come From?

Rice Fields in Bali

Tea and Coffee Farm

Honey Bee Farm

Chocolate Plantation

Beyond preparing food, my family got to visit many people's farms. Typically these homes are comprised of extended families with three to four immediate families. I was incredibly surprised that the Balinese have an "open-door" policy to their homes where you can enter anytime, even if you are a stranger or they don't know you are coming. This practice is very different than the United States and Balinese practices are rooted in karma and hospitality. Immediately when you enter you are given a "Welcome Drink" that is typically a fruit juice, tea, or coffee. The practice of providing a "Welcome Drink" was also invoked at surf lessons, rafting companies, and snorkeling. Although this invitational practice is representative of the cultural values, it also is indicative of the tourist driven economy.

Hunting: Deep Sea Fishing

Coming from Montana, fishing is a large part of my family's history. Therefore, my dad's wish was to go trawling in Bali and try and capture a 60 pound tuna. Here my past literacy of fishing came through and despite the language barrier we were able to communicate with our guides through embodied knowledge. We often discredit muscle memory and tactile knowledge but it can be a powerful tool for overcoming language barriers (Knoblauch). By understanding our "funds of knowledge" we can carve spaces for ourselves to learn in new discourse communities. Many of our students bring diverse forms of literacies to the classroom and by acknowledging what transcends language barriers and transfers to new contexts we develop more informed pedagogies as First Year Writing (FYW) teachers. My family and the guides developed a temporary community -- even for a few hours -- that created meaning by drawing on past experiences and common goals. These social practices of meaning-making are frequently addressed in academia but having a space to embody them -- outside the classroom -- can lend itself to deprivilging traditional forms of knowledge and elevate students' funds of knowledge (Appendix C.1).

Gathering: The Market

One of the most foundational experiences was a full day Bali cooking class my mom, sister, and I took. The experience included shopping at the market and gathering herbs for spices. Moving through the market we learned that in Hindu, people leave out offerings (canang sari) to celebrate their ancestors. Each offering is made daily and placed at different parts of the house. These offerings included: flowers (colors represent various gods), food, and gifts. We were led into the market at 8:00 am because the locals had already shopped and gathered flowers for their day. My past literacy of markets shifted greatly due to the religious aspects of the Balinese. Our guide throughout the market, Rajim, described the process of the holistic way Balinese practice religion -- it is always present in interactions with people and food.

In Bali, food is not consumed at different times during the day but is cooked in the morning before the heat rises and then set on the table to be munched on. Rajim's cultural knowledge of different practices (he knew Americans typically eats three meals a day) suggests a sharing of information between groups. Rajim's shifting of cultural knowledge and language is representative of Canagarajah's translingual practice. As he states, "difference is the norm on which communicative success is built" (17).

Preparing: The Class

After going to the market, we began by making spices and coconut oil, and cooking six different dishes from soup to dessert. When we entered the class, the lead chef Ketut, led us through making coconut oil and milk (which takes 12 coconuts for every 1 liter). We then began grinding spices before creating the various dishes. I was taken back by how familiar many of the dishes were to me. Despite growing up in a largely German family, (an uncle of mine owns a bratwurst shop and brewery) our family's food culture also includes Indonesian.

Seeing the food in context created a new intimacy with the ingredients and the people whose daily practices engage in the literacy of Balinese cooking. Enoch describes how rhet/comp neglects to "consider how geographic location inflects pedagogical practice" (54). In our class we came into contact with the religious and physical reasonings behind various literacies, informing learning in a more holistic way. My own literacy enabled me to work within the space, however, the depth of the Balinese's cooking dared me to reflect on how my own interactions with food and how they (and thus we) are a product of geographic location.

Tasting: The Food Expo

My cousin Davey, who is Balinese, showed us around a food exposition in Denpasar. The expo included 30-40 stands where cooks prepared their best dishes. Vendors come from all the different regions of Bali -- traveling up to 8 hours to attend. I was struck by some of the similarities of my own food culture in Montana. Despite the major differences in types of foods and cultural practices, I became keenly aware of how we reproduce shared values through food practices (e.g., generosity, helping neighbors, celebrating one another, pride in cooking). Although these ideologies are rooted in religious and cultural practices, the universal appeal of coming together with food transcends community barriers.

Sharing: Bringing Food Forward

Much of the ways I engage in reciprocity is sharing food, such as preparing a fish feast and meal after the class/fish trip. Although context was essential to learning/engaging in the literacy practices, sharing knowledge can happen with a clear description of context and its impacts (similar to our understandings of reporting ethnographic and qualitative research).

Another way I hope to bring food forward is by sharing Ketut's recipes with you all. In the section "Recipes" you will get to experience and gain a sense of the recipes I made in Bali (Appendix C.3). Overall, learning outside of books and the "academy" in rich and meaningful ways helps illustrate the importance of embodied knowledge and providing a space for cross-cultural dialogue (through food or otherwise) in our classrooms. Acknowledging different forms of learning helps create more valid methods that connect to place (Appendix C.4). As I bridged my past experiences with food with my practices in Bali I gained a deeper appreciation of the formation of literacy practices, my own funds of knowledge and assumptions.

My cousin Davey and I.

Reciprocity and Privilege

It is impossible to ignore my whiteness as I post these photos and reflect on my interactions (Appendix C.2). I come from a point of American privilege and especially American money. All of the experiences listed were paid for and a product of my privilege. Reciprocity in this space often took the form of funds because Bali has a tourist driven economy. When asking my cousins how to "pay it forward" they discussed the importance of posting reviews on TripAdvisor and Airbnb. As my cousin Becca expressed, "People rise and fall here based on the number of stars." After each experience I committed to posting a thoughtful, and hopefully helpful, response on these websites and made sure to record all of the exchanges to help promote the different experiences (Appendix B).

It is also important to address the poverty in Bali. Although my family experienced places with an abundance of food, it became apparent that outside the tourist markets there is a wide disparity of wealth. None of my pictures are from these areas because it felt voyeristic and exploitative.

One experience that sticks out the most is when we went to a coffee farm. We discovered many coffee farms are owned by white Americans or rich Chinese men but this was a local farm that was a combination of three families. When we first arrived I was horrified by the monkeys and other animals in cages. I wanted to protest buying coffee there but my dad reminded me that culturally the relationship with animals is different and buying coffee from the people helps support not just one person but entire families. Just because I perceived the animals in cages as "cruelty" doesn't mean I had the right or the knowledge to judge or deny these people. I think in the United States we can dismiss GMO, non-organic food as lower-class but I was reminded that without the full story and understanding of cultural conditions we are making assumptions that sometimes deny those who need our support the most. I wish I could say it was a happy ending or as simple as buying coffee from a happy family but I don't know. I never learned the full story. I only was challenged in my "single-story" of the experience and the unsettling feeling of not knowing if it was "good" or "bad" is all I was left with. Sometimes I don't think we get to know the full story and coming into a new culture and assuming I had the right to that information was elitist and single-minded (an important reminder for doing ethnographic or observational research). I was forced to remain open-minded and leave the farm knowing I would only have partial glimpses.

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