In Reply to: I think I am really Shallow! posted by trayden on Sunday, 1. February 2009 at 09:31 Bali Time:
about what they want to do with their own money and possessions and no, it is not shallow to choose not to get involved in charitable acts in Bali. One of the great things we have is the freedom to choose. Just going there you are supporting the staff of hotels and shops, and their families, and the families of people who grow the food you eat, wash the clothes you wear, make the goods you buy.
I choose to help in Bali because I can't not help, if you know what I mean. I don't do it for a pat on the back or grateful tears - I do it because, for me, it is the right thing to do. (I do the same at home when I hear about people who need a hand, but in Bali there is no welfare system and no free health care, so the people I learn of there get my focus).
I sponsor two children at school there, and send little gifts, but do not feel the need to go visit the children.
I take clothing and buy toiletries and other practical gifts for the lovely people from an eastern village that work at our favourite hotel.
I have a real giggle with the ladies in the village when they plunder the bag of pretty bras I have scrounged off my friends (you know the bras - you get home from the department store and they don't fit quite right, and end up in the back of your lingerie drawer). They understand perfectly when I explain they are a gift from women in my country to women in their village.
I fundraise to buy and take pregnancy vitamins for Bumi Sehat Birthing Clinic in Ubud - because I learned that without vitamins through their pregnancies the village women have more complications because their diet does not provide all a pregnant woman needs for optimum health. Knowing that those new babies get all they need as they form, and emerge with a potential undiminished (and the mothers have a reduced risk of terrible complications like excessive bleeding) simply because they were given vitamins (ahd pre-natal care), is an amazing feeling! One bottle of tablets can make that much difference.
I don't support the dog charity there, or give to the NGO charities already set up, or visit the orphanages. I don't because others do that, and we each choose where we want to help, or if we want to help. Each does what they can.
It is a drop in the bucket of what is needed. But a bucket can be filled drop by drop.
I don't want anything back - praise or thanks or a halo. For me it is just good karma to pass on something that brings a smile and eases a person's lot.
I get so much joy from being around all those wonderful Bali people, interacting with them, laughing and chatting about our children, and feeling the positive energy of those radiant smiles. They think we are rich, and materially we are, but they are rich in 'rahayu' (this is their word for being at peace, peace with what you have, not unsettling yourself by wanting what you cannot have). When a wizened old lady looks up from the field as I pass and greets me, a total stranger, with a brilliant toothless smile I know the little things I do there in no way make up for the memorable contacts and small kindesses I receive from these very special people.