maya's half-birthday

Today my daughter is half a year, halfway to her first year. Her first real birthday- but today, we are calling it her birthday. Maya's six month birthday!

Happy birthday, kodok kecil. Happy birthday my little frog, my beautiful girl, my best-ever gift. Thankyou for coming to me; thankyou for growing well, learning well, loving well.

May your next half year be both peaceful and exciting, may february find you glowing with health and new knowledge.

Want to hear how we celebrated? (birthday party number one; tonight i will make cake to celebrate again)

Sendi arrives by sepeda motor at ten. Sendi is Javanese, a strong, vibrant woman with a quick sense of humour and a knack for communication that crosses the language barrier (her english ain't great). She is the masseuse on call for the hotel here, and an excellent individual.

We spend ten minutes convincing her that i will walk the maybe 2km to her house with maya, and her failing to convince me that it's ok to take maya on the motorbike. Finally i start walking, helloing every few steps at another grinning face, through the village and out along a side road through terraces and jungle. Sendi rides ahead.

Sendi's house is pretty big; set back amidst jungle-garden, a bridge across an unused irrigation ditch. Balinese architecture tends to involve much dekorasi, especially wooden carvings around doors and windows etc; cool tiles; bamboo ceiling and thatch roof; white walls. This is no exception. Very balinese. Each bedroom has it's own entrance onto an outdoor sitting area. The kitchen and the bathroom are seperate buildings. A large packed-dirt area gives way to living garden. Chickens are everywhere. I see marigolds, bananas, those pink-leaved things usually seen adorning swimming pools, smell frangipani.

Sendi waits for me on the raised tiled area outside the bedrooms. With her are her mother in law and three anaks. The mother in law, who i address as Ibu, looks more like sendi's grandmother, as is often the way here. One eye looks blind, milky. Her tooth are long gone, in their place gums stained with chewing tobacco or maybe betelnut. Her scrawny frame has seen too much hard physical labour, the kind of work that sendi's body (or mine) will never know. Too much sun, too much squatting over a poorly designed stove, too much to carry uphill on head and hip. We greet each other in indonesian, not the first language for either of us, and for the next couple of hours can communicate only around the basics, or with sendi's help. Her smile is lovely though, and she treats me with a respect i doubt i deserve.

The eldest girl speaks a little english, and is much less shy than her younger sister. Sari (Rose) is ten i think, thin and graceful and already motherly. She is teaching her little sister to read. For much of my visit, Sari carries Maya on her hip with the help of a tied sarong as sling. She claims to be fine doing so, and certainly seems well practiced, though i doubt she's ever met as heavy a frog as mine! Her little brother is barely taller than Maya, and much thinner, though he is one year and four months. He's an adorable little monkeychild, all big eyes and long feet, just learning to talk i think (“habis!” he tells me, shaking his little open hands, when he finishes the pack of krupuk). Kormang. Number three. He wears silver bangles around each wrist and ankle; i learn that these are put on every child in a ceremony around three months of age and removed a year and a half later in- naturally!- another ceremony. (The earrings that i've noticed on very young balinese girls likewise warrant a ceremony.) the younger two are shy with me, but keen to touch maya.

Conversation should be difficult, but sendi makes it easy somehow, laughing, miming, making it up. I follow her lead. She brings me tea, hot and sweet, and i'm uncomfortable that noone else has a drink, but then completely forget this in my astonishment at the next offering. Maya needs a feed, which is clear to all, and sendi offers me a bucket of water and cloth to wipe my breasts- i've been walking, sweating, down a traffic-filled road, of course maya wants my breasts clean first! I am impressed and grateful; i've never been offered this particular hospitality anywhere else! Her hospitality is ever-increasing; after less than an hour maya is getting ragged with tiredness and sendi offers her room to feed and sleep. She lays a blanket on the bed for me to change maya (another bucket of water) and leaves me to feed my girl quietly to sleep. My gratitude at this point is overflowing; it is so lovely to feel that caring for my child not only takes priority but should and will be easy, natural.

Sendi knows all kinds of magic, food and massage and medicine, caring for one's children and for one's sexy bits! We trade info on bali/aussie customs, compare families. Sendi doesn't get to visit her family in java often, though it's not far there is too much to do- always a ceremony, she jokes! Being javanese and christian, she finds the constant ceremony-ing here a bit much, i gather (unsurprisingly).

Maya, refreshed after a short nap and nourished by the biggest “solid” meal she's ever eaten, loves her play time with the other kids. We sit on the ground together, on a blanket, and laugh hysterically at the interactions between her and Kormang. Her gives her little kisses and she responds by trying to suck his face (my girl she gives good pashes!) they hold hands and stare and grin at each other. But i notice that whenever his foot touches her, one of the girls grabs it quickly saying no-no. Feet, i suppose, are extremely unholy. It's probably rude to touch anybody with your feet, but a baby, and a whiteskinned one, must be the worst possible luck. I guess they wouldn't be as impressed as i am by her new foot-in-mouth trick!

I remember at the last minute almost to take some photos of the kids together, and of the house for adrian. Actually, i am only reminded by being shown Ibu's photos ( a couple dozen in an old kids album) of her kids and other grandkids. Six children she's had; only three surviving. The kids love the digital camera, being able to see themselves straight away. I promise to print them copies, aware that this day is special for all of us.

My other promise for my return is the seeds sendi chooses from our Eden Seeds catalogue.

I turn down the offer of a ride up the hill, and set off with the frog bouncing against my full belly, glowing with the happiness of new and unexpected friendship.

Menu makan siang di rumah Sendi:

red rice

some kinda delicious spicy chicken, fried

a clear thin spicy soup with sprouted red beans (more like borlotti than my idea of red bean)

mystery spinach-like vegetable

tempeh “krring”, very small and crispy pieces

sambal goreng, full of shallots and chillis and shrimp paste

shredded spiced coconut yumminess

and afterwards bali copi, black, plenty of sugar

eaten squatting in the kitchen, copi after in garden just outside. Sendi and i eat together; Ibu having already eaten an hour earlier. Oh it's so good to eat real food!!! and to have someone understand why eating restaurant food every day is not luxury but rather frustrating and unhealthy. I am promised real food, village food, here whenever i want it.

and for the babies, red rice custard: red rice flour, aqua, pinches of salt and sugar, heated on stove like custard with much stirring (i make this one!). Maya gobbles the stuff, evidently it kicks ass over the organic baby porridge i've been mixing up for her. But no, i won't be giving her salt and sugar in her food from now on, i don't care how good it tastes! Though she will be getting red rice again, sendi has given me half a kilo of the magic stuff.

half-birthday cake

banana mocha cinnamon cake, as improvised by me in the restaurant kitchen

milk (use sparingly, 1 cup)

flour and baking powder

4 eggs (no need for sparingly!)

“salad oil” (??)

sugar

salt

bananas

remainder of jar of cinnamon mocha instant coffee drink (when i asked for cinnamon this is what junas gave me!)

mix with an old electric number, pour into a tin, bake for just under an hour in an oven with no thermostat. Add chocolate sprinkles (found in corner while looking for sugar) while still warm.

oddly enough it turns out well. Adrian and i and the five people working this evening (cooks, waiters, satpam) share the cake, saving a piece for sendi to pick up later. Seems to make a good impression; junas is already talking about trying out the recipe. But we get busted by guests, all the cooks sitting down in the restaurant eating cake!