An amazing weekend in Blimbing Sari

On the weekend I was taken, with some visiting church pastors from Jakarta, to Blimbing Sari. This is a remarkable village about 3 hours drive from Dempasar. It was originally founded in the 1930's by Christians who were being persecuted for their faith and decided to go to the jungle to for safety. At the time the saying for Christians was, "no rice, no famiy, no death (ie no burial)". They were excommunicated from all aspects of community life.

They set up a village for Christian families and it reminded me a little of my home town of Hillston. It was well set out with sealed roads and houses sitting on quite spacious blocks. Each household is given 2000 sq mtrs for their house and garden, as well as 2ha to farm. As it is very quiet and not much traffic it feels very much like a country town and makes quite a change from the very chaotic traffic of Denpasar.

I visited one of houses and their 2ha was just at the back of the house. Most people in the village grow coconuts, bananas and cocoa plants so their farms look a bit like jungle. From what I could gather the farms are passed on to the next generation and there doesn't seem to be a way for people to buy more land, but it was a bit confused. It seems that most of the younger people go away to get more qualifications and work and come back when their parents or grandparents die. For the farm we visited the daughter was a pharmacist and the son was at University. As the settlement is only 70 years old I guess they still have some inheritance issues to work out.

While in Blimbing Sari we stayed at one of the 7 orphanages run by the GKPB. This one is in a beautiful setting with 82 kids. About 10% are actual orphans and the rest are from single parent families or poor families who can't afford to give their kids education. The children range in age from 3 to 17 and I had a great time with them. They are all learning English and can converse to varying degrees. But they have learnt some English songs and on Sat afternoon a group of them sang for us and then I was able to teach them "Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree".

On the Sat night they were practicing some of their traditional dancing and music, as they take a touring group to Singapore very couple of years. It was a wonderful performance and then a couple of the girls tried to teach me. No photos of that thankfully! If you would like to see some pictures of the kids and where they live you click on this link. I have permission from the Director to put these photos on the Internet.

One of the kids I met was Juliawan, who decided that because our names were so close he would be my friend. He's English was quite good so we were able to have a few conversations. He is 12 years old and has been at the orphange for 3 years. His parents are still alive and live at Singaraja which is quite some distance away but they come to visit each month. There are 3 older children but he is the only one at Blimbing Sari. He is staying at the orphanage so that he can get a better schooling and he tells me that when he finishes school he wants to be a pastor, but in the meantime he is likes the orphanage and the school.