Senggigi is a small place (sometimes too small), so 30 mins after my arrival everybody knew I was back. You know the way, the hotel guy at reception tells the barman, the barman goes to but cigarettes and tells the supermarket guy, etc. Time to check-in, have a quick shower and get to my usual restaurant to grab some food, and here comes my friend Sahur.
This time I didn't come back to Lombok to go on more tours, explore the island and generally speaking to be a tourist. This time the plan was just to chill out, spend time with my friends in the village, and get more info about the project to help the kids here. Like going back home. And so I did. My friends took me with them to various events that are part of their life this time of the year. First one was the party for the birthday of the prophet Mohammad. Not many tourist there as you can imagine. Every village celebrates it on a different day for a total of a couple of weeks, so people can go from one place to another, enjoying concerts (in Sasak language mainly) and seasonal food prepared jst for the occasion.
The gentlemen in the pic are actually cooking a Panggang, a cake made of rice, palm oil, sugar cane and some other ingredients, stirred for hours in that pot heated from a fire in a hole in the ground.From a Muslim celebration to an Hindu one. So the next stop few days later was cock fighting (expect comments from my veggie friends here) and Bola Adil. Bola Adil is a kind of Hindu simplified version of a roulette. You roll your money like a cigarette and you throw it on your favorite symbol, like yellow ball, red square, or green mountain.
Then an odd shaped ball will be rolled on a table with all symbols and depending on where it stops... 10 to 1 paid for the right symbol, less if you put your money on combinations.On the second day I happen to win quite a lot there (beginner's luck?), so with the money I won we went to the market, got 5 huge fishes, 6 durians and had a big party, grilling the fish and having more than 15 people eating in total!
How much did I win? Less than 15 euros!!
So keep that in mind: if you want to donate only a few euros to send the Kampung kids to school it still can make a huge difference!
The following days were exciting ones for the village, Kampung Loco. Having grown to a high enough number of residents, the village was electing for the first time a Kampung kepala, a head of village. This will give the village more power and independence from the city to which it was previously belonging. For me it was fun playing half the official photo-reporter, half an independent international observer:)
On the less cultural side, the remaining days gave me the occasion to flirt around a bit and exercises my bad influence on the lads. I will refrain from going into details, but let's just say that gin and tonic is now extremely popular there, and is now available in many bars where before my arrival they didn't serve it. One of them is Berry's Cafe, with staff at TGIM below.
