Feb 19 - Mitra Bali Artisans and Temples

Tuesday morning we got into our nice blue bus and drove up to Payangan village to visit Mr. and Mrs. Mandana. They make bamboo products in a workshop at their house. They also own a bit of land and are part of the Mitra Bali 'cow advocacy' program. In fact, they have a few cows, some pigs and chickens and are using the manure to power their bio-gas generator. This provides enough fuel to run their kitchen stove and refrigerator. In addition, the left over waste is good fertilizer and helps their bananas, corn and rice to grow better. Since they have income from both making bamboo crafts like the bamboo and coconut wind-chime that we buy at Villages and from their farm produce, they have been able to improve their property and their house and even managed to build a little 'family temple' on the corner of their property. Mitra Bali has programs to find markets for artisan crafts and to assist them in farming and other alternative income generating activities so that they still have income when their craft products are not selling. Seems like a very wholesome and productive approach for the Mandanas. 

Amy and Christina enjoying fresh green coconut juice at the workshop of Mr. and Mrs. Mandana..

 

Chris is looking forward to tasting her green coconut juice.

Wow! this tastes great - all natural and good for you.

Adi, Product Designer at Mitra Bali and Mr. Mandana, bamboo artisan product maker and farmer.

Adi, Mr. Mandana and Mrs. Mandana explaining how bamboo and coconut shell wind chimes are made.

Mrs. and Mr. Mandana. They work together to make bamboo products and to run their small farm. They hire their neighbors to help them with production when orders come in for bamboo products.

Wind chimes hanging on the wall of the Mandana workshop.

The kitchen in the Mandana house. The stove is run on bio-gas that is generated from the manure of their pigs and cattle. Mitra Bali has been instrumental in introducing this technology to the Mandanas and many other artisans/producers through their 'cow advocacy' program.

Young pigs at the Mandana farm. Little bio-gas producers that will grow up into bigger bio-gas producers.

Mr. Bio-gas.

Cattle provide milk, meat and bio-gas for the family kitchen.

The waste from bio-gas production provides fertilizer for the farm and helps crops like these banana trees to flourish.

Banana flower. When the flower matures, bananas grow on a stalk and the flower leaves fall off. The bananas are eaten and the extras are sold for extra income. The large flower petals can be burned for fuel or used to make artisan products.

 

Koi fish in the Mandana fish pond. Nutrition for the family and extra income when they take them to market.

Fish pond at the Mandana farm.

Mandana family Hindu temple on a corner of their property.





After our visit with the Mandana family, we drove up to Abuan village where Mitra Bali has a new co-op farm project. We stopped at Warung Merta Sari, a small farm supply and convenience store, including gasoline for motorbikes in 1 and 2 liter plastic containers and glass bottles. Mr. Punduh is the farm co-op manager and he owns and works the farm along with 27 other member families. Crops they are currently growing are oranges, chiles, casava, sweet corn and rice. They have also built a small Hindu temple on the property next to their farm supply store. We picked some oranges that tasted great. Hopefully, the rest of the crops will do well too. The farm is also planting fast growing albesia trees so they have wood to sell to wood craft artisans who work with Mitra Bali. Albesia grows into a 8 to 10 inch diameter tree in just 4 or 5 years.

 



Ari, Product Designer and Field Worker for Mitra Bali. He has been one of our guides while touring Bali. Here he is telling us about the small Hindu temple on the Mitra Bali farm store property.

Orange grove on the Mitra Bali co-op farm.

Christina, Wendy and Therese making their way through the thick vegetation on the Mitra Bali co-op farm.

One of the boys on the farm (son of one of the coop members) showing off the baby bird in a nest that he found this morning on the co-op farm.

Our tour group with Mitra Bali workers at the artisan owned, Mitra Bali supported, co-op farm. Mr. Punduh, the farm manager is in the grey t-shirt and holding a bucket, on the right.

 





Next, we drove to Basangambu village in Tampaksiring district to visit Mr. and Mrs. Buda who have a wood craft workshop. Buda learned wood carving from his father when he was just an elementary school student. He and his wife work together and employ as many as a dozen other people when they have good orders. Mr. Buda is the woodworker and carver, Mrs. Buda is the painter and finisher. They use albesia wood for their products.Albesia is lightweight, easy to carve and holds an edge quite well. It is also renewable plantation wood that grows very fast.

 



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Mr. Buda, a Mitra Bali artisan, makes our Ten Thousand Villages wooden cat ornament. He's holding a jigsaw cut blank and a finish-carved ornament before painting.

Mrs. Buda is in charge of painting and finishing the wood products like our cat ornament.

Charlotte is coloring an Albesia wood butterfly. We got to try our hand at coloring an ornament. Since we were all beginners, we colored our butterflies with paint markers rather than paint brushes.

Charlotte is doing her best to do a good job but her butterfly probably will not pass quality control. We got to keep our sub-standard handiwork. Making the products we buy and sell at Villages is usually much more difficult than it looks at first glance.

We drove on to Cafe Dewi which overlooks some spectacular rice terraces near the Buda's workshop. We enjoyed a great lunch of Indonesian food while gazing at the amazing terraces that climbed up the hillsides.

 



We had lunch at Cafe Dewi overlooking the spectacular rice terraces.

Rice seedlings just planted in a flooded paddy field on Bali.

After lunch we drove to Gunung Kawi temple. The temple was built in the 11th century by the King of Udayana. It is carved out of solid rock on both sides of a steep ravine with a fast flowing river running down the middle. Amazing and beautiful location. We climbed down and huffed and puffed back up 300 steps to visit the temple. It was well worth it.

 



After lunch we all tied on our Mitra Bali fair trade sarongs and trooped down a long flight of stone steps to the historical Hindu temple, Gunung Kawi, built in the 11 century.

The setting for the temple is fantastic.

Parts of the temple are cut from the solid stone cliffs.

One of the stone-carved temple guardians.

Beautiful flowers and plants seem to grow everywhere.

Late in the afternoon we made our last visit of the day to another temple called Goa Gajah that is famous for its 'elephant cave'.

 



At the Goa Gajah Hindu temple we visited the Elephant Cave. Wendy and Alicia are about to enter the cave.

It's called the Elephant Cave because a statue of Ganesh, one of the Hindu gods, is placed in an alcove of the cave. Devotees bring offerings of flowers, food and water.

We thoroughly enjoyed our full day with Mitra Bali. 

Tomorrow we have another big day with Mitra Bali, visiting artisans and seeing the sights of Bali.