I live in a big, beautiful villa. I love having lots of space but there’s also a good deal of maintenance and management required to keep the place up. My arrangement is that staff (housekeeper, gardener, pool guy) are inclusive with the property rental, which means they are actually employed by my landlord and not me. One the one hand, this saves me the headache of hiring my own staff. On the other hand, I don’t pay their salaries therefore the real power lies with my psycho landlord (who is alltogether another story to whom I will devote a blog entry when I have the stomach to do so.)
I’m lucky though, I have a wonderful pembantu (housekeeper) named Putu*, who has worked here for 10 years, ever since the villa was built in fact. She is stable, loyal, with a comforting maternal quality. I trust her and she takes care of me and my guests.
That doesn’t mean she doesn’t need management, including daily instructions and reminders. On weekdays, we only overlap for about 1/2 hour in the morning before I leave for work. That’s a crucial period in our day when I give her a list of errands, things that need fixing or cleaning around the house, what we need from the market, and feedback. Things that need constant monitoring include the drinking water for the cooler, natural gas canisters for the hot water (we have four showers) and the stove, lightbulbs (there are tons of lights both in the living areas and scattered around the pool and garden), pool chemicals, bills for the electricity, phone and cable, etc. Four people are living here at the moment (me, my roommate L., and my friends J. and K. in the guesthouse), so we are consuming a lot and keeping Putu very busy. But as she's told me many times, she likes having lots of guests and lots to do.
The gardeners are another story. They are lazy. And hard for me to communicate with. My Bahasa is improving, but my vocabulary has yet to encompass the verbs and nouns of gardening. Besides, I’m not a gardener so I don’t have a good sense for what needs to be done, for example when and what plants need to be cut back, watered more often, etc.
The garden itself has been an ongoing saga, due to the aforementioned poor communication with my gardening staff in combination with a few of those typically unpredictable events that surprise you in Bali on a regular basis. But as time goes on I am taking more responsibility for the situation. Nyoman, my Indonesian language teacher, just taught me some vocabulary to help me communicate with the gardeners, so tomorrow I will try: “Tolong, tanam di sini,” and "Tolong, pindahan bungah ini kesana."
*Perhaps you are wondering why I spell out Putu’s name on this anonymous blog, while I use first initials for everyone else. Actually, I will spell out the names of Balinese people, because most have one of only a handful of names, depending on where they are in their family’s birth order: The first child is Wayan or Putu, the second child is Made or Kadek, the third is Nyoman or Komang and the fourth is Ketut. The fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth will be another Wayan, Made, Nyoman, Ketut and Wayan again. These names are shared by men and women alike. Therefore, even if I mention Putu, you have no idea which Putu out of the thousands that work in Seminyak that I mean...
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