On both former vacations, to the Dominican Republic and to Mexico, I went with all inclusive packages. The outskirts of poverty were only visible from the airport shuttle, in my head it resonated and made me sad but as that bus pulled up to the resort(s) all I could think about was that smell, that smell of vacation, man I love that smell, I didn’t even notice the ignorance settling back into the spot I kept trying to force it into on the bus ride, the shacks, the garbage, the rabid uncontrolled dogs and cats, the frailty of the horses, the cows the goats, the dirt on the children doesn’t make them any less cute, I pushed it away, I was on vacation!

When I went to Bali I was of course on a vacation, but for me because they’re my parents and they live there it isn’t just a vacation I have a home there I have my own bedroom, I can leave things, it is mine and Adam’s room. We are trying to learn the language, in essence Bali means something to me personally. My parents have chosen to live a life where they don’t leave everything up to staff members, they have two, one being a security guard who comes to the house at night; he also cleans the beach in front of their house before he leaves in the morning, my dad keeps it clean during the day. The house and the parents living there is to some, I’m sure, already considered ‘all inclusive’ but except for not helping with the dishes I did not treat it as such, I even got my own beers from the fridge. But on a serious note I’m going to inherit this house I still may not ever own the land but whatever happens there is a house in Bali with a piece of beach in front of it that will be ours.

The children from the school down the road play all sorts of sports on that stretch of beach because it is one of the only stretches that is clean in the area. If you are thinking Vacation and beautiful beaches and surfers in Bali most tourists don’t make it out of Denpasar or Kuta, my parents are way north in the village of Banjar, near a rather small tourist area called Lovina, where another small patch is also kept clean.

On one of the first mornings that I woke in Bali I could hear kids playing, I grabbed my camera and walked towards the beach gate to investigate the class of boys and girls, they were wearing their gym uniforms, most of the girls wore their hair in braided pig tails with pretty ribbons to tie off the bottoms, they were playing dodgeball, on this particular morning they didn’t pay much attention to me, but I was still obviously distracting some of the students so I snapped a couple of photos and went to get some coffee. (kopi) In the following mornings I would always check from a distance to see what games they were playing, one morning they were playing a form of net ball, with two kids on each end holding up wee garbage cans, it made me happy to see them playing sports.

During the day when we’d be out exploring the island it was impossible not to notice the amount of children of age that were not in a school. The fact that the children who do go to school go in uniforms make the disparity stick out like a sore thumb. The Balinese children are ridiculously, heart meltingly cute and they LOVE cameras, if they see you have a camera they are all over you to have their photos taken. This is why it was sort of odd that first morning when I was watching them play. One of the mornings shortly before I came home I ventured back right up to the gate and they started yelling halo and waving furiously, I said halo and waved back, the positive vibes off these kids are really something else, a smile broke out on my face and I quickly took some photos, the teacher was tolerating me, he had a seriously sweet moustache and a whistle, he smiled, I turned and walked away with halo still echoing at me until the whistle started to blow.

Sitting in the afternoon one day chatting my father made mention of some of the dilemmas facing a lot of the poorer families and why the children were out on the street and on the beaches playing during the day instead of in a classroom. Although schooling in Indonesia is said to be free to all children it simply isn’t, it costs approximately 5,000 rupiah a month about 50 cents Canadian. Each student is required to have four uniforms at a cost of 50,000 Rp each about $5.00 CAD times two per year. If the average family is making 700,000.00 Rp a month about $70.00 CAD and a bag of rice costs 200,000.00 Rp and lasts a family around a month it isn’t hard to figure out that the money required to send one or more students to school for a year just isn’t there.

Of the lucky children who do get to go to school many are forced to start working as soon as they graduate, this basically eliminates any chance they may have of moving onto university. Once that child can bring in income some of the families don’t have the extra money for university and can’t afford to lose the new income. It is quite sad to think that at only 1 million Rp per semester times two semesters you are only looking at approximately 220 dollars a year.

My head was churning with this information I am seriously bad at math and these were easy numbers even for me. My dad is already a part of the Rotary Club in his area, the Rotary Club are heavily involved in community work and trying to bring a bit of extra education to the people as a whole. Between speakers coming in to talk about everything from the prevention of AIDS, road safety, the importance of beach clean up projects and also with reading projects for the children, the passage of information to the locales is spreading slowly, but it is at least being spread. I attended a Rotary Club meeting when I was in Banjar and was very impressed by the dedication to the cause and also that my father was a part of it. When my father mentioned that he had ideas and had mentioned it to a couple people already about starting a charity to get some of these kids into university and into elementary school I said pretty much instantly that I wanted to be involved. Because Adam and I are not having children it seemed like a no brainer to me.

We have been brainstorming ever since, we still have a long ways to go but have a basic idea of what we want to achieve with the charity. The name we are using right now is Bali Education and Ecology Foundation. Our main goal will be to provide children, who have the capacity and willingness to learn, an opportunity to attend school and/or complete their education.

As a result the children will have a greater opportunity to obtain meaningful employment and escape the cycles of poverty that are prevalent and to a degree hard to picture. The education will provide the opportunity to be a more productive and constructive member of the community. Due to the foundation’s emphasis on the environment it is our hope that this will lead to the promotion of environmental awareness in the communities to the benefit of the whole island of Bali.

This is where is starts with a desire to help, we have already had a couple people offer to help us get up and running but we need more, if you would like more information on our principles and goals and how we plan to put all this into play if we manage to raise some money, or information on how you can help us start this baby up, you can leave a comment below or email corinnal [@] gusgreeper dot com.

Also, stay tuned for Part Tiga – Where I talk about more cool stuff I did and saw.