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BALINESE WOMEN DRESSED in gold bodices dance to rhythmic drumming while waving fans as men in purple outfits sit cross legged around them, jiggling their arms and chanting.
It appears to be just another show on the Indonesian resort island, known for its ancient culture and rituals, but there is a key difference – the dancers are all deaf.
They perform the moves, learnt over months of hard training, from memory.
The village of Bengkala has been home to an unusually large number of deaf people for generations, and now about 40 out of its approximately 3,000 residents have severe hearing loss.
But unlike in other parts of Indonesia where they could face mistreatment, local people have taken the deaf residents to their hearts. In many ways, life in the small hamlet has come to revolve around them.
As well as the dance project, a unique sign language called Kata Kolok has been developed in the isolated village which has been mastered by those with hearing impairment, as well as many of those who can hear, prompting interest from scientists around the world.
In addition, deaf villagers are trained in skills such as making handicrafts that can be sold in the heaving tourist resorts of the island, and they work side by side with other villagers in the rice fields.
“Human rights are the same everywhere. So I thought, why should the deaf be ostracised?” said Ketut Kanta, who heads a community group for the village’s deaf residents.
Unique approach
The approach is relatively unique in Indonesia, where the disabled often suffer harsh discrimination.
Bengkala, in northern Bali, has existed for about eight centuries.
Residents often scrape a living tending to the surrounding rice fields and education levels are generally low.
In the past, villagers thought the high incidence of deafness was due to a curse but those superstitions – and the prejudices they created – have largely been abandoned after experts concluded it was due to a recessive gene common among the local population.
It was not until the 1960s that the village began to make efforts to better integrate its deaf residents and nowadays everyone is treated equally, according to village head I Made Arpana.
“We don’t differentiate between deaf villagers and non-deaf villagers,” he said, adding that the community did not want the hard of hearing residents to feel “inferior”.
A key factor in creating this peaceful co-existence has been Kata Kolok, which literally translates as “talk of the deaf”, and is used to varying degrees by around 80% of the villagers.
It is different to international and Indonesian sign language. It has grown organically over the decades and has its own unique signs created by villagers to reflect how they see the world.
Bright future
Attempts to ensure harmony in the village start at a young age, with a Bengkala elementary school teaching all children side by side.
The 77 students are all given lessons in the local sign language, and are introduced to elements of Indonesian and international signing.
Made Budiasih, whose seven-year-old son goes to the school, said she was worried for his future when they discovered he was deaf at birth, but said the inclusive educational centre had made all the difference.
“I was despairing, but then I found out about this school,” she said.
Still, it is not always easy teaching deaf students as they often become frustrated and act out, according to teacher I Made Wisnu, who has been working at the school for a decade.
There are no junior high schools equipped to teach deaf students, so most have to drop out of the system once they’ve graduated from elementary classes.
Despite the challenges, village chief Arpana is determined to safeguard the unique culture of the hamlet’s deaf community, saying he would be a “sinner” if he did not.
The clearest expression of the village’s warm embrace of its hard of hearing population is the unique project “dance of the deaf”, which has started to draw a trickle of foreign visitors to the out-of-the-way village, giving residents hope for a brighter future.
Tambourine player I Wayan Getar, speaking in sign language through an interpreter, told AFP:
Tourists from China and Europe are coming to watch us, and they really enjoy it.
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When is Germany going to tackle the raising anti-Semitism among male Muslim teens in German schools? Or is that too politically sensitive for Merkel? http://www.dw.com/en/jewish-council-says-anti-semitism-in-germany-is-increasing/a-39805727
@BrianMcB: Its painfully ironic that a country that murdered 6 million Jewish people and has through many different ways acknowledge its holocaust guilt has now through its open border policy allowed hundreds of thousands of anti semites in.
@Clever Jake: “The girls were silent”. Muslims girls in German tend not to speak when their male peers do in class: http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/sexism-and-islam-debated-in-germany-after-cologne-attacks-a-1073751.html
@BrianMcB: I think brian it a little bit more complex than your musings. Antisemitism is on the rise all over europe, particularly in former east Germany, Poland etc.
I prefer to listen to and enjoy music as something to listen to and enjoy. Politics play no part in it for me.I know that most composers had deep political issues but lets separate the two and enjoy the better part.
A lot of Jews – a lot of them very powerful and influential – are rabidly anti Christian, never hear anything about that though do we.
@TehJurolan: Really, who?
@TehJurolan: Isreal the only middle East country where Christians are not perscuated and their numbers are on the increase….
@John003: Lebanon is over 40% Christian . The president is Christian ffs. And they have a very negative view of Israel’s “protection “
From Dublin City Council to Düsseldorf and beyond the jewish people are under siege as anti-Semitism often cloaked as “anti-zionism” is on the rise.
@Brian Morris: Bullhocky. Opposing the actions of Netenyahu is no more anti-semetic than opposing the actions of Mugabe is racist.
By the way, did you just set up your twitter account to post that?
@Brian Morris: the Palestinians who live in the gaza ghettos and have to use tunnels to access supplies can certainly identify with the plight of the Jews who lived under nazism.
“Anti-zionism” is anti-Semitism repackaged for the 21st century. “We’re not anti-Semitic we just hate Israelis”.
@Brian Morris: that’s your reply? Make up a quote and aim. It at others but not as a reply? Try harder
@Dave Hogan: During WWII the Nazis practiced ‘calorie restriction’ on the Jews effectively imprisoned in the Warsaw ghetto.
Now, lets have a read of a quote from Israels Dov Weisglass, former aide to Ariel sharon, about the gaza ghetto….
“The idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”
Netenyahus government even produced guidelines…
http://www.gisha.org/UserFiles/File/publications/redlines/red-lines-presentation-eng.pdf
@The Risen: Do you support Israel’s right to exist as a nation state?
@Dave Hogan: Hows that Dave? Can you outline how the Palestinians can identify with the deliberate industrialised mass murder of millions of Jews under the Nazis?
@The Risen: Go to http://gisha.org/publication/1667 and it outlines that neither widespread food shortages or hunger were reported. Seems odd you’d omit this.
@The Risen: indeed, one Israeli politician even referred to the palestinians as ‘ two legged cockroaches ‘.
@Clever Jake: Hard to understand why the Palestinians refused 94% of this disputed territory being handed over to them so. (With the remaining % made up of Israeli sovereign territory) Its easy to say get out, but it appears much harder to recognise the existence of the state of Israel.
I see the standard hasbara troll talking points are putting in an appearance…..
@The Risen: get the tinfoil, it’s all one big conspiracy orchestrated by the filthy Jews *rolls eyes*
@Honeybadger197: hi honey, question for you, would you agree with the Jews taking up arms against their oppressors in the ghettos or would you describe them as terrorists ?
@Dave Hogan: You’re still pushing that odious false equivalence? I was hoping you could develope your earlier claim that Palestinians could identify with Jews under the Nazis. You made the statement, please support it.
@Honeybadger197: read my comment slowly its self explanatory, now any chance of answering my question , do you condemn or support Jewish resistance against their oppressors in WW2?
@Dave Hogan: Its not, its a false equivalence. Let me explain: Around 400,000 Jews were in the Warsaw ghetto. 100,000 had died from disease, malnutrition or summary execution before the uprising. To be comparable to Gaza over 300,000 Gazans would have had to have died under similar circumstances. After the uprising, 300,000 Jews were moved to Treblinka extermination camp and murdered. At most 200 Jews survived the uprising. 98% of the ghetto were murdered. Please contain your odious comparisons in future.
@Honeybadger197: nice debunking honeybadger. History and facts are two things anti-Semites struggle with.
@Honeybadger197: I have just thought of another similarity, for every nazi killed by the resistance they killed about 20 to 25 in revenge, correct me if I am wrong but is the ratio about the same between the Israeli army and Palestinians.
@The Risen: Not at all. The same source you linked to in your Nazi comparison refutes your nonsense. Better to fall back on vague ad hominem as usual?
@Dave Hogan: Is that the written equivalent of running away Dave? Hysterical exaggeration serves no purpose in a debate.
@Brian Morris: There’s a few headbangers here who’ll push any nonsense. Shameless stuff.
@Honeybadger197: bear with me I’am trying to remember the name of the Israeli politician or member of the IDF who admitted copying nazi methods of controlling large groups of people in ghettos can you refresh my memory with his name?
@Dave Hogan: I’ll happily refresh your memory Dave. It seems you still can’t control that wilful ignorance of yours. You’ll be happy to ignore that they studied this in order to understand how to keep casualties to a minimum (as opposed to ” liquidating” a ghetto) You can’t control yourself can you? I’m happy to help you out though:
@Honeybadger197: At the gates of Yassergrad
25/01/2002
By Amir Oren
In order to prepare properly for the next campaign, one of the Israeli officers in the territories said not long ago, it’s justified and in fact essential to learn from every possible source. If the mission will be to seize a densely populated refugee camp, or take over the casbah in Nablus, and if the commander’s obligation is to try to execute the mission without casualties on either side, then he must first analyze and internalize the lessons of earlier battles – even, however shocking it may sound, even how the German army fought in the Warsaw ghetto.”
@Dave Hogan: You might study this while you’re at it. You’re ticking a lot of boxes here Dave. http://jcpa.org/article/holocaust-inversion-the-portraying-of-israel-and-jews-as-nazis/
@Honeybadger197: LOL! A link to one of the interchangable propaganda sites?
@The Risen: Must be on the money if you’re trying to deflect from it. I’ll chalk that down as a hit so. Thanks buddy!
@Dave Hogan: Oh yes the tunnels which Egypt flooded and destroyed wonder why?
Haha Honeybadger FTW… Nice!
@Honeybadger197: thanks for that, had a read interesting but can’t see much in there that I would agree with.
@Brian Morris: I am against the Israeli government’s policies related to Palestine. That doesn’t make me or anyone who holds that view anti any nation, race or creed.
There is a trend that if you are against a nation’s foreign policy, you are somehow against the people or certain people within that country.
Not the case.
The same way that being against a policy related to war does not mean you don’t appreciate or support the troops. This is something that has come up again and again in Britain and the US.
The genocide is over so why do some quarters wish to continually airbrush history? Anti semitism was one of those many aspects of human history that the majority of us can now sit back and say, that was wrong, why should we now moralise or try to retrospectively and subjectively ‘rethink’ people’s motives instead of dealing with the truth and facts of history as best we can so we do not repeat past mistakes.
@winston smith: ^^ This. There is nothing scarier to me than what is being done to warp the roots and branches of fascism.
And no one picked up on… “German Chancellor Angela Merkel (third from right), with Wagner’s granddaughter Katharina (third from left) at the Bayreuth Festival” statement being wrong? Nice beard lol.
There’s a book floating around Germany and everywhere else. It’s the manifesto of a racist psychopath, a man who saw no problem with murdering Jews. It’s all about his “struggle”. It’s given to kids, who are told to memorise it. It calls Jews “the spawn of apes and pigs”. It calls for the violent subjugation of all peoples, not in his “little gang”. It preaches hate and contains explicit calls to violence, which many people act on. Should we ban this book? Anyone know the name of this book?
@James Dolan: The Koran?
@Clever Jake: You keep jumping in to defend a highly Illiberal right wing ideology… makes me wonder… You a right winger Jake?
Her election is in September, so headlines all the way?
Makes you laugh, or cry. All the arguments for and against the Jews centering around the Nazis. Nothing mentioned about the history of anti-Semitism from the dawn of time, and not a word mentioned about the reasons why? “Anti-Semitism is on the rise”, they say, but in fact it never dwindled, just seethed below the surface. Despite our tolerence and acceptance of other matters, this issue will never go away.
The Palestinian population has grown eightfold since 1948.
Obviously the ‘Pogram’ is not working.
one thing about German opera: its too long and too loud
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