CATEGORY AUSTRALASIAN DENTIST 115 reverence – fishing, and the great, fierce teaching the sea gives about how to be human in a beautiful but dangerous world. Made knows the sea as a living being. A wild, mood-shifting consciousness that provides the glittery fishes that have fed all of the village, equally, for generations, as well as attracted the divers and turtle lovers who have come to rent snorkels, take day trips, and leave with smiles on their faces. The sea has brought all of that – the livelihood, sustenance, the beauty, cash and companionship of the tourists, the physical strength demanded from journeys across her back, the self-trust and joy earned from diving into her body, the treasures found in her depths, and along her shores on those exquisite golden dawns she has woken the village up with for generations. The sea has brought life, and death. Accidents, tragedy, healing and wonder. It is not the sea that scares Made tonight. He is wrestling more with the terrible power of chickens. Here’s how it happened. The little snorkel rental shack was the happiest place in Amed, east Bali, for about a decade – or two. Life flowered beautifully – pristine ocean, a not-too damaged coral garden, cheerful visitors, mostly from Australia, seeking beauty, campfires and Balinese company with their guitars and beers, pranks and hearts full of a radiance fast disappearing in their own countries. The tourists often left their snorkels, and Made rented them out to the next wave, for $5 a day, which included all the friendly companionship and goodwill the locals naturally gave away for free anyway. Days were full of sun-loving fun. Nights were fresh fish barbecued on the beach, cracked open coconuts or local beers cooled in the sea, singalongs by sparkling embers and mozzieserenades in local fishing shacks or on the porch somewhere, of a fisherman who would be up at 4am, pulling his boat into the sea, setting sail for dawn ready to bring home the harvest of another day of wild-caught food and market trade, hauled to shore amid the dancing, gleeful welcome of his toddlers around his knees, and the old people, watching from the shade of the same trees their parents had watched from before them. Then came the road, the motorbikes. The Coca-Cola, the icecream and beer. Then came concrete and foreigners with big ideas instead of Bintang T-shirts and bashed up surfboards. Came mobile phones, helpful, beautiful female agents from the banks offering credit cards, and loans and looking for acres of fallow rice field, jungle or scrubby hillside to secure debt against. So easy! So simple it was to get caught in the nets of these fishermen who hunted on land. $5 snorkel rentals worked for a while. But the corner stores arrived, with their fizzy drinks and fancy treats, and soon there were dental bills. Doctors arrived, clinics overflowed, pharmacies began to ply their trade. Scooters began to be embarrassing. Bigger rides were better. New bikes, cooler bikes, better shoes, hipper clothes, email addresses, phone contracts, repayments, compound interest, kids needing laptops, kids needing braces, wives who shop online, boys getting blind on whisky instead of moonshine: Covid! The trap was set. The net snapped tight. And thousands of simple fishermen, and subsistence communities found themselves being hauled out of the belly of the only world they have ever known and into the bright new future of – debt collectors, warning letters, seizure and repossession. With zero safety nets I Indonesia, zero financial wizardry among the honest fishermen, and total invisibility in a world oblivious to their destruction, people living simple lives were simple shorn of their security and shredded by a global war on the vulnerable, which led to a feast on their land. Cock fighting has been a way in to the graces of the gods forever in Bali. A ritual of sacrifice and reward, a communal bloodletting and war rite grown out of childhood games of betting on leaves flowing downstream, or counting skipping stones, racing snails. Cock Fighting is Very Big Business in Asia. Sponsored by banks. You can change your fate with cock fighting. But not necessarily in a good way. Made must have had a good luck moment, or maybe a streak that paid his mortgage for a month or two and gave him reprieve from dread. Maybe he felt the elated relief that the Gods had his back. Made tread deeper into black water. Cock fighting is like that: a kind of gambling that includes glamour, girls, companionship, war, blood, violence, euphoria, triumph and death – all in fast, wild, devastating theatre and certainty. Your chicken kills – you win big. Your chicken falls – there is no debate. So, on this moony night as my adrenaline was spiking to try to save his shack, Made’s peace was settled on the quicksand of knowing that it was already gone. u If you would like to make a little donation to help raise the $5,000 to get Made out of the swamp and back on his good feet – email me at jade.gently@gmail.com REALITY BITES $49 +POST / GST Apply to be a partner practice visit boutiquewhitening.com.au/contact-us or email info@boutiquewhitening.com.au Boutique Whitening By Night • Practice branding and personalisation • Luxury patient gift bag • 4 x 3ml syringes (up to 20 treatments) • Whitening tray video • Patient instructions
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