Acceptance speaks volumes
Community in Bali refuses to bow to typical discrimination and creates a sign language to help integrate its hard-of-hearing brothers and sisters
BENGKALA, INDONESIA // Women from Bali, 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 cannot hear the music, they are deaf.
The village of Bengkala has been home to a large number of deaf people for generations.
Today, about 40 of the 3,000 residents have severe hearing loss.
They often scrape a living along with the rest of the villagers tending to the surrounding rice fields.
But in a village where education levels are generally low, they are also trained in skills such as handicrafts that can be sold in the tourist resorts of the island. Elsewhere in Indonesia, disa- bled people often suffer harsh discrimination and mistreatment.
But not in Bengkala. Here, residents even developed a sign language, Kata Kolok, that hearing abled and disabled learn.
It grew organically over the decades and is different to Indonesian sign language. It has its unique signs created by villagers to reflect how they saw the world.
This level of acceptance of disability is relatively unique in Indonesia. It took time, though, for Bengkala to reach it.
The northern Bali village has existed for about eight centuries. In the past villagers thought the high incidence of deafness was because of a curse.
However, those superstitions – and the prejudices they created – were largely abandoned after experts discovered the cause was a recessive gene common among the population.
Since the 1960s, the village has been making determined efforts to better integrate its deaf residents.
“Why should the deaf be ostracised?” says Ketut Kanta, who heads a community group for the village’s deaf residents. “Human rights are the same everywhere.”
Now everyone is treated equally, says village head I Made Arpana. “We don’t differentiate between deaf villagers and nondeaf villagers,” he says, 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 translates as “talk of the deaf”. It is used, to varying degrees, by about 80 per cent of the villagers. 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 get lessons in the local sign language, and are introduced to elements of Indonesian and international signing.
Made Budiasih, whose sevenyear-old son goes to the school, says she was worried for his future when they discovered he was deaf at birth, but says the inclusive educational centre had made all the difference.
“I was despairing, but then I found out about this school,” she says.
Still, it is not always easy teaching deaf students as they often become frustrated and misbehave, says teacher I Made Wisnu, who has worked 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 have 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.
“Tourists from China and Europe are coming to watch us, and they really enjoy it,” tambourine player I Wayan Getar signs.
‘ We don’t differentiate between deaf villagers and non-deaf villagers Ketut Kanta head of a community group for the village’s deaf residents