Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

I met the family of Santia, the deaf son of hearing parents, and his wife, Cening Sukesti, the deaf daughter of deaf parents. The two had been childhood friends. Santia was somewhat slow, whereas Cening Sukesti was vibrant, lively, and intelligent. Cening Sukesti chose to marry him because his hearing parents owned enough land for them to work. She said, “If you are deaf, you are deaf. If you are hearing, you are hearing. That’s simply how it is. I’ve never been jealous of hearing people. Life is no easier for them. If we work hard, we will get money, too. I take care of the cows and I sow the seeds and I boil the cassava. If I lived in another village, I might want to be hearing, but I like it here, and here it doesn’t matter.”

Three of their four children were deaf. When their son Suara Putra was nine months old, hearing friends observed that he could hear. He began to sign at eleven months, though he came to feel more fluent in speech. As a young adult, Suara Putra often translates for his parents. He’d never want to give up his hearing or his signing: “I have two where most people have one,” he said. But he maintained he could have been equally happy being deaf. Half his friends were deaf and the other half, hearing; “I don’t count them that way,” he explained, “because it’s all the same to me.” Nonetheless, he said, “I think my parents like having one hearing child. Yet I’d have less tension with them if I were like them.” Cening Sukesti said that Suara Putra signed even better than his deaf siblings because spoken language had made him more comfortable expressing complex ideas.

Their deaf son, Suarayasa, who had been signing while doing his martial arts moves the day before, told us that he had deaf and hearing friends, but that he really liked getting drunk with deaf friends. “Deaf people my age don’t go to school,” he said, “so they have time to work, so they’ve got money and buy the drink.” Alcohol abuse is more frequent in the deaf community in Bengkala, and a number of deaf young men showed me with pride the scars from their drunken fights. Suarayasa’s deaf grandmother said he had to get his drinking under control and shook her head when he said he was going to marry a hearing girl. I asked him why, and he said, “All the deaf girls already turned me down. They don’t like my drinking, even though I never vomit.”

An older couple, Sandi and Kebyar, lived with their two deaf sons, Ngarda and Sudarma. Ngarda’s hearing wife, Molsami, came from another village, and when she realized she was pregnant by Ngarda, she thought she’d better learn to sign. “I worry about the difference between a hardworking husband and a lazy one,” she said. “Hearing or deaf doesn’t make very much difference.” Ngarda was glad to have four hearing children. “We already have many deaf people here,” he said emphatically. “If all of us are deaf, it’s not good.”

Sudarma took the exact opposite position. He is married to a deaf wife, Nym Pindu, and said he would never have married a hearing woman. More than anyone else I met in Bali, he seemed to take the positions associated with Deaf politics in the West. “Deaf people should stick together,” he said. “Hearing to hearing is good, and deaf to deaf is good. I wanted deaf children and I want to live among deaf people.” All three of his children are deaf. Sudarma is a big drinker, with scars to show for his brawling.

We were supposed to have started the day by visiting Getar, the deaf chief of the village, and his sister, Kesyar, but Getar had been called out in the morning to fix some pipes, so we talked to them the next day. At seventy-five, Getar is not only still fixing pipes but also, when he has some money, making regular visits to the brothel in the neighboring town, about which he told us in some considerable detail; on his last visit, he had had three “girls” for thirty thousand rupiah (just over $3). The number of deaf in Bengkala fluctuates; Getar said that when he was born, the village had only six deaf people—though he subsequently explained that by people he meant “adult men,” and that if he included women, he could remember eleven deaf villagers. He communicated frequently with hearing people, and his signing was iconic; it lacked the elegance of Cening Sukesti’s or the punch of Sudarma’s.