Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Family Fun in Bali

After a visit, Ketut driver rode off on his motorbike yesterday to go to a family get-together in Singaraja up north. Families are large and the connections are vague to me. Everyone will be introduced as a sister, brother, aunt, uncle regardless of how close they are - sometimes. No set rules I guess. They do have words for inlaws and cousins but a; cousin can be a 2nd or third cousin it seems. I don't know and won't try to figure it out. The point of the get-together is a family lottery. Something like this - everyone puts in a hundred thousand rupiah bill - $7.32 at today's exchange rate. Then they draw a name and that person gets the pot. At the next gathering that person's name won't be in the pot so they can't win, but they still have to put the money in. Sort of neat.

That's how it was explained but I but it's not that simple because the eligible group would dwindle and eventually just be one. The whole game would get less and less interesting to the group as a whole. But I won't ask.