Balinese Compound.

Bali Compound
The smallest unit in the Balinese community is not the individual but the family. In the strictest sense of the word a family is a married couple with children and the broader sense a family is all the people who live in one compound, family compound. In one such compound there can live brothers, cousins and second cousins with all their children and all relatives who worship in one common house temple. People tend to stick together as long as the compound can hold them and only when the compound has become too small for them all does one of them move out. The oldest members of the family usually stay in the compound, because they are responsible for the family temple. In this modern age the educated members do not like to stay with the large family. As soon as they can afford they build themselves a new compound and they want to be alone and independent and stand on their own feet. But the family tie is still very strong. They do not fail to go back to the compound when family celebrates the anniversary day of the family temple.

A compound is a walled area where the whole family lives. The size of compound depends on the welfare of the family. The size and condition of compound may differ but the lay-out is nearly always the same. The compound of a rich family has walls of stone or bricks and that of a poor family has walls of mud; sometimes there is not wall at all, but just hedges of green, sometimes of only dried coconut frond. The mud walls are covered with straw to prevent the rainwater from soaking the walls from above so that the mud walls do not crumble.

There is only one entrance to compound. This entrance can be an elaborately carved stone gate or a simple one of mud or just an opening in the wall, again depending on the welfare of the owner of the compound. In old fashioned compound there is always right behind the gate a wall or a screen. This wall or screen is of course to prevent people from peeping into the compound and seeing what happens in it, so for privacy, but the religious reason for it is to prevent spirits from entering the compound. According to the popular belief spirits cannot make turns, so they dash inside and then collide against the wall and turn back.
If one enters an old fashioned compound one sees first the kitchen, shared by married women of the family. But more often there is more than one kitchen to avoid quarrels. Since the villagers are nearly all farmers one sees right next to the kitchen one more granaries where the rice is stored. In Badung and Gianyar area the house temple is in the North-East corner. If you face the house temple on your right is a building, called Bale Gde, a prestigious building, where all the religious activities are done, and where the older members of family sleep when there is no ceremony. On the left there is a one-room house with or without a front porch where usually the young girls or the newly weds sleep. There is other open building, for working and also for sleeping. The Bale Gde can be very beautifully carved and painted with gold or very simple, again depending on the welfare of the owner. Especially the house temple as everything in the compound reflects the monetary or financial status of the owner and may be very beautiful or plain. It may have shrines, carved and painted with gold, or just a few and very simple at that. Rich or poor the house temple must have at least two shrines, the Sakti Kemulan, one shrine is for God and the ancestors and the second is for the producing power of God. In many families this sakti shrine is called Taksu or Tugu.

Only deified ancestors are entitled to sit in the Kemulan shrine and ancestor is deified after he is cremated.
In such a compound there are not toilet and bathing facilities. The people do not feel the need of them yet, because there is always a public bathing place inside or outside the village, be it a spring the bushes in their backyard, the extension of their compound.
A housewife nearly always keeps a few or a sow which she feeds with the refuse of the kitchen. This is her saving pot, because she can keep the money she gets from them, when she sells them. It is even more profitable to keep a sow gives birth to sometimes 12 piglets. She keeps the big in a pigsty and for convenience she builds the pigsty behind the kitchen or very close to it, so that she has not walk too far to feed the pigs, because the food for them is cooked in the kitchen at the same she does the cooking for the family.

Since most villages are farmers they have cows to help them work the fields. The cowshed is built in the backyard of the compound. Bali has no grass land where one can graze the cows, so the people have to cut grass for the cow and if there is not much grass, in the dry season for instance, they have to cut leaves to feed the animals with.
Generally speaking animals in Bali are taken care of very well. Cows look very well fed and clean, because they are washed after every work in the field and once in the afternoon before they are led to the cowshed for the night. Even pigs are sometimes washed. The owner throws water over them and that is then their bath.

There are usually a few hens and chicken running loose in the yard or the backyard. But the nests are built in the granary or in a place close to the house, but far away from the living quarters. The pigs and the chickens are not killed to have meat for the family. People in general very seldom eat meat. They eat meat only on festival days.
In the compound people grow fruit trees. Often one sees banana trees, papaya, jackfruit trees, orange trees and some times even coconut trees.

Other Bali Information
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