Important towns have great utilitarian markets of cement and galvanized
tin where shrewd Arabs and Chinese keep regular shops of cloth and imported
knick-knacks, but the average holds market under the shadow, of the waringin
or under square shades of straw mats like umbrellas. A few people sell
there everyday; the “big” market takes place every third day
of the of religius calendar. There are “market associations“,
organized in group of three desa that work together, and holding market
in rotation every day in each of the three villages. The women are-the
financiers that control the market; one seldom sees men in it.
Except in certain trades to help carry load as a fat pig. Even the money
changers are women, who sit behind little filled with rolls of small change,
kepeng, Chinese brass coins with a hole in the middle, worth a small fraction
of a cent (about five to seven to a cent according to the current exchange).
coins are strung into rolls of two hundred, called satak (one string of
twenty-five cents) . Prices in the market vary according to the buyer;
they are lowest to the villager in his home town, slightly higher for
the Balinese of other villages, and considerably higher to foreigners.
This is customary and understandable. one takes, into consideration the
communal spirit of the village and of the Balinese.
It is significant that an average meal in the market costs a Balinese
only twenty-five kepeng or about two or three American cents. The Balinese
do not count in the present Dutch monetary system of guilders and cents;
among themselves they use only the smallest unit, the kepeng, and the
largest, the ringgit, big silver coins (worth two and a half guilders)
that are normally divided into 1,200 kepeng. The Balinese cannot visualize
a foreigner using kepengs and when I bought peanuts or a banana at a food-stand
and they did not have Dutch pennies for change, the women vendors were
amused to see me pocket a heavy string of kepengs. Accustomed to dealing
in hundreds and thousands, they have acquired a surprising knowledge of
mathematics, and the women can add, subtract, multiply, or divide with
the speed of an adding machine. To test this ability we used to ask the
women of our household for multiplications of numbers of several ciphers;
with mysterious operations of a few kepengs spread on their laps, they
always found a quick and accurate result.
The market reaches its height about noon, when it is bard to walk through
the crowd of semi-nude women. At that time the animation is very great
and the market resounds with the excited bargaining, the constant coming
and going of people, and the squealing of the pigs that are mercilessly
stuffed into baskets or carried in the arms of the women like babies.
The thousand smells of coconut oil, flowers, spices, and dried fish combine
to make the pungent smell so characteristic of Balinese markets. The soft
browns and yellows of the women's skirts and the bright colored sashes
they wear, the graceful movements and unconscious beauty of their poses,
make of the market a show as interesting to watch as their luxurious and
spectacular feasts.
The excitement subsides gradually in the late afternoon, when the women
return home loaded with the merchandise they have bought or with the empty
baskets balanced on one corner, in the most absurd defiance of the laws
of gravity, by the heavy strings of kepengs that record the day's sales.
Most markets have a little shrine for the goddess of fertility and of
gardens, Melanting, alsothe deity of the market, to whom the vendors make
small offerings for good luck
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