Kasongan Village

Kasongan Village is a place our tour guide was familiar with. On arrival we went wandering along the byways of the town, sometimes cutting through what I could swear were their equivalent of back yards. As we ran across people we would stop to talk. Although I’m sure many of those we visited have visited with tour groups before, who we encountered seemed entirely random.

We started off at the local police station – or their equivalent. The job is done on a rotating basis with all the able bodied men in the village doing the job and the women providing food. The accommodations (see above) are humble to put it mildly. It’s a three sided concrete shelter with no amenities save the wooden tube in the center of the picture which is pounded in various rhythms to call for help should a problem arise. The men who spend the night in the shelter provide their own bedding.

Problems they handle ranged from theft to fire. Should anything more serious happen, they must apply to the regional police for help.

The next place we stopped was a group of women who weave bamboo sacks. These sacks act as their version of a plastic bag. When people buy something, they typically carry it home in one of these. They are fairly strong, and quite flexible, however they are not typically reused. Generally when they get home, they go into the fire.

When The Girl saw my pictures she was all over it, saying it was a better recycling program than what we do with plastic bags.

The women can make several of these in an hour. They don’t get a lot of money for each, but it is something they can do to pick up a little extra income while tending their homes.

This is not an organized business. People come and go as they please, provide their own materials, and make their own sales. If they do it together, it’s because they are friends hanging out. Think quilting club.

We went down the way and around to corner to a place that takes pottery and glues colored glass to make decorative urns and vases. Most of these were waist high or bigger and intended to use in a hotel.

Although they do place some in stores, this was considered a factory – albeit one without walls. They were busy filling orders when we stopped by, and didn’t seem particularly interested in picking up a sale to the tourists. Just as well. I didn’t exactly have room in my suitcase.

They don’t make the pottery. They buy it and decorate it. This is apparently a common practice in Kasongan Village. Most of the people in town were busy working on things that would be sold to stores or filling orders.

The next place we visited had three men on the front porch of a house all making men’s ceremonial hats. Right next to it was space for three women working on fabric. Two of the women were decorating the fabric with tubes of glitter glue. One was cutting strips of fabric to be used by the men in making the hats. But the fabric for the hats didn’t have the glitter glue on it.

The main thing separating the two was a different slab of concrete for flooring, and the fact the fabric area had three walls around it. The open side faced the porch where the men worked.

They were not adverse to making a sale. I love buying “factory direct”. 🙂

After that we ran across one of those street food vendors who put their wares in baskets attached to a bicycle. This one sold pudding with a berry syrup. I wasn’t quite brave enough to sample her wares, which I now regret. It isn’t exactly something you pick up at WalMart.

From there we went to another place that bought pottery, decorated it, then sold it. At the time they had a huge order for combination ash tray/ trash bins for a hotel chain, but usually they make things like turtle banks (as opposed to piggy banks) for sale in stores.

But right across the street from this one-woman operation were a couple of men training their birds for cock fighting. They mugged for our cameras and we got a little distracted. However, when they offered to really let their cocks fight, the group turned it down.

Then we ran into a household preparing for a wedding. Weddings in the village are huge affairs in which nearly the whole village will be invited to the ceremony. They specially decorated the front of their place.

We went around to the back where they were cooking. Although they were a little surprised to see a dozen foreigners come waltzing into their yard, they were very tolerant of us.

They had already been at it for over a day and expected to keep at it for another day or two. Most of the cooking was done over fire pits in the yard set up for that purpose. There was a lot of hand pressing of rice into banana leaf molds and such.

Near as I could tell there wasn’t a lot of concern over things like refrigeration. Again, I refrained from giving it a taste. This time I didn’t feel like I was missing out on too much because many of the things we were served in restaurants involved rice or fish or something or another pressed into a banana leaf.

They also made hundreds of hard boiled eggs. Each guest would go home with a little basket filled with three hard boiled eggs and a selection of the banana leaf wrapped food.

Then it was back on the bus to be reunited with our suitcases at the hotel.