(CNN) – Bali first captured Kayti Denham’s heart when she came to the Indonesian island in the 1980s for her honeymoon.
“When the plane door to the tarmac opened, the tropical aroma promised everything the UK did not,” she recalls. “The chance to be frolic and sun-drenched.”
She keeps the memory close, and now and then returns to the island to make contact again. The marriage did not last, but Denham says she fell more deeply in love with Bali than with a man.
After 25 years in the UK, Denham moves to Byron Bay in Australia, where she and a friend launch a range of aromatherapy skin care products. Later in Sydney she worked with a local production company as a screenwriter.
Fast forward to 2004, when Denham left Australia for a teaching post in Bali, which led to a series of posts at international schools on the island. She went on to write commissions on the side, including a writing for Scottish chef Will Meyrick, founder of Sarong and Mamasan, two of the most celebrated restaurants on the island.
Robi Supriyanto: musician, environmental activist and earth-positive coffee farmer.
Kayti Denham
A lifelong lover of live music, Denham crossed paths with Robi Supriyanto, lead singer of popular Balinese rock band Navicula. In Indonesia, Supriyanto is known not only for his energetic grunge-inspired performances, but also for his involvement in sustainable agriculture and his efforts to encourage pride in farming, passions that Denham shared through her work with Meyrick and studying at the permaculture guru Bill Mollison. in Australia.
“If you want to get to know Balinese culture, just open the traditional Balinese calendar,” Supriyanto told CNN in 2018. ‘Everything is related to agricultural elements. If you want to preserve Balinese culture, you must also preserve agriculture. ‘
Denham discusses such ideas with Supriyanto, who lives with his American wife and child in the Ubud city of Bali.
“We talked about how fun it would be to establish a home farm where one can practice permaculture and grow organic products,” she says. “For me, it probably comes from fantasies I had when I read Laura Ingalls Wilder books as a child.”
“I had to work on trust and that people had to trust me”
Tabanan Regency in Bali is known for its rice terraces.
SONNY TUMBELAKA / AFP / AFP via Getty Images
Supriyanto helped her find a semi-rural property in Tabanan Regency, often called ‘the real Bali’, where rice fields in terraces follow the natural contours of the country with the dormant volcano of Mount Batukaru in the background.
Stone-walled family connections use subak, the Balinese community-based irrigation control system, for their farms.
Here, Denham could make her dream come true. She formed a partnership with Supriyanto to secure the land in 2015, and through a lawyer drafted contracts that Denham and her daughters Kepsibel and Severen, both in Australia, designated as legal tenants.
“I did not have a lot of money to invest, just my monthly tuition salary,” says Denham. “I had to work on trust and that people had to trust me. The phrase I kept repeating to myself was ‘It will work out’.”
The 1.2-acre property borders the National Conservation Forest near Desa Sanda, a town that, as Denham puts it, ‘lives according to seasons and rituals, market days and motorcycles’.
Denham rents a piece of land surrounded by durian and mango orchards in a village that ‘lives according to seasons and rituals’.
Kayti Denham
Surrounded by durian and mango orchards, the plot of misty wooded hills slides into a valley and through a terraced coffee farm inherited as part of the purchase, before ending up on a natural spring. The fountain flows into the Balinese river, sacred among the Balinese, because the 16th-century Javanese Hindu sage Dang Hyang Nirartha placed his staff in the river and gave it the power to heal the sick. The river empties into the Indian Ocean at Balian Beach, known for its unpopular surf scene, 40 minutes by car away.
“I can not see the ocean from the land, but it’s cooler in the hills,” says Denham. “Beautiful clouds roll in in the afternoon, and at night the sky is clear and clear.”
Find the right limasan
Two years after acquiring the land, Denham and Supriyanto travel to central Java to find a limasan, a traditional wooden house with a millennium-old design history in Java and South Sumatra.
The high hip roofs collect warm air that rises during the day and keep the lower living area cool. It is popular these days among developers who convert it into luxury villas or boutique hotels, but Javanese residents are less interested in maintaining the old structures and like to sell them wall-to-wall.
Denham’s T-shaped house was reassembled.
Kayti Denham
Denham found a vacant limasan in the former royal capital of Surakarta, now known as Solo, and after negotiating a $ 7,000 prize, he hired artisans to dismantle the house, in a loading truck and delivering more than 600 kilometers to Bali, which cost about $ 650.
The Javanese crew showed up in shorts and t-shirts, and Tabanan’s cool mountain air surprised them.
“I went to the country shortly after they had to reassemble the limasan to find that they were shivering around a fire,” says Denham. “I gathered blankets, sweaters and jackets, and we built a place to sleep. But there was tension between them and the local Balinese.
Eventually the Javanese went home to Solo, and Denham completed the house with the help of Ketut, a Balinese artisan who worked on the house she rented in Kerobokan.
She continued to learn to retain funds to build her dream. Where possible, she drove with her builder Ketut from Kerobokan to Desa Sanda to monitor progress.
When completed, the re-assembled and expanded T-shaped housing measured 11 by 10 feet in front and 22 by 5 feet behind. An indoor toilet was added and Denham began moving furniture, bookshelves and antique suitcases.
The interior began to take shape, starting with a large kitchen on a large table with 12 seats.
“I had one more foot in the expat-oriented international school world, but I started getting closer to the Sanda community and hearing about their desire to make the town an eco-tourism destination,” says Denham. ‘On the way home there is an organic bakery that makes fresh bread and cakes to sell to cafes in the south. I also found locals making organic jams, handmade soaps and shampoos. ‘
A local artisan makes the cover (traditional canopy ceiling) good.
Kayti Denham
To develop the land around the house, a group of residents and expats, including a number of Denham’s former international school students, organized a “Permablitz”, a kind of permaculture event that was quickly attacked. They built bamboo outbuildings with long-lasting toilets and started working on an organic vegetable garden while camping with the locals and playing music in the evenings.
As the property was full of coffee, cocoa, durian, mangosteen and avocado, all organically grown, Denham feels her dreams blend effortlessly with those of the community.
Taken away by the pandemic
In July 2018, Denham flew to Australia to take a teaching position in a remote desert town, and returned to Bali over school holidays to continue working at home. She spent most of her Christmas holiday in 2019 moving the rest of her world goods from Kerobokan, where her lease was terminated, to Sanda.
She makes a decision to store everything safely rather than unpack it and give herself the opportunity to sink into the atmosphere of her beautiful home with its antique wooden living room, spacious kitchen and extra lock-up room where she stores her material life. has.
“The rain was falling, the leaves were dripping, the birds were calling, civets were screaming and nothing else happened except one night when a hunter got shelter from the rain and scared me a little. But the last days in the house were nothing but heavenly. ‘
She flies back to Australia after Christmas to teach again and tells her friends in Bali: “See you in April!”
When April 2020 dawned, Denham in Australia pledged with the unexpected travel protocols. It has now been more than a year since she was in her home in Bali. At this point, Denham says, “I live on WhatsApp messages. I get photos of my beautiful home in the big forest, empty and waiting for my return.”
A local family takes care of the house in her absence. Not long ago, Robi’s orchestra recorded a live music video in the garden. The coffee farm produces organic, sustainable robusta.
“Some of the coffee came in front of my door last week,” says Denham. “When I brew a cup, it lifts me to a place where I have not lived before, but which I have dreamed about for years.”