OCTOBER 25, 2014 |  ALEX MEETS WORLD

        “Around the island, everybody knows me,” Nyoman said.

        Everyone, that is, in the village of Ped on the rural island of Nusa Penida near Bali, Indonesia, but even in villages beyond Ped, someone is bound to know Nyoman’s name. That’s because, at some point, most of the people on Nusa Penida were once his students, learning middle school English in his class.

        Nyoman is 57, and he has been teaching English in Nusa Penida since 1979 — first at S.M.P.N. (public middle school) One in Sampalan. Then, later he moved on to work at S.M.P.N. Two in Ped, where he still teaches today.

          In his 35 years of teaching, Nyoman guesstimates that he has taught about five thousand kids and that around 80% of the current school teachers in Nusa Penida across all levels and subjects are past students of his.

        But Nyoman himself never went to school in Nusa Penida. His roots are in Nusa Lembongan, where he grew up a poor, uneducated farmer’s son.

          School was different back then. It was “much worse” Nyoman said.

          Where Nyoman was educated on Nusa Lembongan, there wasn’t any toilet. The floors were made of dirt, and there was no electricity. He had to study on the porch of his house every night in front of an oil lamp.

          “[An oil lamp] is not good for reading at night,” Nyoman recalled. “[It’s] very dark.”

          There weren’t even any school uniforms. He showed up to class just in shorts and a nice, white shirt, but it wasn’t only school that was different.

          Back when Nyoman was growing up, Nusa Lembongan was an entirely other world.

          “That time, all people poor because there is nothing there,” Nyoman said. There weren’t any of the tourists that fringe Lembongan’s beaches today. “[There was] nothing there, no one.”

          As a child, Nyoman lived in a small house with a grass roof, where he slept in a room on a bed without a mattress that he shared with his parents and six brothers and sisters.

          He went to the restroom outside in a bathroom area without a toilet that was shared by a few families. The shower consisted of a big stone and a bucket of water that was also shared, and Nyoman would brush his teeth with bill nut on coconut skin.

          Nyoman’s father was very strict and required that Nyoman help out on the farm, where his family grew corn, tapioca, peanuts, and mangoes. His father also owned cows, and every day after school at two p.m., Nyoman had to gather grass to feed his father’s cows.

          But Nyoman’s father didn’t just want for his children to learn to be farmers. He wanted them to have what he never got himself — an education.

          “All my brothers and sisters studied because of [my father],” Nyoman said.

          “When they [the brothers] come here, sometimes maybe, they are desperate, so we meet, so when a we meet each other, we care each other because we know that everyone is coming from far,” Simon said.

          The struggle for survival is what founded the business selling paintings.

          “We decided what we’re gonna do to survive” Simon said. “Waiting someone to employ us is hard. We don’t always work, so we just started how we survive for ourselves. You know accommodation here in Cape Town is hard you know. It’s expensive. It’s hard for this time for people to keep money.”

          While Simon sells the artwork, other brothers create the pieces on display.

          Although they share an accommodation, a business, and a home country, Simon did not always share the same religion as his brothers from Malawi. He was raised a Christian by his parents, who did not so easily accept his new beliefs.

          “When we become Rasta, we’re becoming like a stranger,” Simon said. “We fight with our parents because they say ‘no. Won’t be Rasta man!’ Always they say ‘you cannot grow crown. You cannot grow dreadlocks in my house’ you know and ‘you started to praise another god. Where about us who give you this god?’ You know the parents they cannot just say yes.”

          Even outside of the house, Simon was criticized for his religion.

          “The pastor say ‘no. You cannot leave the child, your child, like that,’” Simon said. “Sometimes when inside the house, they [my parents] understand, but when a they go to majority to society, it’s coming ‘Eh. My son. I don’t know what I can do.’”

          It took seven years of fighting and trying to show the goodness of Rastafari for Simon’s parents to finally accept his new, Rasta lifestyle.

          “When I sit with them, they see the truth,” Simon said. “Now, they like me. Even they want me to be close to them because I prove myself, you know. They was a think that is a bad person, but years and times, they decide naw, he’s a good man.”

          During the seven years prior to this decision, which Simon describes as the time his parents forsook him, Simon dealt with his parents by giving them respect and keeping a distance.

          “I forgive them,” Simon said. “We forgive them, and we show them love, and they understand what we standing for now. For our parents, for us to trod this way won’t be easy, even to society, even to society outside, even the government, even whatever. We are confusing people. We live a clean life and are promoting peace and love, but to understand even in the way we are looking, people, they don’t believe. They believe you have to look clean, so when you look not, you are not clean.”

          Simon left the Christian church 22 years ago when he was 15 because he believed that the rigid, organized church structure and rules, “conditions” he called them, did not allow him to be a “natural man”.

          “It’s like a food,” he said. “We don’t get full [from other religions], and when we find Rastafari, we notice that we are living clean now, we are living better lives you know than like we used to before.”

          Simon describes his childhood as “nice” and “peaceful”, but life before Rastafari was “not life” he said. “[It was a] good life as the way mama, parents, want.”

          Simon’s lifework now “is to give thanks,” he said. In the mornings, he gives thanks before taking the train to Simon’s Town to work. After the sun has gone down, he takes the train back to his home in Langa to give thanks again before going to bed. The cycle only ever alters on Saturday (the Sabbath) and Friday, when he spends the day preparing for Sabbath.

          With a packed work and prayer schedule, Simon has no time for fun.

          “The Father said ‘no. We mustn’t have the time for fun,’” Simon explained.” Anytime for us is to do Jah works [God’s works]. We are passing by to spread the message for Father.”

          As for the future, Simon doesn’t dwell on it too much. He does not worry about providing because he trusts that God will provide for him.

          “God Himself said He helps people that they help themselves, so when we stand up looking for the bread for today, that is God. He never fail. Always He provide,” Simon said. “We just say give thanks to [God], but give us a life and protecting from the dangerous parts so we can see glory, white hair you know. We think about the future, but the present moment is what is more important you see.”

          For the rest of his life, Simon has only two desires: to go to Zion, Heaven, and to return home to Pretoria, where he hopes to die.

          “We don’t dream nothing except what we have,” he said. “The greatest joy you see is like the way the Father when he opens the gates of Zion to prepare a good place for me to praise him, you know, because like the enjoy for me when I sit down and I feel happy is when I praise the Father, you know. The praise is more joy for us, for me. We just want a to have the time to glorify His name, Hailie Selassie, [a late Ethiopian emperor whom Rastas regard as a Jesus-like figure].”

          While Simon is not a wealthy man, working far from his family and house of brothers, he is content with life.

          “I’m comfortable the way I live,” he said. “If I can have a Benz or a big house but if I don’t live Rasta living, I don’t feeling loyal. Of course, there’s a lot of tribulations we face in this life, but what is more important we don’t want to leave Father Hailie Selassie. We cannot complain. We give thanks because we know our Father. You life is like, sometimes, we stay in good condition, sometimes, we harder situation, but his journey continues. Still trod on. Still trod on because no choice.”

          Looking thoughtfully out into the distance, Simon trod to the side of the road opposite the orange and brown paintings that are his livelihood and took a seat on the grass, under the sun and in the shadows of the late afternoon with a picture of Emperor Hailie Selassie pinned to his lapel and a smile on his bearded face as he preached “one love” to the passersby, his wrapped dreadlocks hanging happily behind him.