While the village is open and communal, the Balinese home is hidden and private. High thatch-covered mud walls run along the roads, broken at intervals by high pillared porticos with thick, carved wooden doors, each the entrance to a family compound, invariably guarded by a barking dog or two. The thick mud walls of the enclosure define and protect the family; they would feel insecure without them.

A central ramp runs up the flight of steps so motorcycles can be ridden into the walled enclosure. These cells of unbroken, interlocking, single domestic courtyard homes are open only in the back, where the rubbish thrown and pigs root. Behind the main gate is a thin wall (aling-aling) which affords privacy and prevents evil spirits from entering; it’s difficult for the beasties to turn corners.

Just as the layout of the village reflects the grand order, so too does the layout of the family compound. The Balinese believe each part of the house corresponds to a part of the human anatomy: the head is the family shrine, the sexual organs are the gates, the arms are the bedrooms and the social parlor, the navel is the courtyard, the legs and feet are the kitchen and granary, and the anus is the backyard garbage pit. In each corner of the yard are temples dedicated to guardian spirits.

Because sons generally take their brides home, several generations - up to 10 separate families - share the compound, each maintaining separate hearths and properties. Open-sided raised pavilions for sleeping, playing, and working all face inward, forming a circle around the inner courtyard. Near the center of the yard is the family open-air “living room.” Separate enclosures and huts are assigned to cooking and washing. Just outside the compound, off in the corner, is the pigsty, where the next festival’s main course is fattened up.

Compund part

• ‘candi bentar’ - entrance gate
• ‘aling-aling’ - small wall inside the doorway to stop entry of devils and evil spirits. Chinese derivation.
• ‘apit lawang’ - house shrines, at entrance of compound
• ‘bale tiang sangah’ - social pavilion and guest bale. Generally contains benches or mats where guests can sit cross-legged.
• ‘tugu’ - small shrine, west of the ‘umah meten’, where offerings are laid at the beginning of each work day
• ‘umah-meten’ - the windowless, locked sleeping quarters for the head of the family and his wife, built on the side nearest the holy mountain on a platform of bricks or sandstone. Supported by eight pillars and four walls, it’s often topped by a thick roof of thatch. There are usually only beds inside. It is also the treasure-house of the compound where heirlooms, cassette recorders, jewelry, motorcycles, etc., are kept. In more prosperous households the platform of the ‘meten’ extends into a veranda-like platform with additional beds. Hung on the walls are photographs of President Suharto and the family in formal at fire, etc. After the shrine area, the most important building in the compound.
• ‘bale sakapat’ and ‘bale sakanem’ - guest pavilions for relatives and children; also where souvenirs are made, for weaving looms, and crafts-and implement-making activities. These vary in size and number according to each family’s needs.
• ’sanggah kemula’ - the family counterpart of the formal village temple in the more well-to-do families, usually walled in and consisting of shrines with grass thatch and an altar for offerings. These shrines are dedicated to the ancestral spirits, to the holy mountains (Gunung Batur and Gunung Agung), to the interpreter of the gods, etc. In the compound of noblemen, the ’sanggah’ section is as elaborate as a temple and is called a ‘pamerajan’; in the poorest families they’re just small bamboo god-houses on top of split bamboo.
• ‘lumbung’ - rice granary, the size an indication of the wealth of the family. These are tall structures with steep thatched roofs, four wooden pillars with rat-stopping discs attached. Always on the south side of ‘kampung’, alongside the kitchen, at a lower level and west of the sleeping quarters.
• ‘pengijen’ - a small shrine dedicated to the Spirit of the Jewel.
• ‘natar’ - interior courtyard. In the old days this included a cleared area behind the granary where rice was threshed, but now with the new strains of miracle rice, the threshing is done in the fields.
• ‘paon’ - the dark, hot kitchen, often just a flimsy bamboo structure with woven palm-leaf walls, a smooth, hard dirt floor, and a simple roof of coarse thatch supported by posts. At one end a raised bamboo platform serves as the kitchen table, a mudstone at the other. The dirt floor keeps food inside the clay pots hot for hours, and is smooth and easy to clean. The ‘paon’ is always located on the south side of the compound. opigsty ochicken coop