(CNN) – Bali first captured the heart of Kayti Denham when he arrived on the Indonesian island during his honeymoon in the 1980s.
“When the plane’s door opened on the tarmac, the intoxicating tropical aroma promised everything the UK didn’t do,” he recalls. “The chance to be fun and sun-drenched.”
He kept the memory closed and returned to the island from time to time to reconnect. The marriage did not last, but Denham says he fell in love with Bali more than ever with a man.
After 25 years in the UK, Denham moved to Byron Bay, Australia, where he launched a range of aromatherapy skin care products with a friend. Later, in Sydney, he worked with a local production company as a screenwriter.
Fast forward to 2004, when Denham left Australia to work as a teacher in Bali, which led to a number of places with international schools on the island. He continued to take writing assignments alongside, including a writing for Scottish chef Will Meyrick, founder of Sarong and Mamasan, two of the island’s most famous locavore restaurants.
Robi Supriyanto: musician, environmental activist and producer of positive coffee on earth.
Kayti Denham
A lifelong lover of live music, Denham came across Robi Supriyanto, head of the popular Balinese rock band Navicula. In Indonesia, Supriyanto is known not only for his energetic performances inspired by grunge, but for his involvement in sustainable agriculture and his efforts to foster the pride of agricultural life, the passions that Denham shared through of his work with Meyrick and studies with permaculture guru Bill Mollison. in Australia.
“If you want to know Balinese culture, you just have to open the traditional Balinese calendar,” Supriyanto told CNN in 2018. “It’s all about agricultural elements. If you want to preserve Balinese culture, you also have to preserve agriculture.”
Denham discussed these ideas with Supriyanto, who lives in the city of Ubud in Bali with his American wife and son.
“We talked about how nice it would be to set up a home farm where you could practice permaculture and grow organic produce,” he says. “For me, it probably comes from fantasies I had when I read books by Laura Ingalls Wilder when I was a little girl.”
“I had to work on trust and get people to trust me”
The Tabanan regency of Bali is known for its rice terraces.
SONNY TUMBELAKA / AFP / AFP via Getty Images
Supriyanto helped her find a semi-rural property in the Tabanan regency, often called “authentic Bali,” where terraced rice fields follow the natural contours of the land with the dormant volcano of Mount Batukaru in the background. .
Family stone wall compounds use the subak, the Balinese community-based irrigation control system, for their farms.
Here Denham could make his dream come true. He formed a partnership with Supriyanto to insure the land in 2015 and, through a lawyer, established contracts designating Denham and his daughters Kepsibel and Severen, both residents of Australia, as legal tenants.
“I didn’t have a pile of money to invest, just the monthly salary of a teacher,” Denham says. “I had to work on trust and get people to trust me. The phrase I repeated over and over again was ‘It’s going to work.'”
The 1.2-hectare property borders the National Conservation Forest near Desa Sanda, a village that, as Denham says, “lives according to seasons and rituals, market days and motorbikes.”
Denham rented a plot of land surrounded by durian and mango orchards in a village that “lives according to the seasons and rituals.”
Kayti Denham
Surrounded by orchards of durians and mangoes, the plot climbs from misty wooded hills to a valley and passes through an inherited terraced coffee farm as part of the purchase, before ending at a fountain. natural. The spring flows into the Balian River, sacred among Balinese because the 16th century Javanese Hindu sage Dang Hyang Nirartha placed his staff in the river, giving it the power to heal the sick. The river flows into the Indian Ocean at Balian Beach, famous for its sparsely populated surfing scene, a 40-minute drive away.
“I can’t see the ocean from land, but it’s cooler on the hills,” Denham says. “During the afternoon beautiful clouds roll in and at night the sky is clear and clear.”
Finding the right space
Two years after acquiring the land, Denham and Supriyanto traveled to central Java to find a limasan, a traditional wooden house with a millennial design history in Java and South Sumatra.
The high, sloping ceilings pick up the hot air that rises during the day, keeping the lower seating area cool. They are currently popular with developers who turn them into luxury villas or boutique hotels, but Javanese residents are less than happy with the maintenance of old structures and are happy to sell them wall to wall.
Denham’s house was reassembled in a T-shape.
Kayti Denham
Denham found a vacant limasan in the former royal capital of Surakarta, commonly known as Solo these days, and after negotiating a price – $ 7,000 – hired artisans to dismantle the house, load it into a truck and deliver it. the more than 600 kilometers to Bali, which cost about $ 650.
The Javanese crew arrived in shorts and T-shirts, and the fresh mountain air of Tabanan caught them by surprise.
“I went to land shortly after they were supposed to reassemble the limasan to find them trembling around a fire,” Denham says. “I rounded blankets, sweaters and jackets and built a shelter for sleeping. But in addition to not taking in the mountain climate, there was tension between them and the local Balinese.”
Eventually the Javanese went home to Solo and Denham finished the house with the help of Ketut, a Balinese craftsman who had worked in the house he rented in Kerobokan.
He continued to teach how to keep funds to build his dream. Whenever possible, he drove from Kerobokan to Desa Sanda with his builder Ketut to monitor progress.
When finished, the reassembled and enlarged T-shaped house measured 11 by 10 meters at the front and 22 by 5 meters at the rear. An interior sink was added and Denham began to move on antique furniture, shelves, and trunks.
The interior began to take shape, starting with a huge kitchen centered on a large table that seats 12 people.
“I still had a foothold in the expat-oriented international school world, but I started to get closer to Sanda’s community and learn about her desire to make the village an ecotourism destination,” says Denham. “On the road to the house, there’s an organic bakery, which makes fresh bread and cakes to sell in southern cafes. I also found locals making organic jams, handmade soaps and shampoos.”
A local artisan tests the bedek mold (traditional cane straw roof).
Kayti Denham
To develop the land surrounding the house, a group of locals and expats, including several Denham international alumni, organized a “Permablitz,” a sort of fast-paced permaculture event. They built bamboo outbuildings with long-lasting toilets and began working in an organic orchard, while camping and playing music with the locals at night.
Seeing the property filled with coffee, cocoa, durian, mangosteen and avocado, all organically grown, Denham felt his dreams merge effortlessly with those in the community.
Away from the pandemic
In July 2018, Denham flew to Australia to take up a teaching job in a remote desert city, returning to Bali during school holidays to work more at home. He spent most of his 2019 Christmas vacation moving the rest of his mundane assets from Kerobokan, where he had ended his lease, to Sanda.
He made the decision that, instead of unpacking, he would keep everything safe and be given the opportunity to sink into the ambiance of his beautiful home, with his old wooden living room, the spacious kitchen and dressing room where to store your material life.
“The rain fell, the leaves dripped, the birds called, the civets screamed and nothing else happened except one night when a hunter took refuge from the rain and scared me a little. But these last days in the house were nothing short of heavenly. “
He returned to Australia after Christmas to teach again and told his friends in Bali, “See you in April!”
When April 2020 arrived, unexpected pandemic travel protocols left Denham stranded in Australia. He has not been at home in Bali for more than a year now. Right now, Denham says, “I live with WhatsApp messages. They send me pictures of my beautiful house in the woods, empty and waiting for my return.”
A local family takes care of the house in absentia. Not long ago, Robi’s band recorded a music video in the garden. The coffee farm produces robust organic and sustainable.
“Part of that coffee came to my house last week,” Denham says. “Whenever I make a cup, it elevates me to a place I still don’t live in, but have dreamed of for years.”