Balinese women dressed in gold bodices dance to rhythmic drumming while waving fans as men in purple outfits sit cross legged around them, jiggling their arms and chanting. It appears to be just another show on the Indonesian resort island, known for its ancient culture and rituals, but there is a key difference -- the dancers are all deaf and cannot hear the beat.
They perform the moves, learnt over months of hard training, from memory.
The village of Bengkala has been home to an unusually large number of deaf people for generations, and nowadays about 40 out of its approximately 3000 residents have severe hearing loss. But unlike in other parts of Indonesia where they could face mistreatment, local people have taken the deaf residents to their hearts. In many ways, life in the small hamlet has come to revolve around them. As well as the dance project, a unique sign language called Kata Kolok has been developed in the isolated village which has been mastered by those with hearing impairment, as well as many of those who can hear, prompting interest from scientists around the world.
In addition, deaf villagers are trained in skills such as making handicrafts that can be sold in the heaving tourist resorts of the island, and they work side by side with other villagers in the rice fields. "Human rights are the same everywhere. So I thought, why should the deaf be ostracised?" said Ketut Kanta, who heads a community group for the village's deaf residents.
The approach is relatively unique in Indonesia, where the disabled often suffer harsh discrimination. Bengkala, in northern Bali, has existed for about eight centuries. Residents often scrape a living tending to the surrounding rice fields and education levels are generally low. In the past villagers thought the high incidence of deafness was due to a curse but those superstitions -- and the prejudices they created -- have largely been abandoned after experts concluded it was due to a recessive gene common among the local population. It was not until the 1960s that the village began to make efforts to better integrate its deaf residents and nowadays everyone is treated equally, according to village head I Made Arpana.
"We don't differentiate between deaf villagers and non-deaf villagers," he said, adding that the community did not want the hard of hearing residents to feel "inferior".
A key factor in creating this peaceful co-existence has been Kata Kolok, which literally translates as "talk of the deaf", and is used to varying degrees by around 80 percent of the villagers. It is different to international and Indonesian sign language. It has grown organically over the decades and has its own unique signs created by villagers to reflect how they see the world.
Attempts to ensure harmony in the village start at a young age, with a Bengkala elementary school teaching all children side by side. The 77 students are all given lessons in the local sign language, and are introduced to elements of Indonesian and international signing. Still, it is not always easy teaching deaf students as they often become frustrated and act out, according to teacher I Made Wisnu, who has been working at the school for a decade. There are no junior high schools equipped to teach deaf students, so most have to drop out of the system once they've graduated from elementary classes.
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This story in 30 seconds
• The village of Bengkala has been home to an unusually large number of deaf people for generations, and nowadays about 40 out of its approximately 3000 residents have severe hearing loss
• In the past villagers thought the high incidence of deafness was due to a curse
• But those superstitions have been abandoned after experts concluded it was due to a recessive gene common among the local population
• In the 1960s the village began to make efforts to better integrate its deaf residents and nowadays everyone is treated equally
• The Bengkala elementary school teache all children side by side
• A dance project and a unique sign language called Kata Kolok has been developed in the isolated village
