The Holy Tree.

Once again we had a house in the mountains. This time also with a huge lawn around it. The lawn was completely surrounded by a fence. At one end the fence came a bit inward, behind that spot a lot of bushes were growing on a small hill. Behind the bushes stood an enormous tree. To give you an idea how large the tree was, it needed tree people with outstreched arms to embrace its trunk. In the middle of the lawn was our swimming pool, where we spent many days.

Almost every day we heard people going to the tree singing songs and praying. It appeared to be a holy tree. The Indonesian people brought the most delicious food, sweets and cookies and other things in bananaleaves, as an offer to their holy tree. It all looked and smelled wonderful. As we looked at it, it made our mouth water. Our “baboe”, the Indonesian word for household help, told us that if you brought food to the tree, nothing bad will happen to you.

One day we sneaked of through the fence to look at the tree closely. With amazement we looked at all the delicacies laying there. My brother said:”I would like to try some of this food when everyone is gone. I did not think that was a good idea and told him that when he did something terrible would happen to him. My brother looked at me in surprise saying: “do you really believe that rubbish?”

Of course we went back to the tree again, when everyone was taking a nap in the afternoon, in the Tropics it is custom to rest in the afternoon. Nobody was there and no one was in sight. My brother bent carefully forward to have a closer look at the food and select something he really liked. Before he could take something, we heard a loud rustle in the bushes. Although we were afraid of nothing, we actually were scared of snakes. We left quickly because we thought the noise came from snakes.

The next time we went, making sure no one saw us, my brother again tried to take some of the delicacies. Once more we heard the loud rustle, it was so loud that we stayed in our tracks very silently, seeing the bushes going back and forth. There is nothing said my brother. Yes, I said there is a probably a snake also eating something of the food.
We ran away then.

From that day onwards we have never been back to the tree trying to take something away. Instead we went to put some food there ourselves, hoping that it also protected us from bad luck and indeed it did, nothing really bad happened to us, we were all still alive and healthy. Dinky

Dinkie