Kadek

Kadek

26 years old

Bali, Indonesia

Hi, my name is Kadek. I am the second child and I would like to tell you a little about my family. 

I was born into a broken family. My mother left me and my brother when my brother and I were very small. My mother didn't leave because she wanted to, or because she remarried, she left because she could not bear the burdens of my father. She has since died.

My father was a gambler, and he was temperamental. He sold the rice fields that he inherited from his parents so that he could gamble. He would not return home while he still had money to gamble, while his family borrowed money to eat. 

Once the money ran out and my father came home, he would get angry at my mother. My mother then left and returned to her parents' house in a seriously ill condition. My mother was very stressed thinking about me and my brother when she left and my world was destroyed. I was seven years old and it was the sickest I ever felt. In Bali, when a woman leaves her marriage, she cannot take the children with her.

My dreams and goals when I was big were that I wanted to make my mother happy. I stopped going to school when I was 14 because of my family conditions. I am now working with Australians. I began working with an Australian man in 2009. 

My boss is a very generous person and he has helped many people in Bali. He gave me choices about how I worked with him. I was a helper and cleaner, and then he helped me to learn the computer. He taught me a lot of things I never knew before like databases, editing, how to research and do social media and he also taught me a lot about the meaning of life. I now want to change everything, so that I will make my own life experience.

Now the biggest desire in my life is to help the children who lost their families in my village. I also want to change the culture in my village, like around getting married young. In my village a lot of women decide to marry young because they think it will change their lives.  

Many young women who are still in school fall pregnant out of marriage, and because of that I want to help the women in my village to focus on their school and career. I want to teach them that getting married young is not a good choice for their lives, and to teach them how important it is for us to help each other. 

In Bali, it’s important to have a son because the son will stay at the village and be head of the family. The woman is not able to do this here and because of this, we are not valued the same. When the woman gets married, she leaves the family and goes to her husband’s family.

I also help abandoned animals, such as dogs and cats. I work for two Australians and I am building my skills and language. Because of this, I have also been able to travel and want to travel more and see and learn a lot more things about life and the world and people in the future.