Building community alone has value.

Kalau pembangunan ekonomi Bali dilaksanakan melalui pembangunan sektor sekunder, maka ‘’kaki’’ ekonomi Bali akan lebih kokoh. Maka, kalau sektor tersier (pariwisata) di Bali kolaps, pengaruhnya akan dapat ditopang oleh sektor primer dan sektor sekunder dengan sepadan.

Selain itu, menurut Windia, pertanian yang perlu dilakukan tidak berhenti hanya menghasilkan produk untuk dijual mentah. Hasil pertanian mestinya diolah melalui proses produksi melalui industi pascapanen. Ini berarti Bali harus mengembangkan sektor sekunder berupa industri pengolahan.

Normalnya, ekonomi bergerak dari sektor primer yakni pertanian ke sektor sekunder (industri pengolahan) baru ke sektor tersier (jasa, dalam konteks Bali adalah pariwisata). Pariwisata itu, kata Windia, sangat rapuh (fragile).

Bali mulai dimanjakan oleh pariwisata, karena transformasi ekonomi Bali yang terlalu kencang. “Tiba-tiba saja melompat dari sektor primer ke sektor tersier. Sumbangannya pada PDRB Bali tiba-tiba saja melompat menjadi lebih dari 70 persen, dalam 25-30 tahun terakhir,”

Guru Besar Fakultas Pertanian Unud Prof. Dr. I Wayan Windia mengatakan, Bali sangat mungkin tetap tangguh tanpa pariwisata karena sebelumnya sangat kuat pertaniannya. “Tiga puluh tahun lalu, 70 persen ekonomi Bali dipengaruhi oleh pertanian,”

pack their whole lives into vans and cars

When I tell you of how I smuggled in fancy chocolates and trendy shoes through the checkpoints at a risk to my life, are you disappointed in us for not being pristine in our victimhood, or must I add a note to explain how even in siege people might prioritize luxury over necessity to live as opposed to merely survive?

When you hear me exclaim, over and over, “Alhamdulillah!”—“Praise God!”—when I hear that my son or husband has been killed by a sniper or carbomb or left gutted on the side of the road by the shabbiha (though we now use the word martyred for all the war dead, including two-week old daughters who die because of a siege on medical supplies), do you think me so twisted into barbarism by my baffling religion that I might truly find joy in this news, or must I add a note to explain that submitting to God’s will is the only way I have not to go utterly mad with grief fighting it?

Fear is something you get used to, it becomes the new baseline from which your body operates. Quivering, animal, alert. You even come, in the dark malja’ of your consciousness, to accept the idea of your own death

Unable to allow ourselves to truly believe anymore, after all that we have lived and seen

Sitting on a worn gray couch with earplugs in, trying to block out the sounds of sheering metal from the construction site right under my window as I translate stories from Arabic to English for the Damascus Bureau, an under-project of the Institute for War and Peace Reporting.

I have fled Aleppo from the increased fanaticism of the rebels, I have fled Aleppo from the chokehold of the regime, I have fled Aleppo to Turkey, I have fled Aleppo to Lebanon, I have fled Aleppo not knowing if I will ever return, or what I might find if I do.