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Indigenous women of Jambi strive to make do after forest fires
“After the forest burned in recent months, it has been very difficult to find damar resin,” said 30-year-old Nani, one of only 31 adult women of the Batin Sembilan tribe in Jambi province.
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Nani of the Batin Sembilan tribe in Sungai Kelompak village shows the 'damar' resin she collected from the forest with her family members. (JP/Jon Afrizal)
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hirty-year-old Nani came home feeling anxious. That Friday afternoon she brought with her only one sack of meranti (Shorea) and damar (Agathis) wood weighing less than 20 kilograms.
“After the forest burned in recent months, it has been very difficult to find damar resin,” she told The Jakarta Post.
Nani is one of only 31 adult women of the Batin Sembilan tribe who live in Sungai Kelompang village, Sungai Bahar district, Muaro Jambi regency, Jambi province. Their livelihoods depend solely on the forest.
Collecting damar resin is a crucial part of the livelihoods of these indigenous people. They call it mandah, which literally means scouring the forest to fulfill their basic needs.
The mandah usually lasts for one week. Hopping on motorcycles, three or four members of a family, including children, enter the deepest parts of the forest located between the provinces of Jambi and South Sumatra.
The journey, which usually takes around three hours, includes traversing difficult terrain of sharp climbs and steep descents.
When the group finally arrives in an open area within the forest, they erect a humble tent, known as sudung, using small tree trunks as the floor and a plastic tarp shaped into a triangle as the roof.
