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Food literacy given boost to celebrate Indonesia’s rich culinary heritage
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Studying history: Negeri Rempah Foundation volunteers visit Kacang Butor village in Belitung in Bangka-Belitung province, taking note of the great stories of pepper explained by a local farmer in Belitung, known as the main producer of pepper in the country. (Negeri Rempah Foundation/-)
Raising awareness about Indonesia’s wealth of spices and foods remains a challenge.
Indonesia has an unflinching determination to seek recognition from UNESCO for the country’s spice trail as world cultural heritage.
However, according to Negeri Rempah Foundation chairwoman Kumoratih Kushardjanto, there has always been a lack of manuscripts about Indonesia’s food and its past glory in shaping the world through its spices.
Therefore, she intends to start a writers club for food journalists to boost publications about the country’s spice trail to draw more people’s interest to learn about the traces of civilization left by the trail that connected Southeast Asia, the source of spices, with the Middle East and Europe.
In a talk during Tempo Media Week at the National Library in Jakarta on Dec. 7 last year, she said the club members could join Jelajah Negeri Rempah (Spice Land Tour), the foundation’s signature tour to explore the spice trail to study the great stories of Indonesia’s wealth of spices, including the lesser-known ones, such as camphor, an aromatic spice endemic to Barus district in Central Tapanuli regency in North Sumatra.
Long before the first Europeans arrived in the archipelago in 1512, camphor, locally known as kapur barus, was heavily traded by foreign nations such as Egypt and China, according to Guide to Geography, an ancient map written by Greek astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus who lived in Egypt in the 1st century AD.
In 2020, Negeri Rempah will go to Maluku, known as the Spice Islands, to make a four-day pilgrimage to spots that German-born botanist Georg Eberhard Rumphius once visited in Ambon during the era of the Dutch East India Company (VOC).
