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The Magic `Jamu' (Part 1)
She came down the street on her bicycle, the same as she did every morning, wearing a woven caping to cover her face and a bright sarong covered in batik flowers
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he came down the street on her bicycle, the same as she did every morning, wearing a woven caping to cover her face and a bright sarong covered in batik flowers.
She was the color of fertile earth; her teeth were strong and white as she smiled at her neighbors and bid them good morning. Her slender hands - with fingernails painted orange with the juice of imai flowers from a recent wedding - gripped her bicycle's handle bars. Her legs worked round and round, her sandaled feet curving over the edges of the pedals as she made her way into the city.
On the back of her bicycle, a specially made box painted turquoise contained an array of bottles. They clinked gently when she rode over a stone, their spicy rich contents swirling. Each bottle contained remedies her customers sought for beauty, health and vitality.
Some contained turmeric, the color of late afternoon sunshine and monks' robes, the healer of inflamed livers, sore knees and cancer. Some contained ginger, the settler of stomach upsets, soother of heart troubles and slimmer of the body.
Others contained tamarind, the cleanser and calmer of coughs brought on by the chill of rain or constant drift of dust and diesel that blanketed the city streets. There were other remedies including fresh rice water to soften the complexion and kencur root, to build strength.
These natural medicines, in an infinite variety of combinations to meet an equal number of uses, are jamu, Indonesia's traditional medicine. Every morning she rose, like other jamu gendong, (herbal medicine seller) while the moon still glowed and the muezzin sang, to prepare these special healing remedies.
Some bottles held secret elixirs from roots deep in the earth, or from flowers, fruits and leaves of plants she collected in the rainforest when she went on one of her gathering walks, then ground with a mortar and pestle as taught by her mother, and her grandmother, and her grandmother's mother. She prepared them carefully, at certain times of the month, when the moon was pregnant with light or dark with knowing.
Further in the forest, away from her medicine hut, men squatted under the trees and howled with laughter, smoking clove cigarettes and making palm sap wine in old oil cans. They had their spirits to possess the body and she had her potions to heal it.
She ground the herbs, uttering prayers, heart full as a spring. She mixed them with extracts of other berries, roots and leaves, thanking the forest for providing her with their essence. She placed the elixirs in bottles. Some she placed in moonlight, some in sunlight. These were her magic jamu.
When her medicines were ready, she rolled a piece of banana leaf and placed it in the neck of each bottle as a stopper. Then she put all her bottles in the turquoise box of her bicycle and off she went to supply jamu to the people of the city, bringing them life and health - and with the magic jamu sometimes love, sometimes wealth or happiness. That was how she was different from the other jamu ladies.
On the road that circled the outskirts of the city, she came to a clearing at the entrance of a kebun sawit, a palm oil plantation. The men who worked the plantation were resting beneath the palms, which were thick and shaggy with ferns and creeping vines.
They called out to the jamu lady greeting her, and she stopped to mix the daily jamu they needed to keep them strong, to feed their slender, sinewy muscles and bring spirit into their tired bones. She carefully washed and wiped each small glass in her portable bucket and prepared beras kencur with raw rice water, fresh kencur root, a knob of tamarind, and a pinch of salt and red sugar.
They tossed the jamu down the back of their throats and smacked their lips, feeling strength return to their limbs. They admired the jamu lady's strong white teeth and glowing skin, her curvaceous figure in the sarong. She was neither old nor young.
She was ageless. "See you again, sister!" they said, pressing tattered rupiah notes in her right palm. She hopped on her bike and cycled down the dusty road, calmly peddling as yellow Angkot buses blasting dangdut music sped past, and motorized three-wheeled becaks bearing passengers loaded with children and vegetables from the morning market.
In one becak sat a mother, sheltered from the rising sun, with at her feet a plastic basket filled with kangkung, water spinach with long slender leaves; hard round purple eggplants called terong belanda, and juicy avocado fruits she would blend with chocolate.
Her children loved avocado shakes, but she had a hard time making them eat their spinach. She saw the jamu lady, who had made her body and womb strong enough to bear seven children. The mother felt old and tired after bearing so many children-too tired to make herself pretty any longer. She had not taken any jamu in a long time. Besides, with so many mouths to feed, she had very little money to spend on herself.
She often went to the market in her old faded-pink teddy bear pajamas, and this morning she barely had the strength to drag a comb through her hair. She didn't want to look in a mirror anymore because she would only see more strands of gray appearing in her once glorious crown of black, flowing hair.
She was too busy making rice for the children's breakfast anyway. She felt so old.she knew her husband preferred to hang out with his friends playing chess, drinking coffee and watching the pretty girls go by.
She waved to the jamu lady and asked the becak driver to stop. "Little sister," she called. "I feel so old and tired today. Your jamu has always made me feel stronger. But I need something special this time, and I know you can do it. Can you make me a special jamu that will make me younger and prettier? Maybe bring me more love? I know I have some life in me yet."
The jamu lady smoothed her sarong over her hips and looked into the mother's tired, pleading eyes. Beneath them, two pouches had formed from lack of sleep. Her gray hairs had sprung from her bun, wild and unruly. Her youngest children clung to her heavy legs, gazing up with wide, wondering eyes.
The jamu lady knew of just the thing to help. She cut fresh lime and squeezed it into a glass-vitamin C to rejuvenate the skin. She mixed in fresh tamarind juice and herbs for a woman's womb and added the juice of a flower plucked from the leafy heart of the forest.
She pulled out a small glass bottle from beneath a cloth in her bicycle basket and added three ruby red drops. They spread in the juice like a sunset, or a bleeding heart. She handed the glass to the mother to drink. She sipped it slowly, her eyes closed.
Her little boy played with his sister at her feet. She opened her eyes and blinked. The jamu lady smiled, satisfied. The mother's eyes had already cleared to the color of kayu manis, cinnamon.
"Thank you, little sister," she said, and gave her three tattered one thousand rupiah notes. Then she climbed back onto the becak with her children and her basket of fresh vegetables, and disappeared with a puff of smoke into the gathering traffic of the morning, the cacophony of horns, honks and dangdut music.
The jamu lady entered the city, which became more and more congested with traffic. Ucok's durians had been put out on the side of the road, the spiky fruits lined up like yellow hand grenades, their pungent odor detonating in the tropical heat.
The teenager with the kaki lima cart had just arrived with his wares hanging in long strips of plastic packets-sparkly hair clips and headbands, velvet scrunchies embroidered with sequins, cheap necklaces that twinkled today but would be tarnished tomorrow, bejeweled brooches that women bought to fasten their jilbabs at their necks or to adorn their tunics.
All in black, the youth sported hair that stuck out at fashionably odd angles, and his pants were so tight his legs looked like chopsticks. He strutted like a rooster and pouted like a rock star. But he was still good-hearted and polite.
"Good morning, mother!" he called to the jamu lady, who set up her bicycle next to him to begin her morning trade in the market. The sun had risen above the buildings and begun to beat down on the blue plastic canvas umbrellas that sheltered the piles of kangkung, red chilies, green chilies, cauliflower, broccoli, red onion, garlic, pineapples, avocados, terong belanda, star fruit, mangosteen, rambutan, and passion fruit.
Fans of overripe bananas hung from rusty nails. A rooster chased a scrawny chicken past a garbage heap of rotting vegetable peels. "Kukuruyuk!" the rooster shouted hoarsely after her, his beady red eyes firmly fixated on her feathered rear end.
The restless youth swaggered up to the jamu lady, practicing his rock star pose. When she smiled, he forgot his self consciousness a moment.
"You know, I wish there was something more for me other than this kaki lima," he said, scuffing his sneakers in the dirt. "I've got my own business here, and I'm grateful for it. Lots of girls buy this stuff because they always want to look good. But is this where I will spend the rest of my life?"
He glanced around at the other market sellers napping beneath their umbrellas, or smoking idly and swatting at hungry flies looking for a free meal. He tossed his hair. "I want more than this. And, God willing, maybe I can get it."
The boy's eyes searched the jamu lady's eyes. "C'mon, mother," he said. "Everybody knows your jamu is special. Could you mix a little something up to help me find fame and fortune? Maybe be a rock star? Please?"
It was true, the boy was always singing at the top of his lungs in the market. And the girls thought he was pretty cute. Maybe he could make it if he worked hard at it. With a little luck.and some magic jamu.
