Sugar of the rings: A worker prepares bamboo molds to be filled with liquid brown sugar.

Milled sugarcane lies piled up in a building with a tiled roof, from which white smoke drifts up. Four workers produce brown sugar from cane in the building located in Napel hamlet, Malang regency, East Java. Sugarcane that is unsuitable for sugar factories is processed into brown sugar. There are at least 40 brown sugar makers in the village.

Pak Buang, 65, and the four workers labor from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. They have a day off every Friday based on the
Javanese calendar.

The sucrose content of cane juice very much determines the quality of sugar produced. If the content is high in the sugarcane harvest season, a lot more brown sugar will be turned out. Brown sugar makers thus very much depend on the sucrose output.

The juice extracted from cane is then cooked in a row of large frying pans, which are arranged in certain order according to the rates of viscosity of the liquid that is boiled along with the residue of milled cane. After the boiled juice becomes thick brown sugar, it is shaped in bamboo molds until it solidifies.

Before being sold, the cast sugar is wrapped in dry cane leaves into packs each containing 10 pieces and costing Rp 10,000 (89 US cents). Pak Buang and his workers have a daily production capacity of five quintals of brown sugar.

By utilizing the natural resources around their hamlet, the workers in Napel produce brown sugar from local sugarcane and pack it with local materials.

They have been faithfully engaged in sugarcane juice processing, demonstrating their consistent dedication to the occupation passed down through generations, as evident by Pak Buang and his peers.

-Photos by Suci Rahayu

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