Page 154 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

A few hundred metres from the Paku Alam Palace in Yogyakarta stands one of the most famous jamu
shops in Indonesia. Called ‘Ginggang’, the shop is owned by Ibu Subari, daughter of its well-known
founder, Ibu Puspumadyo, who started life as one of the workers in Paku Alam Palace. Every day she
made jamu for the Sultan, his wife and close members of the royal family, and Paku Alam V
personally nicknamed her ‘Ginggang’. After the Sultan’s death, she continued to make jamu for the
royal family. During her years at the palace, the Prince, now Paku Alam VIII, became very ill and
Ginggang nursed him back to health with special jamu.
Following the prince’s recovery, Ibu Puspumadyo gained a reputation as a healer, so starting a
jamu shop was a natural progression. Around 1925 she bought an old stable near the palace and
slowly turned it into a café-style jamu shop. Ginggang’s finally opened for business in 1940. Her
daughter and son-inlaw now run the shop. It opens at 8.30 am for 12 hours each day, and still sells
the formulæ Ibu Puspumadyo started in the palace.
Ginggang’s is large and airy, with an open front overlooking a tree-lined street. The
atmosphere is strangely akin to a French sidewalk café, except the smell of herbs replaces that of
strong coffee. Large white boards on the yellowing walls list the jamu on sale together with prices.
Ibu Supari makes and sells 31 kinds of dried mixtures or jamu godog. “My mother used to sell 36
jamu, but we decided to drop five because they had a laxative effect. They cleaned out the stomach
efficiently, but having read some of the recently published books and magazines, I didn’t think this
was too healthy so we stopped them. For the same reason I always tell customers to steam herbs, not
boil them. That way they don’t lose their goodness.”
She sells the same jamu, in what Ginggang term their instant range, for customers who want a
drink on the spot. This is made on the premises by her staff of 20 and includes the usual mixtures
plus a few special recipes. In the mid 1980s, Ginggang’s received an unsolicited testimonial in a
paper presented by Dra Harini Sangat-Roemantyo, Senior Researcher at the National Institute of
Botanical Research, which stated: “The fresh Ginggang jamu is very effective for several diseases—
coughs, flu, fever, stomach problems and stomach ache.”
The clean, tidy kitchen is part of the shop, which means customers can watch all the
preparations and see large pans of jamu brewing on the stoves. The staff serve 150 people a day with
most of the business being done between 5 pm and 7 pm.
The business runs like clockwork. Wasn’t there anything that went wrong occasionally? “Not
really,” we were told, “but if there are lots of customers we sometimes run short of eggs.”

Sandalwood gives a wonderful, heady scent to cosmetic powders and
perfumes; Western aromatherapists recommend it for its tranquil effect, while oil