Page 175 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

materials and do a first crushing in the lumpang, a large, square grinder, using an outsize pestle
about one and a half metres (five feet) long. Within two hours, six pastes are roughly ground ready
for the second grinding next morning. Their basic preparations complete, the family collapse into bed
for a well-earned five and a half hours’ sleep.
They rise at 2.30 am to finish making the jamu. The whole place, including the traditional
floor of hard packed earth, is kept scrupulously clean. Two fires glow in the background, casting
shadows that flicker round the dimly lit room. Sixty-year-old Bapak Mulyono is usually the first to
get going in the mornings. He starts by grinding a mix of raw rice and cloves. He kneels on the floor,
building up a steady rhythm with the gandik or pestle, as it moves smoothly back and forth over the
flat, rectangular grinding stone. At this point Ibu Mul appears to lend a hand. Before starting work,
she carefully places a cloth on her lap to protect her clothes and binds her waist with a piece of strong
cloth (called a stagen) to prevent straining the muscles of the back.

Five pairs of practised hands go about their business quietly and efficiently. The whole kitchen
has a look of organized chaos. Nothing is hurried, the familiar routine flows smoothly. At intervals
someone stops what they are doing to check pans of water on the stove and ensure the flame is not
too high. Boiling is essential to eliminate impurities. Ibu Mul is also very particular about cooling
mixtures when they come off the fire. The hot liquid is transferred from huge steaming metal pots
into plastic basins; if it went directly into the special, thick glass bottles, it would break them. Once
full, they are sealed with rolled banana leaves. Cold, boiled water is added to the mixture during its
second grinding to make the paste finer and keep the ingredients moist whilst they’re being worked.
Each paste needs at least 15 minutes continuous grinding and like any experienced cook, Ibu Mul
knows when it’s finished from the texture and feel.
A typical day’s stock is five bottles of Beras Kencur; three bottles of bitter mixtures—
considered the most effective; two or three bottles of sugar syrup for sweetness; one bottle of ground
raw rice and sugar, one bottle of wejah and plastic bags filled with extra, ground kencur to satisfy
individual tastes.
“I like to be in place by 7.15 am,” she asserts, “because I don’t want to disappoint my
regulars.” Between 7 am and 11 am, there is a continuous stream of people who stop and buy on their
way between the street and market. Her recipes taste delicious and the exchange becomes a social
occasion when the women catch up on gossip.
Ibu Mul is illiterate, so she relies on memory for her jamu recipes, but with eyes twinkling, she
says: “I know the bank notes and can count which is all that’s necessary!”

As the media and the internet contribute towards improving awareness of
health and fitness, patients are becoming more knowledgeable. Preventive and
holistic medicine is on the rise; the practice of blindly adhering to orthodox
drugs has now lost popularity. Medical herbalists are coming back into fashion