Page 61 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

A CHANGE OF CAREER AND CHANGE IN FORTUNES

An educated woman, Ibu Sri is forty-two years old and has sold jamu for the past five years. She
started life as an elementary school teacher but couldn’t manage on such a small salary. After various
unsatisfactory jobs, Ibu Sri worked her way through books on jamu making and experimented for
over a year until she was satisfied with the results. Because these were cures for serious illness as
opposed to recipes to keep the body healthy, she verified the complicated formulæ with her cousin, a
doctor, to be sure the mixtures were safe.
Like most Central Javanese, Ibu Sri grew up with herbal medicine but received a rather special
training. She lived with her grandmother at the kraton until she was 25, long enough to receive a
thorough grounding in the palace herbal medicine. “I use her recipes but you’ll never find them in
books: things like treating diarrhoea, making face powder, caring for hair and ingredients to make
skin smooth.”
The children help their mother after school. Unemployed, her husband helps out too, although
he has difficulty understanding the jamu formulæ. This means his assistance is limited but he does
occasionally buy ingredients when he cycles to the market in Yogyakarta.
Ibu Sri’s set up is unusual because she claims to cure 35 ailments including diarrhoea,
dysentery, food poisoning and cancer. Remedies for asthma and tiredness, and medicines to prevent
or cure female complaints are among her best sellers.
While unaware of the scientific data, Ibu Sri has a fair idea of the chemical action of her
ingredients. Customers generally tell her their symptoms, which enables her to choose the most
suitable jamu for them. “We mustn’t forget that jamu was the forerunner of modern pharmacy and
widely used before anyone dreamt of synthetic drugs,” she admonishes. “I believe my own family
has kept healthy thanks to jamu. It was effective hundreds of years ago and it’s effective now.”
This maker knows most formulæ by heart but if memory fails Ibu Sri checks the details in a
well-thumbed exercise book. Everything is written by hand in Old Javanese and amended with
improvements to the original formulæ. Because the research was painstakingly long, she keeps the
formulæ secret and the recipes will pass on to her family only on her death.
She is proud her jamu keeps people healthy and can cure serious illness but she also spoke
enthusiastically about her potions that can be used to lengthen and condition the hair—a good
illustration of the blurred boundary between health and beauty care.
How does Ibu Sri see herself? “I’m a healer starting out as a business-woman.” What does she