Beauty Among The Beast

https://www.etsy.com/listing/247901654/indonesian-lady-selling-herbal-medicine

“Beauty among the beast. Hahaha.. that’s what I want to describe it in my post here. Ibu Eni, was a young mother who choose to be a jamu (traditional Indonesian herbal) seller. She’s always sells her jamu at Sunda Kelapa docks, the place that so many sailorman reside there. If we imagine that the sailorman is the rude person, it’s different with Ibu Eni perspective. Many sailorman there were a loyal costumer of Ibu Eni, not only that, they also sometimes treat this Jamu seller as their own sister. She said that they are softer and caring than the town people who always flirting her when she became sales promotion girl. She has a child and she still want to give her time for her child, also she think that her job is alternative way to improve her social relationship. In the end, there are so many beautiful thing in your job as long as you love your job.”

The dockyards and wharfs of Sunda Kelapa, North Jakarta are primarily men’s space, where hard working laborers and sailors strain to load and unload sacks of cement, piles of timber, bricks and building materials from the pinisi, the traditional cargo boats that connect the smaller ports of Indonesia’s eastern islands with the industrial centers of Jakarta and Surabaya. The world over, sailors and wharfies are not particularly famous for their polite, refined ways, and the workers here are no exception. It takes a brave woman to walk alone around the piers, jetties and warehouses of the port zone.

One such woman is Srimudjeni, or Ibu Eni, a young, attractive, distinctly flirtatious seller of jamu, a traditional mixture of herbs, roots, medicine, eggs, and honey that Indonesians take for an extensive array of minor, and not so minor, ailments.

“To tell you the truth, most of the guys here aren’t so bad. Of course, they come onto you at first, and there’s a lot of teasing. Most of the guys aren’t married or they’ve left their wives back in the village while they go out to sea or to work in the dockyards in the city, so of course they like to see a young woman. They like to try it on a bit. But the wharfies are the regular crew, the same guys every day, so they’ve got used to me. Even the guys on the boats come to Sunda Kelapa pretty regularly, so I see the same faces every few weeks. I don’t think there’s any danger. They treat me like a sister. They look after me. If there’s a new guy who takes it a bit too far, the other guys will pull him back. It’s mostly just young guys talking, showing off a bit to their mates. I can handle them. And of course, if they want to talk to an attractive girl, the best way to buy a bit of my time is to call me over to order a jamu. I’m always happy to talk to a man who’s drinking one of my jamu!

https://www.parkwayparade.com.sg/store-directory/indonesian-jamu-centre/

“I buy some of the jamu dried and ready to serve in packets and I make some of them myself. I make my own beras kencur: that’s a drink from rice husks mixed with palm sugar. You drink it after you’ve had a bitter jamu to wash the taste out of your mouth. I also make some of my own bitter jamu, from papaya leaves. I take the jamu from the packets and mix them up with a raw egg, some honey, and some sweet wine. It’s all good for you. It’s all meant to give you concentrated energy. If you have a jamu with an egg and honey, it’s almost like a meal.

“The jamu in packets are made by big companies, like Nyonya Meneer. In the old days, people used to grow herbs themselves or collect them from the forest, but that’s not very practical in Jakarta. Most of the time, people just have a jamu from a packet. It’s like instant coffee. There are hundreds of different sorts: there are jamu for women who’ve just had babies, to tighten their vaginas again so that their husbands don’t go running after other women. There are jamu for men, so that they can satisfy their wives. There are lots of those, but kuku bima is the most popular. That’ll keep a man going all night long. Then, there are bitter jamu to help give you an appetite and to help you digest your food. Then there’s pegal linu, which is to help relieve sore, tired muscles. I’d say eighty to ninety percent of my customers are men. There are a few women at the offices near the front of the dockyard, but most of them are men. The most popular jamu are for men’s virility. Around here, pegal linu is also popular. The boys work hard, lifting and carrying heavy loads, so they often have pegal linu to relieve the pain.

“On a really good day, I might sell 50 to 100 packets of jamu, maybe 20 or 30 with eggs. A jamu with an egg goes for Rp 5,000 (US$ 0,55). Without, it’s around Rp 3,000 (US$ 0,33). I get the packets from the agent for Rp 1,000 (US$ 0,11) per, and an egg costs about Rp 1,000 (US$ 0,11). On a really good day, I might make about Rp 200,000 – 300,000 (US$ 22 – 33) for four hours work. I start off in the dockyards in the morning, and then go back through the fish markets.

https://essenceofindonesia.wordpress.com/2015/12/15/indonesias-natural-medicines-jamu/

“When I first came to Jakarta, I had a few different jobs. For a while, I worked as a sales promotion girl. You have to wear a miniskirt and a sexy top, and you hand out brochures or give pamphlets to promote different products. Cars, televisions, electronics, all sorts of things. The harassment I got from the rich businessmen while I was doing that was far worse than I get from the boys in the dockyards and on the wharf. And it’s not regular work. You might just get a few days here and there. Sometimes, you only get a commission on sales, too. You are selling for someone else, so you can’t build up your own clientele, like I can when I’m selling jamu.

“After that, I worked in a factory for Bonecom, preparing fish steaks for packaging. I was a machine operator. The money wasn’t bad, about the same as what I make selling jamu, except that I had to work from morning to evening. At the factory, you have to clock on in the morning, and even if you are just a few minutes late, you get your salary docked. If you’re often late, you get fired.

“I met my husband at Bonecom. He’s still working there now. He’s doing okay, he’s earning good money. I left after we got married and had children. It was impossible to work the long hours every day and look after my children at the same time. The ones who go on working at the factory after they’ve had children are the ones who leave their children with the grandparents back at the village. If you want to look after your own children, you can’t hold down a factory job.

“Selling jamu is much more flexible. You can start a bit later if you need to, and you can finish early. You can take a day off, if you need to. It’s much better if you are a mother and you are looking after your own children. I’ve got three, now. The oldest goes to primary school, and I leave the others with a neighbor for a few hours while I go out and do my rounds.

“I’d say that almost all of the women selling jamu have kids. Almost all of them had other kinds of jobs before they had children. Almost all of them switched to selling jamu after they got married so they’d have more times for their families. A lot of them had good jobs, in offices. I know a few of the vendors that have university degrees and who worked at big companies in the cities. Even I finished high school and got my senior high school certificate. Women sell jamu because it gives them the flexibility to look after their husbands and children, not because they aren’t qualified to do anything else.

“I started off selling jamu through my older sister-in-law. She was already working as a vendor, so she introduced me to the agent. That’s usually the way it goes: the agent likes to know who he’s dealing with, so he accepts women who are recommended by vendors he already knows. Almost all of them come from around Solo, in Central Java, like me. I’m from Sukohardjo, about an hour away from Solo. Just from my village alone, there are two or three other women selling jamu that I run into in Jakarta while I’m on my rounds.

“I don’t know why all the jamu sellers come from Solo. Perhaps it’s because traditional medicine is part of our culture. All over Indonesia, people know that women from Central Java understand herbs and traditional medicine. Most of us wear traditional dress. It’s part of our culture, and it lets our customers know where we come from. I always wear a batik cloth, for example, although I don’t wear a kebyar (traditional women’s top) – it’s too hot and constricting to walk around in a kebyar. But if the boys see me wearing batik (traditional Indonesian printed textiles) they know I’m Javanese. A lot of them are Javanese, too, so they can talk to me in our own language. They like that.

“All of that’s an important part of selling jamu. It’s not just like buying an aspirin and taking it when you have a headache. A jamu is more like sitting down to have a meal, or a drink, or a cigarette. You have a jamu while you are sitting around with friends. Having a jamu is more like a social event.”

https://www.writetravelin.com/blog/2018/art-herbs-in-yogyakarta