The Magic Jamu
Trip Start
Unknown
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2
8
Trip End
Ongoing
Medan, Sumatera Utara, Indonesia
Monday, July 20, 2009
The Magic Jamu
She came down the street on her bicycle, the same as she did every morning, wearing a woven caping to shelter her face and a bright sarong covered in batik flowers. She was the color of fertile earth; her teeth were strong and white as she smiled at her neighbors and bid them good morning. Her slender hands, fingernails painted orange with the juice of imai flowers from a recent wedding, gripped the handle bars of her bicycle. Her legs worked round and round, sandaled feet curving over the edges of the pedals as she made her way into the city.
On the back of her bicycle, a specially made box, painted turquoise, held an array of bottles. They clinked gently when she rode over a stone, their spicy rich contents swirling. Each bottle contained remedies her customers sought for beauty, health, vitality. Some contained tumeric, the colour of late afternoon sunshine and monks' robes, healer of inflamed livers, sore knees, and cancer. Some contained ginger, settler of stomach upsets, soother of heart troubles, slimmer of the body. Others contained tamarind, cleanser and calmer of coughs brought on by the chill of rain or constant drift of dust and diesel that blanketed the city streets. There were other remedies besides, including fresh rice water to soften the complexion and kencur root, to build strength. These medicines from nature, in an infinite variety of combinations to meet an equal number of uses, are jamu, the traditional medicine of Indonesia. Every morning she rose, like other jamu gendong, while the moon still glowed and the muezzin sang, to prepare these special healing remedies.
Some bottles held secret elixirs from roots deep in the earth, or from flowers, fruits and leaves of plants she collected in the rainforest when she went on one of her gathering walks, then ground with a mortar and pestle as her mother had taught, and her grandmother, and her grandmother's mother. She prepared them carefully, at certain times of the month, when the moon was pregnant with light or dark with knowing. Further in the forest, away from her medicine hut, men squatted under the trees and howled with laughter, smoking clove cigarettes and making palm sap wine in old oil cans. They had their spirits to possess the body and she had her potions to heal it. She ground the herbs, uttering prayers, heart full as a spring. She mixed them with extracts of other berries, roots and leaves, thanking the forest for providing her with their essence. She placed the elixirs in bottles. Some she placed in moonlight, some in sunlight. These were her magic jamu.
When her medicines were ready, she rolled a piece of banana leaf and placed it in the neck of each bottle as a stopper. Then she put all her bottles in the turquoise box of her bicycle and off she went to supply jamu to the people of the city, bringing them life and health. (And with the magic jamu sometimes love, sometimes wealth or happiness. That was how she was different from the other jamu ladies.)
Her muscular legs went round and round. On the road that circled the outskirts of the city, she came to a clearing at the entrance to a kebun sawit, a palm oil plantation. The men who worked the plantation were resting beneath the palms, which were thick and shaggy with ferns and creeping vines. They called out to the jamu lady in greeting, and she stopped to mix the daily jamu they needed to keep them strong, to feed their slender, sinewy muscles and bring spirit into their tired bones. She carefully washed and wiped each small glass in her portable bucket and prepared beras kencur with raw rice water, fresh kencur root, a knob of tamarind, and a pinch of salt and red sugar.
They tossed the jamu down the back of their throats and smacked their lips, feeling strength return to their limbs. They admired the jamu lady's strong white teeth and glowing skin, her curvaceous figure in the sarong. She was neither old nor young. She was ageless. "See you again, sister!" they said, pressing tattered rupiah notes in her right palm. She hopped on her bike and cycled down the dusty road, calmly peddling as yellow Angkot buses blasting dangdut music sped past, and motorized three-wheeled becaks bearing passengers loaded with children and vegetables from the morning market.
In one becak sat a mother, sheltered from the rising sun, at her feet a plastic basket filled with kangkung, water spinach, with long slender leaves; hard round purple eggplants called terong belanda, and juicy avocado fruits she would blend with chocolate. Her children loved avocado shakes, but she had a hard time making them eat their spinach. She saw the jamu lady, who had made her body and womb strong enough to bear seven children. The mother felt old and tired after bearing so many children-too tired to make herself pretty any longer. She hadn't taken any jamu in a long time. Besides, with so many mouths to feed, she had very little money to spend on herself. She often went to the market in her old faded pink teddy bear pajamas, and this morning she had barely the strength to drag a comb through her hair. She didn't want to look in a mirror anymore because she would only see more strands of gray appearing in her once glorious crown of black, flowing hair. She was too busy making rice for the children's breakfast anyway. She felt so old...she knew her husband preferred to hang out with his friends playing chess, drinking coffee and watching the pretty girls go by.
She waved to the jamu lady and asked the becak driver to stop. "Little sister," she called. "I feel so old and tired today. Your jamu has always made me feel stronger. But I need something special this time, and I know you can do it. Can you make me a special jamu that will make me younger and prettier? Maybe bring me more love? I know I have some life in me yet."
The jamu lady smoothed her sarong over her hips and looked into the mother's tired, pleading eyes. Beneath them, two pouches had formed from lack of sleep. Her gray hairs had sprung from her bun, wild and unruly. Her youngest children clung to her heavy legs, gazing up with wide, wondering eyes.
The jamu lady knew of just the thing to help. She cut fresh lime and squeezed it into a glass-vitamin C to rejuvenate the skin. She mixed in fresh tamarind juice and herbs for a woman's womb and added the juice of a flower plucked from the leafy heart of the forest. She pulled out a small glass bottle from beneath a cloth in her bicycle basket and added three ruby red drops. They spread in the juice like a sunset, or a bleeding heart. She handed the glass to the mother to drink. She sipped it slowly, her eyes closed. Her little boy played with his sister at her feet. She opened her eyes and blinked. The jamu lady smiled, satisfied. The mother's eyes had already cleared to the colour of kayu manis, cinnamon.
"Thank you, little sister," she said, and gave her three tattered one thousand rupiah notes. Then she climbed back onto the becak with her children and her basket of fresh vegetables, and disappeared with a puff of smoke into the gathering traffic of the morning, the cacophony of horns, honks and dangdut music.
The jamu lady entered the city, which became more and more congested with traffic. Ucok's durians had been put out on the side of the road, the spiky fruits lined up like yellow hand grenades, their pungent odor detonating in the tropical heat. The teenager with the kaki lima cart had just arrived with his wares hanging in long strips of plastic packets-sparkly hair clips and headbands, velvet scrunchies embroidered with sequins, cheap necklaces that twinkled today but would be tarnished tomorrow, bejeweled brooches that women bought to fasten their jilbabs at their necks or to adorn their tunics.
Dressed all in black, the youth sported hair that stuck out at fashionably odd angles, and his pants were so tight his legs looked like chopsticks. He strutted like a rooster and pouted like a rock star. But he was still good hearted and polite.
"Good morning, mother!" he called to the jamu lady, who set up her bicycle next to him to begin her morning trade in the market. The sun had risen above the buildings and begun to beat down on the blue plastic canvas umbrellas that sheltered the piles of kangkung, red chilies, green chilies, cauliflower, broccoli, red onion, garlic, pineapples, avocados, terong belanda, starfruit, mangosteen, rambutan, and passionfruit. Fans of overripe bananas hung from rusty nails. A rooster chased a scrawny chicken past a garbage heap of rotting vegetable peels. "Kukuruyuk!" the rooster shouted hoarsely after her, his beady red eyes firmly fixated on her feathered rear end.
The restless youth swaggered up to the jamu lady, practicing his rock star pose. When she smiled, he forgot his self consciousness a moment. "You know, I wish there was something more for me other than this kaki lima," he said, scuffing his sneakers in the dirt. "I've got my own business here, and I'm grateful for it. Lots of girls buy this stuff because they always want to look good. But is this where I will spend the rest of my life?" He glanced around at the other market sellers napping beneath their umbrellas, or smoking idly and swatting at hungry flies looking for a free meal. He tossed his hair. "I want more than this. And, God willing, maybe I can get it."
The boy's eyes searched the jamu lady's eyes. "C'mon, mother," he said. "Everybody knows your jamu is special. Could you mix a little something up to help me find fame and fortune? Maybe be a rock star? Please?"
It was true, the boy was always singing at the top of his lungs in the market. And the girls thought he was pretty cute. Maybe he could make it if he worked hard at it. With a little luck...and some magic jamu.
She nodded, and reached for the bottle of Coca-Cola. She added a splash of this and that from other bottles, remembering the recipe her mother had taught her. Then she reached in the front basket of her bicycle and found a second small glass bottle. She added five drops. Instantly the mixture turned green, the color of leaves after a monsoon, or fresh-minted American money.
The youth took the jamu and drank. He made a face and tossed his hair. "Wah! So strong!" The jamu lady smiled. Yes, he would have to be strong. The magic jamu can only do so much. You must meet it halfway and keep up your end of the bargain, create space for the magic to work.
The jamu lady did a brisk business in the market that morning. Soon almost all her bottles were empty. She packed her things, bid goodbye to the kaki lima rockstar, and hopped on her bike. She was on her way home to give her children lunch after school, attend to the garden and prepare a fresh batch of jamu for her afternoon route on the other side of town. But suddenly the sky darkened. Thunder rumbled deep in the belly of the clouds.
Then the rain spilled out, gushing through the gutters and splashing on the streets. Lightning chicken-scratched the sky. Becak drivers covered their becaks with sheets of old plastic. Motorcyclists pulled over to wait out the rain under the eaves of buildings. The jamu lady did the same. She pulled her bicycle to the side of an empty building. It was still being built and the exposed rust-red bricks were not yet plastered over. Piles of bricks stood in front, and mounds of grey dirt used to mix into cement and cover the bricks. The workers, in tattered vests and pants, were gathered, smoking. They were staring hard at something. "Pssst! Pssst!" they hissed, like snakes. The jamu lady turned to see what they were looking at.
The girl's skin was so white she looked like a ghost. Her hair was corn yellow and her eyes the colour of faded denim, or the painted bicycle box that held her jamu. The girl was tall, very tall. She stood in the doorway, shoulders stooped, her back to the smoking men.
The jamu lady had never seen a white girl before. She couldn't take her eyes off her. She looked so strange! And even more ghostly in this haunted, empty house full of eyes. Even stranger, the girl was crying, harder than the rain was falling from the sky.
The jamu lady's heart filled, looking at the girl in her predicament, all alone, with those men eating at her with their eyes, like tigers who hadn't seen a meal in weeks. Despite her shyness, she came closer to the girl and saw she was wet and bedraggled, her knee covered in blood. Her cotton blouse and army green pants were wet and dirty, as if she had fallen in a mud puddle. She carried a duffel bag and an old guitar case beaten up and covered with stickers.
"I'm lost and I don't know where I am," the girl cried. "I'm supposed to go to some hotel, but the becak driver didn't understand me, and he just kept going around and around. So I got off, and after he overcharged me, I fell through a hole in the sidewalk and got all dirty and cut my knee..." She trailed off and broke into a fresh gale of sobs.
The jamu lady didn't understand a word the girl said. One thing she did understand, though, was that she needed help. She patted the girl's shoulder to soothe her. She might have looked strange, but she was solid. Only a human being after all. The jamu lady couldn't be sure if it was the colour of the girl's eyes, but suddenly she could see more deeply into them than she could into eyes like her own, as if looking into the ocean. The girl became quiet, and allowed her to clean her knee and put a soft clean cloth on it.
"You are so nice," the girl said. "I know I shouldn't be travelling alone, but I saw it as a kind of adventure, you know? I wanted to travel the world, go places where tourists don't normally go. But now I wonder. What have I done? What am I doing here?" The girl's eyes brimmed again. The rain wasn't letting up. The jamu lady nodded. She didn't understand the words, but she understood the meaning.
So the jamu lady took matters into her own hands and mixed her final elixir of the day. She added seven drops from another small bottle in her bicycle basket. The jamu was bright as an orange, or a smile. The girl hesitated, but took a tiny sip. "Mmm," she said, and drank the rest.
* * *
The magic jamu works in mysterious ways. You may drink it with a wish in your heart but, like a prayer, it may not be fulfilled in the way you expect. The magic transforms from one person to another. Like giving, it flows. The final outcome is the result of an invisible alchemy, the interplay of emotion, desire, fate and free choice-and the hand of the jamu lady who mixes the medicine.
With the jamu lady's cure, the girl eventually found her way. Soon after she drank it the clouds cracked open, but this time the sun appeared like the bright, fresh yolk of an egg. The jamu settled the girl's stomach (that was the ginger). She felt a peace descend upon her. Suddenly, she didn't seem so alone. In this city she was surrounded by people who said hello and smiled. They were curious and asked questions like, "Where are you going?" or "Where are you from?" She connected with people at mosques, churches, and temples.
She decided she like the city and its motley assortment of people and riotous traffic, the sultry nights and sweltering days so different from the chilly northern country she had left behind. She liked the trees heavy with mangoes, the groves of palms in the middle of the city, the greenery clamoring over the gates, reclaiming its space. She had found her place in the world.
The girl accepted a job teaching at a local school, and there fell in love with the children-their thick tousled hair and skin like chocolate, how their eyes lit with understanding when she planted a seed of knowledge in their minds. The girls wore candy colours and sparkles, and the boys hid toys in the pockets of their school uniforms. Sometimes she brought her guitar and played them songs. When loneliness threatened to return the young teacher thought of the children, and the kindness of the jamu lady who gave her medicine and helped her find her way.
One day after class the young girl with the Minnie Mouse T-shirt who always loved to listen to the teacher play said, "Thank you, Miss! God bless you, Miss!" When the girl's mother came for her the teacher said, "Your daughter is a wonderful girl and a good student. You must be very proud of her."
The mother beamed, showing a gap where one of her front teeth used to be because she spent all her money on her children's education instead of the dentist. She didn't understand the teacher's words, but she understood the meaning behind them. Her smile was so pure the teacher was struck by the beauty of the woman.
The mother returned to her modest house on the outskirts of town with chickens out the front and laundry drying on the line. She stood a little taller as she entered. It felt good that her achievement with one of her children had been recognized. The good feeling spread from her head down to her toes. She loved her children, heart and soul. As she sat on the floor preparing spicy kangkung and tempe with rice for the evening meal, she felt her daughter's slender arms circle her shoulders in an embrace. "Momma, you look so pretty today," she said. "When I grow up, I want to be just like you."
Later, the mother had an idea. She wrapped up some of the fresh dried rice she and her husband grew in their own paddy, enough for a month of dinners, and brought it to the school.
Things started to look up for the kaki lima rockstar. He still peddled fashion accessories from his cart (one foot on the cart, two on his bicycle and two more at the end of his skinny legs made five feet, kaki lima). But by night he took to serenading young lovers as they sipped tea demurely together at roadside stalls, under the cool light of the moon and an LED lightbulb hanging from the tarp. He was a pengamen, although he preferred to see himself as a troubadour rather than a travelling singer, making a name for himself singing rock ballads and making a little more money. He even wrote some of his own tunes.
A western girl had started coming to the market, only the second he had ever seen next to some girl in a music video on television who tossed her corn-tassel hair and writhed half naked with a python around her neck. As the schoolteacher hovered over rhinestone necklaces and velvet hair scrunchies, he wondered if she did the same in her spare time. But she was not that kind of artist.
The teacher often bought small treats for her students as prizes. She bought fresh fruit from the market, and stopped for some jamu and a chat with the jamu lady. She was even beginning to speak their language. One day she had her guitar over her shoulder, and he asked her to play while he sang along. The people in the market stopped to listen. They smiled and tapped their toes. Later, she brought him the guitar. She had just bought a new one, and on a whim (she didn't know what possessed her), she thought she would give the old one away. She asked the kaki lima rockstar if he wanted it. Did he! He accepted the gift and began to play, teaching himself sitting on the front stoop of his house at night. Sometimes they sang together in the market and people gathered around. The jamu lady smiled and nodded her head to the rhythm. He started making a few extra rupiah. It wasn't a lot but it was more than he had before. "God is great," he said. "This is just the first step. One day, I will make an album."
The jamu gendong returned to the forest to make more magic jamu from the roots, leaves and fruits of the plants there. As the men drank jungle juice under the trees, howling with laughter and falling off their tree stumps, she prepared fresh medicines for happiness, wealth and love. A happiness elixir that may beget the blossoming of a heart in a new city, a wealth elixir a new friend, a love elixir the eternal admiration of a child.
You never know what you are going to get with that magic jamu.
