Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing. Susan-Jane Beers
jamu seller
Choosing and Drinking Jamu
Whatever one’s needs, jamu can almost certainly supply an answer, but it may require experimentation to find the right manufacturer. Pegal Linu, for instance, concocted by one manufacturer to counteract rheumatism and tiredness, may make no difference to symptoms, whilst the same medicine produced by another company could bring instant relief. Experimentation with products from different companies is often necessary. Furthermore, manufacturers warn that jamu works slowly, on the basis of the body’s self-healing capabilities, and it may take up to two months before results are noticed.
Then there is the problem of how to take the potion. Jamu is steeped in folklore that is respected but rarely explained. For example, why is jamu drunk standing up straight with one’s big toes crossed? Few people know the answer: most can only reply that it is tradition. Yet they still do it! One school of thought insists that jamu must be drunk facing the sun. This accords with the principles relating to spiritual energy, where the sun is a symbol of light and divine power, representing the oneness of everything. On a more pragmatic level, the sun warms the body, automatically relaxing the muscles and enabling the body’s systems to absorb the herbs more efficiently.
Herbalists warn never to drink jamu with alcohol because the latter dissolves the jamu, thus cancelling out its benefits. Furthermore, freshly ground roots and powders may sink to the bottom of a glass and end up being washed down the sink: the solution is to stir and drink the mixture immediately. To make jamu more potent, some advise whisking in a fresh chicken or quail egg (but not duck or turtle eggs). This is a popular addition to many powdered jamu and is normally mixed into Jamu Cabe Puyang (an abbreviation of cabe jawa, the fruit of piper retrofractum, a type of pepper, and lempuyang pahit, the rhizome of the bitter ginger, zingiber amaricans). Jamu Cabe Puyang is often prescribed for people who are run down.
The right jamu gendong or seller is the best route to successful jamu taking. It is expected that the jamu gendong will pose a number of questions to ascertain whether an ailment might be related to other complaints, due to pregnancy, vaccinations, and so on, and therefore will have a better idea which jamu is most suitable. A lack of experience can lead to the wrong mixture which, not surprisingly, will not work.
Rituals that Govern Jamu
As with many traditions, jamu has its fair share of superstitions that must be addressed to eliminate potential dangers or to ensure the he aling properties of the medicine. Many of these beliefs stem from practical considerations: some are long since lost, others are easier to recognize. It is not just a question of adding an extra ingredient or the angle you face when taking a potion: it is what might happen if you do not. For instance, it is believed that if a woman breaks her grinding stone, disaster will befall her household. To prevent this, she must then walk around the house, naked, seven times. For the Javanese household, jamu is vital and if a wife breaks her tools, there is no way to protect against ills. Likewise, no self-respecting housewife will leave her pestle and mortar on the doorstep because her husband, coming home after a day’s work in the rice fields, could trip over it, break his neck and be unable to support his family.
Another superstition states that quantities of an ingredient have to be twice “the number of the day when born”. This presents an unusual problem nowadays as the Javanese calendar is based on the five-day week. The normal seven-day week is made to fit into this by simple addition. For example, a Javanese woman would understand that if she was born on Saturday Pahing 9, and the recipe called for twice that amount, she has to add 18 ingredients to a recipe. Conflicting with this is the superstition that ingredients must be of an odd number. Thus you may include one or three handfuls of an ingredient, or one or five cups of liquid, but never two. Some recipes for jamu furthermore require the preparation of the medicine by a girl who has yet to start menstruating—yet another hurdle.
A CAUTIONARY TALE
It is vital to follow instructions when mixing jamu. Barbara Johnson, an American who has lived in Jakarta for many years, discovered this at her own expense. Although Barbara has a fine figure she noticed the beginnings of cellulite on the back of her thighs. Mentioning this to an Indonesian friend, she was amazed when a pack of dried roots and herbs arrived at her house a few days later. “This is for the cellulite,” her friend said. “I’ve used it for years and it works wonders.”
Barbara asked her maids, village girls with experience of jamu, to prepare the drink and promptly forgot about it. She later found a glass of black liquid in the fridge and, enquiring what it was, learned that it was her jamu. Naturally she was keen to see whether this foul-tasting brew was effective and drank it all down only to realize minutes later that she’d made a big mistake.
Barbara was rushed to hospital, having burned her throat, oesophagus and intestines to such an extent that she couldn’t go home for six weeks. She says the only good part of this tale was the result. “When I looked in the mirror I discovered there was not one single ounce of cellulite anywhere on my body. The cure was incredible in more ways than one.”
Why did this happen? Apparently Barbara had consumed about three weeks’ supply of jamu in one draught, because the girls had accidentally made the mixture far too strong.
Other beliefs concern the need for additional ingredients for pregnant women. They are advised to include the powdered egg shells of newly-hatched, healthy chickens and carbonized mouse nests in their jamu. The egg shells are included in the hope that the baby will be equally healthy; they provide additional calcium while the carbon helps absorb toxins. The mouse nests were believed to make birthing as easy as that of a mouse.
Jamu also features in Javanese wedding ceremonies in which the bride’s mother presents a newly married couple with a box or botekan containing various seeds, rhizomes and dried cuttings from traditional medicinal plants and spices. Traditionally, these should be used on the first day of marriage and, more importantly, be planted in the garden of the couple’s new home. This gesture is a mother’s last symbolic effort to provide a healthy life for her daughter.
Old beliefs are not in short supply. Some believed that ingredients had to be ground in the home of the person drinking the jamu. However, if that person did not possess a grinding stone, the jamu maker had to decide whether it was appropriate to make the jamu in his or her own home before delivering it to the client. It was also considered part of the cure for the jamu maker to give the jamu directly to the recipient. If it was a paste, the maker would clean the grinding stone with her hands, and then rub a little of the mixture onto the patient’s skin. If the medicine was to be drunk, the jamu maker would put a little of the ground mixture into the glass of jamu with her fingers before the patient was allowed to take it.
Government Regulations
In the interests of safety, the government advises that only those brands of jamu carrying the Indonesian Food and Drug Control Directorate (the DepKes RI number) on the packet should be consumed. (DepKes is the acronym for the Departemen Kesehatan, the Department of Health and RI stands for Republic of Indonesia.) These registration numbers (issued also by the Departemen Kesehatan) must, by law, be printed on every bottle or packet. The number is issued only after the product has been tested by government laboratories and met a stringent set of requirements. If the name or formula of the jamu changes after registration the whole process must be repeated.
The Department of Health regularly buys herbal medicine from retail outlets to verify that products are not sold after their expiry date and then submits these samples for testing by its team of pharmacists to ensure standards of quality control and storage conditions have been met. Some smaller producers, however, simply cannot afford to pay the DepKes registration fees but still make excellent jamu. In this instance a specialist jamu shop should be able to offer advice.
The government now insists every jamu and herbal medicine company employs a qualified pharmacist (or assistant pharmacist) to ensure professional quality control. It has laid