Asip A. Hasani The Jakarta Post Yogyakarta

A 37-year-old craftsman Khoirun of Nggamblong village in Sleman regency could not stop giggling any time he is asked about eceng gondok (a water hyacinth species), a plant on which he now relies much of his living.

"In the old days, I and many other local villagers here almost had hatred feeling towards this plant. Every wet season, we regularly used to work together to clean our fishponds and rice- fields from that once a 'useless' plant," recalled Khoirun.

For so many generations, residents of Nggamblong, some 15 kilometers to the west of Yogyakarta, once earned money for living partly from weaving natural items, such as from coconut tree materials, for various handmade handicrafts, such as matts and curtains.

And eceng gondok, which grow faster and quickly shallow the pond or river, was simply an enemy to the local villagers, most of whom worked at farms.

The ruined image of the water plant was changed only until some four years ago, when a handicraft trader from Jakarta visited the Nggamblong village seeking woven handicrafts made of dried eceng gondok. At sudden, the hatred feeling of the enemy drastically changed.

In a matter of few months, more orders of the new items came to the village, encouraging dozens of the Nggamblong families, including Khoirun and his neighbors, as well as inhabitants living at nearby regencies, such as Bantul and Kulonprogo, to shift professions.

The limited stock led the people to order eceng gondok from Ambarawa, where the plant grows wildly in many swampy areas. The business grows rapidly.

Khoirun alone now employs over 10 craftsmen in his 'workshop' at his modest house with a production capacity of at least 550 eceng gondok-made items of various types of handicrafts, from handbags, boxes, fruit baskets, waste bins, carpets, pillows, to different home and office accessories.

For the work, he pays his employees between Rp 10,000 (US$1.10) and Rp 20,000 per day each. But his employers often received overtime fee to meet the growing orders, mostly come from businessmen in Yogyakarta, Surakarta and Jakarta.

"Frankly speaking, I don't like working overtime, neither my craftsmen do, because the quality is worse if we are forced to meet a deadline which is actually beyond our production capacity," Khoirun said.

He designs some of his Made-in-Nggamblong products. In some occasions, he asks the help of the other handicraft trading companies.

As part of the deal, the finishing touch of his products is carried out by his business partners, who make the orders.

According to him, the price of his handmade items set to the trading companies ranges from Rp 15,000 to Rp 90,000 each.

At many local retail shops in Yogyakarta, for example, Khoirun's works are labeled with the price tags of between Rp 35,000 and Rp 150,000 each.

The image of eceng gondok handicrafts and furniture is also on the rise in the overseas markets thanks to the massive back-to- nature campaign worldwide.

Consequently, the dried water plant -- once a useless one -- is sold at Rp 3,500 per kilogram. Khoirun alone needs at least 100 kilograms per month.

"We now think of growing this parasite water plant in our rice fields and fishponds in order to meet the growing demand of eceng gondok-made handcrafts. It sounds rather ridiculous, right?" Khoirun said.

According to Emmy Pratiwi, director of Yogyakarta-based PT. Bhumi Prama Cipta, a manufacturer of handicrafts made of natural raw materials which focuses on producing fashion bags, among the major importers of the eceng-gondok-made handicrafts are the U.S., Japan and several countries in Europe.

"This summer we just shipped some 4,000 items of bags made of the plant to the U.S.," she said, adding that her company was currently preparing another shipment of the same items, which has the price of between $6 and $18 per piece, to Italy," Emmy said.

Unlike rattan or wood or other natural materials, eceng gondok is slightly thicker and much easier to shape in forming and designing an item.

"The handicrafts also gives more natural impression," she said.

Unfortunately, she said, the time of shipment orders from her overseas partners usually do not match the dry season in Indonesia, in which the sun is badly needed to quickly help dry the water plant.

That is why Emmy often rejects certain amount of orders which arrived during the wet season unless the stock is still available.

Judging from the also growing local demands of eceng gondok- made stuffs, she said that the industry is urgently needs extra raw materials. Emmy herself already planned to establish several factories in Kalimantan and other islands in which the water plant is still described as a wild and worthless species and a parasite by locals.

But she still stuck with another serious problem: local talented craftsmen for the eceng gondok.