'Eceng gondok,' a useless water plant turns to gold

Asip A. Hasani, The Jakarta Post, Yogyakarta

Khoirun, a 37-year-old craftsman from the Nggamblong village in Sleman regency, can not stop giggling when he is asked about eceng gondok (a water hyacinth species), a plant on which he now relies on to survive.

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

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

Eceng gondok, which grew quickly to clog ponds or rivers, was simply an enemy to the local villagers, most of whom worked on farms.

The image of the water plant was changed four years ago, when a handicraft trader from Jakarta visited the Nggamblong village seeking woven handicrafts made of dried eceng gondok. All of a sudden, the hatred toward the despised plant drastically changed.

In a matter of a 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 businesses grew rapidly.

Khoirun alone now employs more than 10 craftsmen in his 'workshop' at his modest house with a production capacity of at least 550 various types of handicrafts made from eceng gondok. They range 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 receive overtime fees to meet the growing orders, mostly from businessmen in Yogyakarta, Surakarta and Jakarta.

"Frankly speaking, I don't like working overtime, neither do my craftsmen, 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. Occasionally, he asks for 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 the items to the trading companies ranged from Rp 15,000 to Rp 90,000 each.

At many local retail shops in Yogyakarta, for example, Khoirun's works are sold for between Rp 35,000 and Rp 150,000 each.

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

Consequently, the dried water plant -- once useless -- 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 handicrafts. It sounds rather ridiculous, right?" Khoirun said.

Yogyakarta-based PT. Bhumi Prama Cipta director Emmy Pratiwi, whose company manufactures handicrafts made of natural raw materials, particularly producing fashion bags, said among the major importers of the eceng-gondok-made handicrafts were the U.S., Japan and several countries in Europe.

"This summer we just shipped some 4,000 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 was slightly thicker and much easier to shape in forming and designing an item.

"The handicrafts also gives a 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 a certain number of orders which arrived during the wet season unless the stock is still available.

Judging from the growing local demands of eceng gondok-made stuffs, she said that the industry urgently needed 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 is still stuck with another serious problem: finding talented craftsmen.