Kalimantan villagers plait their life with 'purun' leaves

Text and photos by Ali Budiman

AMUNTAI, South Kalimantan (JP): Villages with their wooden houses on stilts sprawl along both sides of the Tabalong River and the Balagan River, which cut through Amuntai, Hulu Sungai Utara regency, South Kalimantan.

After crossing a suspension bridge and continuing down a path, you are sure to find housewives and young women skillfully moving their fingers as they plait dry elongated purun leaves into mats, fruit baskets or pretty bags.

This rural life, marked by peace, fertility, religion and productivity, can be easily seen in the villages of Palimbangan Gusti, Pulan Tani or Haur Gading, about 200 kms north of Banjarmasin, the provincial capital. The men of the village work either in the rice fields or other plantations. They also make small boats, breed fish in the surrounding streams using baskets -- a technique locally known as the karamba method -- or work in the timber area of Hapau.

Life in these villages is colored to a large degree by the purun plantations, the management of which has been handed down from one generation to another. Having a tough fiber, knowledge of purun is believed to have been handed down to the locals by their forefathers. Thanks to this legacy, these villages are now famous as the main producers and suppliers of Purun handicrafts, which, under the management of the local housewives, has become a good source of extra income. Purun grows in abundance as a weed in the blackish loose soil and in the extensive brackish areas to the north of these villages.

Purun is harvested twice a year, said Haj Muhidin, who is a purun grower. He said that harvesting purun was rather unique in that you must have the right distance between the root and the part you are going to cut because otherwise the plant will take a long time to start growing again.

When the Purun harvest is over, the leaves are dried for three days and then tied into bundles with a diameter of some 10 cm. Then these bundles are pounded with a rice pestle until they are flat. These elongated, tough leaves are the raw material for the plaited handicrafts.

Zikriati, 20, who lives in Amuntai village, has been making plaited works since she was at elementary school, following in her mother's footsteps. Zikriati's father grows corn, plants rice and goes fishing. Four years ago, Zikriati completed her junior high school studies and since then she has been plaiting rattan mats. At home, however, she continues helping her mother make the purun plaited bags.

Her slender fingers deftly work on the purun leaves, plaiting them into shopping bags or large fruit baskets. This home industry, passed down through the family, focuses on making bags because they fetch a better price than mats and also because there is a regular demand for plaited purun bags in the Amuntai market, she said, adding that there was also a regular demand for large fruit baskets in the market. Every Wednesday and Thursday, a trader will come to their house especially to buy 60 bags and a few scores of large fruit baskets, which are made to order and paid for in cash. Twenty shopping bags are sold at a total price of Rp 30,000 while twenty large fruit baskets bring twice as much.

Zikriati is the eldest in the family and has a younger sister, who has also completed her elementary schooling, and a younger brother aged 7. They live with their parents in a modest house on stilts, in whose clean and neatly arranged sitting room there is a 14-inch color television set. Zikriati says she is happy living in the modest and peaceful surroundings. She nurtures a modest ambition, i.e. to help her parents run the purun home industry in order to be able to raise her two siblings. She said that sometimes it occurs to her to introduce some new innovations into the purun handicrafts, for example providing them with different colors and ornaments. She admitted, though, but she had not found the right pattern and marketing strategy for such products. Therefore, she said, for the time being she will just meet the market demand.

When asked about when she might want to get married, she answered with a big laugh that she did not really think about this matter. To the question about what kind of man she would like to have as her husband, she added shyly, while continuing to plait purun in accordance with the pattern, that he must be a devout and hard-working man.

Located a little to the north of Palimbangan Gusti village, Pulan Tani has also made a name for its plaited mats. Residents in this village, whose name literally means "thick agriculture", generally conduct farming as their means of earning a living. Rice fields here have never been short of water because of the abundant water supplies from two rivers, Tabalong and Balagan. Everyone in these two villages generally has a modest purun estate. Purun estates are rarely sold but are usually passed down to the next generation.

One of the villagers, Bintang Jahra, 55, said that life used to be much easier. She could save a lot of money from the business and in 1980 she even went on a haj pilgrimage with her husband, who died in 1997. Since the country was hit by a deep economic crisis in mid 1997, the business has been painfully slow. The money she earns is hardly enough to buy the daily necessities.

But Jahra, an only child with no children who lives with her cousin, keeps thanking God for keeping her in such good health so that she does not even need glasses to plait purun leaves into the mats that she produces at the speed of one an hour.