Kalimantan villagers plait their life with 'purun' leaves

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.