Life gets harder for Pelus river rock smashers

By Agus Maryono and Ngadi Utomo

PURWOKERTO, Central Java (JP): The one-year-long economic crisis has brought increasingly hard times for the countless "strongwomen" along the Pelus river who traditionally make a living smashing rocks.

Not only do they earn less because the crippling crisis has brought construction projects to a grinding halt, they are suffering because their hard-earned money does not stretch nearly as far as it used to.

Although they realize that their income is hardly sufficient to make ends meet, they are equally aware that they cannot imagine doing anything else to help support their families.

While women dealt a better lot are still setting their tables for breakfast, these women leave home at daybreak to collect stones downstream of their village located in the Banyumas regency. They carry the stones in pails along an ascending road back to their homes.

After a brief rest, they put the stones into a used tire and, holding them with their left hand, they hammer the stones into pieces. Then the pebbles are placed at strategic points on the roadside for potential buyers to see.

In Banyumas, women stone breakers are found along fast-flowing rivers such as the Pelus, Serayu and Logawa.

These women live a life as hard as the stones they hammer. It has never occurred to them that they are likely to drown if the river overflows -- after all the river is part of their means of subsistence.

Lasem, a 70-year-old residing on the banks of the Pelus river in Karanggintung village, is one of these stone smashers. The gray-haired, wrinkly faced widow who has seven children spends all her days breaking rocks.

She was doing just this when interviewed. Once in a while she wiped sweat from her face. "This is what a woman here does if she lives close to a river," she said. "I thank God, nevertheless. If my house were farther away, things would be even more difficult for me."

She claimed that she could break up to two cubic meters of stones in a month, which earns her Rp 40,000 (US$2.80).

"The money is enough to buy basic food for the family. If I have some money left, I spend it on snacks for my grandchildren," she said.

She said she is becoming more bewildered with each passing day as rice of low quality now costs Rp 2,200 per kg. "I'm confused. I don't know what age we are living in now. I don't think the price of rice is compatible with the price of a cubic meter of rock."

Lasem has been breaking stones for as long as she can remember. Now she is assisted by one of her daughters, who also happens to be a widow.

"I used to break more stones when I was young. Now my children advise me not to work so hard because I'm already old," she said.

Hammering stones, she said, had become the rhythm of her heartbeat so, she says, she will not feel in good shape if she stops for even one day.

"If I don't hold a hammer and smash rocks for one day, my hand will feel painfully sore."

Now she rarely collects stone in the river because she cannot stand in the water long enough. "I cannot stand the cold. If I stay in the water long enough I will have a relapse of my rheumatism."

Her daughter, Rati, 53, is now entrusted with this task. "But sometimes when I feel like carrying stones, I'll do so," she said. "Although I'm very old now, I'm sill strong enough to carry dozens of kilograms of stones on my shoulders," she said.

Lasem, known as a humorous woman, then shows off her fists and the muscles in her right arm. "An old woman like me should no longer do this kind of job. But if I stop breaking stones, how can I feed myself?" she added.

Boom

She said that when the construction business was booming, her stones "sold like hot cakes". Pointing at a stack of about two cubic meters of split stones, she said that now she did not even know where to sell the commodity.

However, Lasem, who prides herself on what strength she has left at her advanced age, can still enjoy some consolation when foreign tourists come to see her and take photographs of her breaking stones.

"Perhaps there are no stone-breakers like me in their country. It seems that most foreign tourists have never seen someone breaking stones for their living before. Some of these tourists often take my picture and others just give me money for nothing," she said.

"But, I don't know why only very few foreign tourists have come to see me lately. In fact, the money from a foreign tourist is the same as what I get from selling one cubic meter of split stones," she said naively.

Male and female stone collectors go to the Pelus river together to collect stones but they have their own territories. The parts of the river where the men collect rocks are usually deeper than those for the women.

Another stone collector, Kasih, 60, a widow with seven children, recalled a time when she narrowly missed being carried away in the strong current of the Pelus river when it overflowed unexpectedly. She was in the men's territory when the pristine water suddenly turned brownish. A booming sound got louder and louder.

"As soon as the rolls of water started approaching, people shouted my name. Then I left all the stone I had collected in the pail and ran away for safety," she said. Since then she has never gone to the men's territory to collect stones.

She added that men are, by convention, not allowed to go over to the woman's territory because if they do, they will be considered cowardly.

In the female territory, women also wash their dishes and clothes. When they return they always take a pail of rocks.

Sair, 45, a mother of three, is one of them. After completing the washing, she leaves her clothes and crockery on a large slab and then begins collecting stones.

"Although I come here to wash the dishes or clothes, I always collect a few pails of stones, which I usually put on the bank of the river," said Sair. "When I have got enough stones at home, I will break them into small pieces," she said, adding that she can break one cubic meter of stones in two weeks.

Kaswati, 34, a mother of four, has to work hard to support her husband, a pedicab driver. Like other women in the lower reaches of the Pelus river, Kaswati has only the most basic of formal education and therefore does not attach much importance to family harmony.

"My children can occupy themselves after a meal, an occasion when we usually get together. The most important thing is that they have something to eat. It is when they are out that I can find time to break slabs of rocks," she said.

The same situation is also found in the downstream area of the River Logawa, also in Banyumas. Married women make their living working as rock breakers, earning about Rp 2,200 a day. They realize that what they earn is not compatible with the energy they spend.

"I have no other choice. Unless I do this job, I won't have money to buy food," said Satinem, 40. Her daughter Karti, 13, helps her, bringing more money into the family.

Many elderly women in Banyumas have to survive by crushing rocks without any help.

"My children are all married. They are poor, too," Nasitem, 50, said, adding that she had been doing this job for 10 years.

These older women stone breakers generally say that they do this jobs to support their husbands, who drive pedicabs, work on construction projects and so forth. Interestingly, many husbands stay away from the stone-breaking business.