Profile of a Jakarta crumpet seller

Profile of a Jakarta crumpet seller

JAKARTA (JP): The smoke gets in my eyes, and hers too. But it does not seem to irritate her narrow eyes.

She puts firewood into the base of the clay pots. To check whether the food is thoroughly cooked she removes the pans' covers with a pair of long, wooden tongs.

What she is cooking are Javanese crumpets (serabi) which bubble as they touch the hot pan. They are made from rice flour mixed with coconut milk and a dash of salt.

She places the cooked crumpets on a crude cooling rack. When the crumpets have cooled she places them on a reed tray which she covers with newspaper and places under the cooling rack.

Some flies buzz around. They come from a garbage heap at the nearby Kebayoran Lama traditional market in South Jakarta.

With "How much do they cost?" I started to satisfy my curiosity on how such a very traditional way of cooking survived in today's fast-food crazy Jakarta.

Her crumpets cost Rp 100 (4.5 U.S. cents) each and she earns Rp 6,000 to Rp 8,000 a day.

She bought the clay pots in her hometown for only Rp 1,000 and uses four kilograms of rice flour a day to make the crumpets. She uses empty tomato crates, which she obtains for free, as firewood.

She starts selling after lunchtime. By 5.00 or 6.00 p.m. the crumpets are usually sold out.

"I have only been here three days," the barefooted woman said. Her name is Widarsem and is "perhaps 40 years old," she told me when I asked what her age was. She speaks Javanese with a very strong Indramayu accent, jumbled with broken Indonesia -- making her difficult to understand.

She said she came from Kulosarang village near Cirebon, West Java. She said she never went to school and that she has only one daughter who is now in elementary school.

In her hometown, she said, she and her husband worked as farm laborers, tending the rice fields of better-off neighbors or relatives.

Flood

She said she left her husband at home because "he cannot do anything." It was late November last year and there was a prolonged drought at that time.

But later she said she came to Jakarta because there was no work at home due to floods "I will go back home when the flood abates. I am here just to make ends meet," she said.

She was then silent, her face looking unfriendly as if to let me know she disliked my presence. But I continued asking her how much she earned from working in the paddy fields. She remained silent. Not giving me even a glance, she kept herself busy with cooking and serving customers.

Feeling uneasy with the silence, one of her customers, a female house servant, told me that from experience, farm laborers usually earn two thirds of the yield, while the owner earns one third.

Suddenly Widarsem looked at me and asked, "Who are you? Why do you keep asking me so many questions and taking my photo? Are you a policeman? Have I committed any wrongdoings?"

So that was it, her silent treatment was either fear or irritation.

I explained twice that I was interviewing her, not interrogating her, and that I'm a reporter. But she asked me what a reporter is.

I realized it was pointless to explain that way. So I pointed to a photo in the newspaper beneath the cooling rack and told her that her photos would appear like that. She seemed to understand what I meant. Nevertheless, I decided to end the interview.

Since then I saw her almost every day on my way to work. About two weeks later, however, I could only find a hawker selling drinks on the sidewalk near where she was.

So I asked the hawker her whereabouts. The hawker told me he did not know where she went but at dusk he often sees her going to a stall selling wholesale watermelon across the street.

So I went to the stall and met Jono who referred me to Rasban, another watermelon wholesaler who, according to Jono, was Widarsem's neighbor from whom I could get more information about her.

Husband

But Rasban told me the woman was not his neighbor and she did not live in his village. Rasban said the right person to turn to was Jono because Widarsem's husband had worked with him as a watermelon seller for quite a long time.

So I went back to Jono who was finally willing to share what he knew about her.

Jono said it was true that Widarsem's husband worked as a watermelon seller. "Because he is an old man, I usually give him about 15 watermelons which weigh no more than 50 kg," Jono said.

His wife Widarsem came here with him because there was no work at home due to the prolonged drought, Jono said.

A week later I saw her again, selling crumpets as usual. "How are you?" I greeted her before asking her why she lied to me about her husband.

"Now you know," was her reply, "Jono must have told you everything." "Yes," I said, "But I still have an unanswered question ... how much do you earn from tending paddies?"

"Won't you buy my serabi?" was her sudden response. "Oh, yes, of course! Please give me five of those which are still hot from the pans," I said. She put five crumpets into folded paper and I ate one straightaway.

"Molasses?" she asked (people usually eat serabi with molasses). "No," I said.

The serabi tasted bland. I paid Rp 500 and she said that as a farm laborer, she was paid Rp 2,500 a day.

"So, you get Rp 75,000 a month?" I said. "No," she replied, "It isn't that easy. Work isn't always available daily, particularly when there is a drought. That's why I came here."

A few weeks have elapsed since I last saw her. The year 1995 has set in. The sidewalk, where she used to sell serabi, is now empty and wet with rain.