Snakes: A healing bite for believers

Danny Raharto, Contributor, Jakarta

You may find snakes horrible and disgusting. But these feelings do not affect Ali Rohali, the owner of a street stall in Jl. Mangga Besar Raya, West Jakarta, that specializes in snake products for gastronomy and medication.

Snake meat, blood, gall and marrow are available at his stall. In an advertising brochure, the 41 year old claims that snake products can cure almost any ailment, including allergies, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, as well as improving sexual performance and vitality.

He started the business back in 1978 in a market formerly known as Princen Park (now Lokasari) in West Jakarta. He was first approached by a Chinese-Indonesian man who was looking for snake meat to cure an ailment.

Not long afterwards, he met a tourist from Taiwan who was looking for the same snake meat. The Taiwanese man taught him a great about the healing qualities of snake meat and blood and their ability to keep the body fit and healthy. He also learned how to prepare the blood for inclusion in a remedy, by reducing its overpowering smell.

Using this newly acquired knowledge and some of his savings, Ali decided to open up a snake stall in Princen Park. He managed to stay in the market until 1985, when he was forced to relocate by the Jakarta authority, which wanted to rebuild the old market complex to bring in higher rents.

Ali decided to haul his small cart around on foot through an ethnic Chinese neighborhood in West Jakarta.

Tired of pushing his cart on the street, he decided to set up a stall in front of a bank building not far from the intersection of Jl. Hayam Wuruk and Jl. Mangga Besar Raya in Jakarta's Chinatown district. That was in 1995.

Today, the stall does a brisk trade from the moment it opens at 4 p.m.

A customer, Hilda, visited the stall after a friend recommended snake products as an alternative cure for a skin rash she had picked up after swimming at Ancol in North Jakarta. Ali decided that snake blood would be the best medicine.

So he took out a cobra, placing its head in a bamboo implement to keep it steady. With a swift chop, he cut off its head and allowed its blood to flow. Ali promptly poured the blood into a tea cup already containing arak (rice wine) and honey. Then he peeled the snake skin, removed the gall and placed it in a small teaspoon.

Then a second snake went under the knife and Hilda, along with her husband Bambang, ate a gall each, daintily served on a teaspoon. Only Bambang drank the blood.

Hilda ordered 10 satay sticks, grilled just like any other meat at a sidewalk stall.

"It tastes like chicken satay but the meat is tougher," Bambang said. "For me the meal makes me fit and healthy, whereas for my wife it is to cure her allergy."

Hilda found the gall, which must not be chewed, to be as tough as rubber. Before putting the gall in her mouth, she asked her husband whether she could eat it at home but Bambang flatly rejected the idea.

Reluctantly she composed herself and said, "With good intentions, God will help me to cure my illness".

She then swallowed the gall, drank the lemon juice chaser Ali had prepared and cursed her husband for the weird taste of the gall. Bambang merely laughed.

Ali reminded them not to drink coffee or tea or to smoke for the next week because it would eradicate the curing effects of the snake gall.

"We will be back here again next week in order to fully cure my allergy, then after that we will eat the snake meat regularly to keep ourselves fit and healthy," Hilda said.

Ali earns a steady income from his stall. He lives in the suburb of Kebayoran Baru in South Jakarta with his wife and six children, ranging in age from 13 years to two months.

He also sometimes feeds his children snake meat to maintain their health.

Most of his customers are people who have become tired of visiting doctors without being cured. Many come from abroad, such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, mainland China and Thailand. The rest of his customers are locals.

Ali said, however, that it was one's faith, not merely the snake, that cured the illness. Asked whether he suffered a lot of snake bites, he said, "At the beginning I did, but after a while I got better at handling the snakes. If I am bitten, I know how to handle it myself".

Snakes, which are regarded by most people as unappealing reptiles to be avoided, have done nothing but good for Ali and his family. There is a saying that if we make friends with an outsider, the outsider will reward our good deed. Perhaps Ali is the living proof.