Snakes: A healing bite for believers

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.