Swimming with the fish at Barito Market

By Mehru Jaffer

JAKARTA (JP): There may be others, but it is the market around Jl. Barito in South Jakarta that seems to be the fishiest place in town. Yet the market is also one of the most frequented places, especially for all those who love birds, flowers, fruits and fish.

With more than 50 colorful kiosks and nearly 200 people attending to hundreds of species of fish both big and small, the Barito Market is marked by hustle and bustle all day long. On the first weekend of every month even the stars are said to come down to Barito in search of their favorite fish.

It is not unusual to rub shoulders here with the rich, and famous fish fans, from military generals and tycoons to show business personalities.

Putut, who services the nearly 100 aquariums owned by Rano Karno, said the actor-director has the most fascinating collection of fish in his house.

Putut's own favorite is an African variety but many people are crazy about the colorful koi.

Koi is none other than the common carp whose ancestral home is thought to be Iran. The wild carp was carried to Japan, China and Western Europe by traders about a thousand years ago. Along the line it became the national fish of Japan, where it was called Nishikigoi, nishiki being the local word for a highly colored cloth. The fish can be seen today in many ancient paintings, its representation adorning utensils, pottery, sculptures and carvings from Asia and the Far East.

Koi was bred in Japan in the 1820s in the town of Ojiya, where rice farmers introduced carp into their irrigation ponds to supplement their diet of rice. Color mutations, involving red, white and light yellow, were first noticed in the early 1800s and the eventual cross-breeding of red and white carp produced the koi as it is known today and that has over the years come to symbolize good luck and prosperity.

Yadi, 27, a koi specialist at Budi's kiosk, says that a rare variety of the fish can sell for as much as Rp 8 million. The Indonesian variety can be bought for as little as Rp 15,000. While the koi is kept in a pond by pet lovers, the equally expensive arwana is an aquarium fish.

Apart from bringing luck both the fish are also considered status symbols among the nouveau riche. The favorite fish of the not so wealthy is the lively koki.

Yadi, a high school graduate, has been selling fish for 10 years and his dream is to have his own kiosk. He earns a Rp 500,000 wage and receives a 10 percent commission on the sale of fish for the entire month.

He said his profession is lucrative enough.

"It all depends upon me. The more I sell, the higher my income is," he said.

Each month he is able to make sales of between Rp 6 million and Rp 10 million. When luck favors he sells even more.

Marcus earns much less but he loves being with the fish. Born in the Banda islands, Marcus came to Jakarta in 1952. He worked all his adult life with a pharmaceutical firm. Upon retiring a few years ago, he set up a portable kiosk at Barito, selling knick-knacks like cigarettes and repairing pumps for aquariums.

"And this is all that I want to do as long as I am alive. It also prevents me from feeling homesick about my island where I first learned to love fishes," said the jeans-clad Marcus, grinning from ear to ear as his snow-white hair blew freely in the wind.

Heri Santosa, a graduate in fishery from Kalimantan, has a more lofty plan. He hands over a three-page printed proposal for a farm for breeding koi in Indonesia instead of paying millions of extra rupiah for imports. Heri needs Rp 100 million to start the project.

"It may sound like a dream at the moment but I will make it a reality someday," says the young man who works at a golf course for the moment to make ends meet. Whenever he has time off he promptly comes to spend it at the fish market.

Teddy, 49, a former resident of the area, recalls swimming in a lake that flowed a few decades ago in exactly the same spot where the Barito Market stands today. The first shops to come up here were those selling flowers and fruits, positioned on stilts in the lake that was full of a vast variety of fish.

Over the years the lake dried up and about 15 years ago kiosks equipped with fish ponds and stacked with different kinds of aquariums sprouted up, making it one of the most magical markets in the city.

Sitting on plastic stools outside a kiosk, the boys working at the Barito are full of fishy tales which they tell over a glass of warm coffee or a chilled bottle of cold drink. It seems that there are more fish on earth than birds or mammals; that new fish are discovered all the time and there may be 28,000 different species. The discus fish feed their young on mucus they excrete from their bodies, goldfish if cared for well can live as long as 70 years old and that Tennessee in the U.S. has the largest public freshwater aquarium in the world, measuring 130,000 square foot.

Their knowledge is extensive but their lives, after all, are devoted to caring for these beautiful animals.