Traditional herbal medicine a remedy for penny-pinchers

By Agus Maryono

PURWOKERTO, Central Java (JP): It is 8:30 p.m. and Kusmiati is busy mixing a brownish-white herbal powder.

Next to bottles neatly arranged on her table, she dexterously mixes and stirs the powder in a glass. She adds three chicken eggs and honey.

"This is your herbal tonic. Have it now, sir. If after five minutes you don't feel any reaction, please don't come back here," she advised the customer.

The 53-year-old Purwokerto Lor villager is one of about 200 traditional herbal medicine sellers in Banyumas district. Most of them sell their herbal medicine on motorcycles or by bike.

Kusmiati has a permanent location. Her kiosk, located in a shopping compound and across from one owned by her elder sister, is open from 6 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

Kusmiati has sold traditional medicine at the site since 1981.

The mother of five and grandmother of four began in the business at age 15.

She swore no competition existed with her sister because each had their own customers.

"My grandmother and my mother, both from Surakarta, were the first and second generation of traditional herbal medicine sellers. I am the youngest of 14, all selling this stuff."

The economic crisis has been a blessing to the woman known as Bu (Mrs.) Kus, with a 50 percent increase in customers at the kiosk.

"The number of buyers keep increasing, perhaps because many cannot afford prescription medicine," she said.

Before the crisis, she would serve about 100 people daily. Now she averages about 150. The number can reach 200 on days at the beginning or end of a month.

"Before the monetary crisis I could make only Rp 50,000 net a day, but now I can earn between Rp 75,000 and Rp 100,000."

Prices of her herbal medicine range from less than Rp 1,000 to Rp 5,000. Some customers drink the medicine at her kiosk, but others prefer to take it home.

"The cheapest is a concoction for sore muscles or for a cold. You can have it for Rp 1,000 a glass plus one egg mixed into the concoction. The most expensive, Rp 5,000 a glass, is the special concoction to improve a man's virility, which is mixed with three eggs."

Her customers are an eclectic mix -- civil servants, security guards, private company employees, pedicab drivers and prostitutes.

"They (prostitutes) are my long-standing customers. Usually they need the concoction to relieve them of weariness and pain in their muscles or to enable them to perform their job well," she said.

"Some customers come here every night. Others come here once a week or even once a month. Usually they buy the herbal medicine in quite a large quantity, sometimes at a value of Rp 200,000 to Rp 300,000 for one purchase."

Orders by mail come from Medan, Lampung, Bengkulu and Ujungpandang.

Particularly popular is her family planning medicine, available at an average price of Rp 35,000 per packet and lasting for a month.

"This is my own concoction and is a traditional way of family planning."

Head of the Banyumas office of the National Family Planning Board, Yayat Suyatno, acknowledged a sharp drop in the number of participants in the family planning program in the region in the past year as prices soared.

"The crisis has substantially increased prices of contraceptives," he said.

Between April and December 1998, he said, there were 222,749 active family planning participants, down from 262,182 in the same period in 1997. The number does not include private doctors' records.

"We have tried our best to provide the best service possible, such as distributing contraceptives free-of-charge through community health centers, but the number of family planning participants has continued to drop."

The office has never monitored users of traditional contraceptives.

"However, if there are many of them, we need to know what kind of herbal concoction is used and how it is used," Suyatno said.

Kusmiati said she started making the concoction nine years ago but it gained popularity two years ago.

Kusmiati boasted her concoction was quite effective, but she warned it should not be taken by people with hypertension and stomach problems.

A hypertensive woman, she said, would be likely to suffer a stroke because of the heat-generating materials used, such as white pepper, galingale and clove. The ingredients are not good for the stomach, she added.

She has participated in several traditional herbal medicine festivals both at the regional and national levels. She took first place every year between 1987 and 1994 in the Central Java medicine festival. "In 1997 I placed second in the same festival at the national level."

In the past year she has received orders from health community centers engaged in a back-to-nature program.

Kusmiati said she used 52 kinds of herbs. Some she cultivates herself and buys others from other regions, such as Sumatra, Kalimantan and Irian Jaya.

"I must, for example, buy pasak bumi wood from Kalimantan for my men's aphrodisiac herbal concoction. Yellow sandalwood and swallow's nests are usually purchased from Irian Jaya," she said.

"Kumis kucing (a herb with leaves which have diuretic properties), cimplukan, kecipir (four-sided bean usually eaten as vegetable) and some other herbs can be found in my own garden."

Kusmiati spends up to Rp 600,000 a week on the materials to make her medicine. Ingredients for herbal concoctions are relatively stable in price, with white pepper, used in treatment of colds or men's aphrodisiacs, the exception.

"White pepper used to cost only Rp 10,000 per kilogram but now it is Rp 90,000/kg. Luckily I do not depend much on it," she said.

She puts her concoctions into three main categories: herbal tonics for men, such as those which may be used as an aphrodisiac or a cure for impotence; herbal tonic and other medicines for women, including those to cure leukorrhea; and herbal concoctions which may be taken by anybody irrespective of their sex, such as those to combat colds, rheumatism, diabetes and hemorrhoids.

Kusmiati said the secret of her success was simplicity.

"First make sure that you have all the materials for a particular concoction. Then pound these materials into fine powder. The next thing to do is to mix them into a concoction.

"Then put it in a glass and mix with boiling water. Now the herbal medicine is ready to drink," she said.