"Jamu... Jamu”. Every day, at roughly 12 noon, the same batik-dressed young woman passes by my house. Her body doubled over beneath the burden of the basket she carries on her back, she calls “Jamu... Jamuuuuu” every 50 meters or so. Sometimes the nearby warung owner hails her. Or it might be the teacher’s servant. Or even my wife. What this young woman is peddling is - as she advertises with her repetitive cry - jamu, a traditional Javanese concoction with medicinal qualities.

Today it is a group of construction workers at the road-side who, after four hours of toiling in the searing heat, call her over. The mere thought of sipping a glass of jamu brings a look of welcome relief to their tired eyes. On approaching them, she unfastens the cloth sash by which she carries her load, swings her basket down to ground level and squats down beside it. From her basket protrude the slender necks of the glass bottles that are contained within it. A worker scrutinises the bottles for a while and then points to one of them. The woman hastens to unscrew the top and pours a cup of his selection. A few others indicate their choice and she serves them in turn.

This woman is one of the many so-called jamu gendong (lit. ‘carried jamu’) who are now a common sight in Bali. Like sate and noodle soup the jamu gendong are poor Javanese migrants to Bali - part of a wave of migration which has been transforming the social and ethnic fabric of Balinese towns and villages over the last twenty years. Almost all of the jamu gendong hail from the Solo - Wonogiri area of Central Java. This is significant, for that the women of this area are reputed to boast a composure and physique that Indonesians generally idealise is attributed to their frequent imbibing of jamu. Jamu, it is said, helps the Central Javanese woman remain true to her slim and attractive stereotype.

Not only in Bali has the number of jamu gendong been growing over the past two decades. In Java in the 1970s, when the state-sponsored introduction of ‘miracle rice’ displaced a great number of Javanese women from the agricultural labor force, many of them sought alternative forms of employment, including peddling jamu. Since that time the numbers of jamu gendong have been growing in Java too, where their variously-composed golden liquids assist women in their attempts to simulate the virginity that their men-folk, with their corresponding jamu-induced strength, find so desirable.