“Can you introduce yourself? Tell us who you are?”
The camera was rolling and I quickly set it down on the counter in front of her.
“Can you stop for one moment, please? I’m sorry!” She looked straight into the camera and doubled over from shy, anxious laughter.
“Does the camera make you nervous?” I pushed the little red ‘stop’ button.
“Yes!” She covered her smiling face with the Jamu class schedule in her left hand. Now we both busted out laughing.
It’s no wonder she was nervous. She had just met me not 10 minutes ago, and here I was putting her on film.
“Let me start the recording over. Go ahead when you’re ready.”
“Hello, good afternoon. My name is Lelir. In today’s Jamu class I will show you how to make ‘daily medicine.’ Jamu is very important for our life in Bali…”
Ni Wayan Lelir (Nee Why-an Lee-leer) is from a family of Balians. Balian means healer in Bali, so the country itself is named after healing. She’s only about four and a half feet tall, and a bundle of sweetness and energy.
She’s a fifth-generation herbalist from a long family tradition, much like my friend Ivey Harris in Jamaica. Lelir was taught by her mother and grandmother. We’ll be working with her to develop some formulas you can’t get anywhere else so we can re-circulate some of the lost wisdom of the Balinese healers.
In fact, when I visited her in her workshop, she gave me a 50-minute presentation on how to make your own formulas. She was so excited to have me there that she started right in with almost no introduction, and I almost forgot to turn my video camera on.
She used herbs that she grows there in her garden. But she talks about substitutions you can use if you don’t have hers. Some of the herbs are available now in the United States and Europe, like turmeric and coconut oil.
They buy everything else from local farmers, and try to help the farmers by coming up with ways to use their products. Lelir buys from cocoa farmers and makes a lot of cocoa butter and powder. Restaurants buy the powder from her, and she sells the cocoa butter as a base for white chocolate, and cosmetics. She gets cinnamon from farmers, too, and makes cinnamon powder, which she sells to bakeries.
At her workshop she makes many, many different kinds of teas, but she also makes a daily tonic – kind of a detoxifying, immune strengthening tonic that you drink every day that has ginger and turmeric. She makes them from scratch. She puts the herbs in a stone pestle and grinds it up and boils it down and makes the tonic. It was very nice. I had it every day I stayed with them.
The exfoliating body scrub she makes has rice and a whole bunch of herbs in it. It feels fantastic just rubbing it on my hands. She makes an anti-aging facial cream, and a clay masks made from volcanic clay. And she makes moisturizing oil they call “Sweet Dream.” It’s coconut oil-based and takes an entire month to brew. She makes Ayurvedic oil that takes six weeks for the base to distill.
Lelir makes everything by pressing fresh ingredients. Sweet Dream has pressed vanilla, cinnamon and cocoa butter, which are very good for dry skin. You can even eat Sweet Dream. She told me you can put it on bread and cookies, and it’s part of traditional Balinese pancake batter.
For her lip balm, she uses Balinese bitter orange leaves and she infuses them with coconut oil.
All her formulas are part of the Indonesian tradition of “Jamu” which means herbal healing in Javanese. Lelir told me Jamu is very important for life in Bali because they treat illnesses mostly with herbal medicine.
To help people prevent infection, soothe muscles, and help people who have respiratory problems, she makes what she calls “internal medicine” – a kind of juice made with turmeric root – for a daily tonic.
Lelir was nice enough to give me a Jamu class to teach me how to make her daily “internal medicine.” Here’s what she taught me:
Start with two pieces of turmeric root (about 50 grams), one bulb of alpinia galangal root (from the ginger family), 30 grams of fresh, raw tamarind pulp, 50 grams of raw palm sugar (you can substitute cane juice) and a teaspoon of salt.
- Peel the turmeric root and cut it up into small pieces.
- Take the skin off of one bulb of galangal root and cut into small pieces.
- Add the roots together with about two cups of water in a blender or chopper of your choice and blend for about a minute and a half.
- Pour the mixture into a 5-quart saucepan.
- Add the palm sugar, tamarind, a teaspoon of salt, and mix with a spoon.
- Put the saucepan on high heat and boil for 15 minutes.
- Stir again, and strain into a glass container. Cool and drink.