Impressions around Salatiga

Salatiga impressions

Music Festival at UKSW. On October 31 we went to the UKSW-Music Festival, and enjoyed the choirs singing for the category “Etnik”. The crowd of students from all over Indonesia was as enthousiastic as soccer-supporters in the Netherlands. And we agreed with them, that is with the students.

Choirs from Papua and Ambon in traditional dresses.

Lidie attracts a lot of attention…. The students behind us wanted to know from where we came? From “Blanda”. They were from Jakarta, Salatiga and Japan.

Alvin. The 8-year old son of Lusi and Santoso already knows about Antoni van Leeuwenhoek and Louis Pasteur! He already spoke better english than most students. Also, he had learned how to calculate with a chineese Abacus.

Alvin, reading the story “Antoni van Leeuwenhoek” in bahassa Indonesia and
Demonstrating an Abacus.

Nature. This time I have seen more birds than 8 years ago. At the lake of Rawah Penin we saw the Kingfisher and a White Egret. Near the lab I finally saw the Oriole singing in the trees and a yellow Honeysucker (?) in a Flamboyant tree. High in the sky a large eagle, the Garuda? The Gekko sounded 12 times. ..
Many different birds could be heard in the top of bamboo trees, but they remained invisible.

Rain clouds above the sawa (Photo Ed Aschermann).

Below the Beringin (Waringin) tree (inset: a large spider, almost 10 cm across).

A wood with bushes of bambu trees. Many birds, no snakes,
but an old woman cutting bambu twigs who got a shock when she saw me….

Tempe production

Tempe production

In Salatiga there are about 100 home factories for tempe production. Tempe is a food product obtained by fermenting crushed soybeans with the mycelial fungus Rhizopus oligosporus. Even in small home factories the starter cultures of the fungus (called “ragi”) are bought from factories in Bandung or Jakarta. The soybeans are bought by the governement in the US and distributed via special shops. They are cheaper than those from China or those grown locally. However, during the last months the price of soyabeans has more than doubled.
An article in the Jakarta Post perhaps points to renewed interest in the use of tempe.

Jakarta Post: young scientists present their finding that tempe fermentation

can be accelerated by increasing the temperature in an oven.

During the past days we visited home factories of different sizes. They use different starter cultures and apply different recepees. We took samples of the various stages in the production for microscopic characterization of the microorganisms. See more recent posts.

Example of a small factory. Clockwise: -Fire place where the crushed soybeans are steamed (not boiled). -Water well and small machine to crush the beans. -The fermented tempe is packed in banana leaves. -Together with the proud owners of this home factory.

Example of a larger factory where 7 people are working. Clockwise: -Backside of the factory where the soaked soybeans are boiled in big drums. -Jeffy holding one of the US-sacks. –The crushing machine. –Packing of the washed soybeans mixed with “ragi” (starter culkture). -Naked soybeans and their hulls.

One small home factory was run since 1959 by Bapak Muslimin (75 years; Address: Sawo, Rt03RW01, Salatiga). When I asked whether he could make a living with the produced tempe he had to laugh. He told us happily that he payed the university study of two sons and that he was well able to support the rest of the family. His smile is no exception: Although we have seen many poor people in Semarang and in Salatiga my overall impression is that there is little discontent among the people.

Another example of a small home factory owned by 75 year old Bapak Muslimin. He has no machine to remove the soybean hulls and uses his bare feet. The hulls are not removed.

Visit to Jokja

Visit to Jokja (Djokjakarta)

At 6 o’clock Sunday morning I visited the market on the main road of Salatiga, close to our Hotel “Le Beringin”. At that time the market is already open during 3 hours. Most people sit on the ground waiting until 7 o’clock when the inside market will open. Many people sold tempe packed in either leaves or plastic. They didn’t sell “ragi”, the starting culture for tempe fermentation.

Early market in a street of Salatiga. The woman (left) sells lombok,
the boy (right) taugé.

Walking back through the noise of hundred motorbikes I heard nearby the beautiful song of an Oriole. It took me some time to find the caged bird in a closed shop behind an open window.

Main street of Salatiga; at right the entrance to our hotel.
Right: a caged bird singing like an Oriole.

After breakfast Lusi, Santoso and Alvin came in a big car driven by Utomo to bring us to Jokja. Near the town we visited an old sugar factory, Gondang Baru, that had been closed down in June. Although it didn’t seem possible we were told that the factory would be running again next year.

Pictures of the sugar factory Gondang Baru, taken by Ed Aschermann.

Next we visited a village were they made ceramics and sculptures of wood and stone. In one of the gardens we saw a beautiful Rambutan tree; what a pity that these delicious fruits were not yet ripe…. We didn’t reach Jokja-center and drove back through a heavy rain via Magelang.

Throwing large pots with clay found nearby.
Right: Primitive wood firing in a one-man pot factory.

Rambutan tree with ripening fruits.
Rain on our way to Magelang.

Graduation 24th and 25th October
Saturday morning Lusi comes to fetch me; she brings delicious snacks for breakfast. In the lab Yanti and Fenny make again preparations of fresh tempe. We still have to develop a procedure for cutting small and representative samples from the tempe blocs; the staining and microscopy part seems to be easier. Fenny is a great help in operating the HP. To our surprise we do not find much mycelium; instead a lot of large cells apparently derived from plant tissue (see photograph).

Pictures of tempe taken with the Axiostar fluorescence microscope.
Left: UV excitation of tempe-sample stained with DAPI and propidium iodide. The thin threads of the mold (Rhizopus?) seem dead.
Right: Blue light excitation with a X-filter. The green cells with red nuclei are probably plant cells.

About 25 students will get their bachelor degree (“Sarjana” and “Para-sarjana”; para=many) from the “Fakultas Sains dan Matematika`’. After a prayer and some talks the students come forward in white jackets and receive a trophy out of the hands of Lusi. There is live music, again a prayer and then an informal lunch. I talk with a student from East-Timor who will become a teacher. He speaks indonesian and hardly portugeese; but that is going to be changed now that they are independent!
In contrast to nearby towns like Semarang and Solo, Salatiga has a Christian majority of 60%, most of them catholic. In the whole of Indonesia the percentage of Christians is about 10%.

Lusi, as dean of the faculty, speaks to the students and their parents. After the formal session and a lunch, students come to Lusi to thank her for the education.

On Saturday the official graduation ceremony takes place which occurs three times a year. This time 530 students will graduate. The female students have to go to a hairdresser already at 5 o’clock in the morning! Their dress will cost them another $20!

The official graduation. Left: The members of the Senate are in beautiful dresses. In the middle are standing Kris Timotius, Rector of the University, and Lusi Dewi, Dean of the Fakultas Sains dan Matematika. Right: All students look beautiful!

We are fetched from our Hotel Le Beringin by a University car and guided through the crowd of students and parents to seats in the front for V.I.P. The speeches, a prayer and the naming of all stuidents is accompanied by gamelan music. The rector, Kris Timotius, moves the tassle at the left side to the right side of the graduation cap of all the 530 students that pass him. This solemn act of confirmation is performed in all Universities of Indonesia.
In his speech Kris Timotius mentions the dutchmen from Amsterdam at the VIP table and asks us to stand up, thanking us for bringing the micrsocope. After the ceremony we were invited to have lunch with the senate.

Jeffy&Ed Aschermann and Lidie as VIP’s at the graduation ceremony.

22 October: Tempe samples

On our trip around Rawah Paning, the lake near Salatiga, we were surprised by a heavy rain storm! (21 October 2008)

22 October. Tempe: fresh and spoiled

With Lusi and Kris we discuss possibilities for a project and a grant application. A technician brings two packages of tempe packed in banana leaves: fresh and rotten. The rotten, brown-colored tempe has a terrible smell. Only now I realize that all the fresh tempe is produced the previous day from soybeans that are imported from the US. Local farmers cannot make profit with growing soybeans.

Two packages of tempe: fresh and rotten.
Sudaryanti (technician), Fenny (biology student) and Lusi, making preparations in the lab.

In the lab we try to make preparations of the two samples. We have to vortex, to centrifuge and to dilute the fluorescence stains. Now I realize how spoiled we are in our dutch laboratory with all the modern equipment. We only succeed in photographing Rhizopus-spores and yeast cells from the starter culture given by Rob Samson of CBS (Fungal Biodiversity Center, Utrecht).