JAKARTA POST (Indonesia) 24 August 07 Reptile Broker (Sri Wahyuni)
Purbalingga, Central Java: People call him Saddam, but his real name is Sardam; neither are usual names for a Javanese man, and are just as unique as the way the 32-year-old father of two makes a living. A resident of Kembaran Kulon village in Purbalingga, Central Java , Sardam is an independent broker of unusual commodities like snakes, frogs, geckos, lizard, turtles, and other reptiles.
“I’ve been in the business since 1999,” Sardam said during a recent visit to his humble home on the outskirts of Purbalingga, some 200 kilometers west of the provincial capital, Semarang.
The morning of my visit, Sardam was busy receiving some a dozen visitors — all reptile hunters. Some brought slaughtered and skinned frogs while others brought live snakes, geckos and lizards.
“This is my catch of the day,” said Yatin, 39, delivering a sack of geckos and a sack of snakes of various sizes and species.
Sardam quickly opened the gunnysack containing geckos. Wearing only a glove made of fabric, he skillfully sorted the animals according to size while counting them.
He did the same for the snakes — only this time, he no longer wore the glove. With bare hands, he took the venomous animals out of the sack and removed them to another for the counting.
The snakes were also separated according to size, and those less than a meter long were put into a plastic container. The rest were put in a gunnysack that was already half full of snakes measuring more than a meter long.
Sardam’s 27-year-old wife, Emi Surati, jotted down the catch of each hunter in a small notebook, which she would refer to in issuing a receipt and payment.
“You made a big catch today,” commented Sardam as Emi handed a smiling Yatin Rp 96,000 for a dozen snakes and about 60 geckos.
Sardam buys big geckos at Rp 700 each, and small ones at Rp 200 each. Large snakes of over a meter in length are priced at Rp 1,500 to Rp 10,000 each, depending on the species, while small ones are a maximum Rp 5,000 each.
Each commodity carries a different price. Frogs, for example, are Rp 10,000-22,000 per kilogram, while house lizards are Rp 20,000 per kilogram.
Sardam only accepts unharmed reptiles, and does not hesitate to reject “damaged” animals, even if they had just a slight scratch.
“My dealer would also do the same if I insisted on sending him such goods,” said Sardam, adding that all the live animals were sent to a major dealer in Ciamis, West Java, while the slaughtered frogs were mostly sent to Purworejo, Central Java.
Sardam usually makes a shipment once every three days. For each shipment, he needs some Rp 3 million to purchase the reptiles caught by the hunters. He, however, declined to say how much he earned from the business.
“I am not making a big profit from this,” he said. “Frogs, for example, I sell with a Rp 1,000 mark-up per kilogram … just enough to fulfill our daily needs,” he said.
Asked about what the animals were for, however, Sardam said he knew nothing about it.
“I’m not sure about that — I never ask. Some say they are for traditional medicines. Still others say they are for consumption or even export,” said Sardam, who first entered the business as a hunter.
Being bitten by either snakes or geckos, therefore, is nothing new for Sardam, who has traveled as far as West Java and Jakarta to hunt reptiles and seek a bigger catch.
He said he once almost fainted after being bitten by a cobra. It was fortunate that he always carried with him a remedy locally known as watu wisa (poison stone), so that he survived from the bite.
“I quickly tied my arm here tightly with a rope, cut the bite with a very sharp knife, put the stone on it, and left it there until it fell off on its own, indicating that the poison had all been absorbed by the stone,” said Sardam, showing a scar on his left hand.
Other unforgettable experiences include a chaotic incident he unwittingly caused in the neighborhood when several snakes escaped from one of his sacks.
Sardam is relatively well known in Purbalingga as a reptile broker, and hunters come from regions more than 50 kilometers away to sell their catch to him.
In fact, he is so well known that people often add the name of a reptile after Sardam’s name.
“We often call him Saddam ‘Kodhok’, Saddam ‘Ula’, or Saddam ‘Tekek’,” a neighbor told the Post, referring to the local terms for frog, snake and gecko, respectively.
“I don’t mind that, as it is what I do to make a living,” said
Sardam. He added that, having never finished elementary school, he had a very limited choice when it came to making money.
“What is most important is that I am not disturbing anyone, nor violating any regulations,” he said.
Unlike Sardam, whose only source of income is brokering reptiles, many of the hunters who sold their catch to him that morning said they hunted as a side job. Some actually worked as pedicab drivers or as manual workers, while others were farmers.
“We need almost zero capital to (hunt),” said 42-year-old Sarkim.
He said all that hunting required were simple tools they could make themselves, using spare materials available in the neighborhood.
“We may just need to buy batteries for the flashlight we use to hunt at night. If we hunt at daytime, we don’t need to buy them either, do we?” said Sarkim.
Reptile Broker