Becoming a Medicine Man: An Exploration of One Space Between Childhood and Adulthood in Java

This paper explores one space between childhood and adulthood in post reformasi Indonesia. Drawing on Benedict Anderson’s 1972 work on youth in Java, I have two objectives. Firstly, I ask; is the experience of migrating to the capital city comparable with the withdrawal from society and separation from family and kampung that Anderson (1972) deems a crucial process for boys to become men in traditional Java? Secondly, I propose that the bosses and family members who teach young men to trade in the city- commonly referred to as “bos” (sic)-, can be considered as tantamount to the traditional gurus, or teacher like figures that Anderson describes as essential authority figures crucial to this period of separation that was an essential ingredient of “adolescence”, in Java’s mystical past. This paper spurs from dual sited ethnographic fieldwork conducted between July 2007 and June 2008, where I traced the extended kinship based employment migration of a group of young men from an agricultural-based village in a highland region of the district of Banjarnegara, Central Java, who migrate to a red-light district of Indonesia’s capital city Jakarta. The boys I am talking about all sell obat kuat, which is literally “strong medicine” for men- yet better understood as potency enhancing medicine for mainly men, and also includes desire enhancing potions for women (which are often purchased by men, to enhance the sexual experience of men).