It is hard to adventuring every region in Indonesia. The country is a very rich archipelago, consist of thousands islands, hundreds ethnics, cultures, and natural resources. Every ethnic that live in a territory in Indonesia develop their each own way of life.
Sure, they would adjust themselves with the environment and condition of nature where they live. They process the plants that grown around them to become all short of shape and use it creatively, such as clothes, weapons, toys, art utensils, to medicines.
But if we want to know more, we could just go to Indonesia Ethnobotanical Museum in Bogor, West Java. In this museum, we could see all about the diversity of ethnics in Indonesia, with the richness of its cultures and natural resources. The museum has 1,700 ethnobotanical objects, from Nangroe Aceh Darussalam to Papua.
Ethnobotanical may be unfamiliar for most of people. It is a branch of botanical science. It is about the relations between indigene societies with the plants around them. If we study about ethnobotanical, we could know the origin of a plant and how it was disseminated.
We also would know about how adaptive and creative people in a region could be. Every potential of a plant could be used to fulfill their needs. It is a proof that botanical gives wide influences to a culture and its society.
Ethnobotanical Museum is located at Jalan Ir. H. Juanda 22-24, not far from Kebun Raya Bogor. The building is not directly seen from the street and looked old.
I felt hesitate once I came in to the building. It was so desolate and dark. But, my wary just went away while my feet stepping inside the exhibition room, orderly arranged with much enough collections.
The admission ticket is relatively cheap, only Rp2,000 per person. If you want to get more detail information, you need to request a museum tour guide to accompany you. This museum has four tour guides. They always ready to explain about these museum‘�s collections to visitor.
In the front side of exhibition room, you can see some plant fossils that found from various regions in Indonesia. There are various kinds of weapons, such as lances, bows and arrows, also sculptures.
Other collections are shown orderly in several glass cupboards. Some are classified by region, like Toraja, Dayak, Bali or Lombok. Some others are classified by genre, like rattan or sago.
There are also some collections that classified and exhibited by the use, such as fishing, weaving or kitchen equipment, music to religion ceremony utensils. Beside those, there are various kinds of plants and fruits that dry and wetly preservatives. There are also sample collections of traditional medicines.
“Once a week, all of collections are cleaned. There are some objects that just need to be ragged on its surface. Some collections need to be sowed by camphor inside the cupboard. Once a year, we also invite a fumigation expert to maintain the collections, so they won‘t be covered by molds or eaten by insects,” said Mulyani Rahayu, an ethnobotanic from the museum.
She added that the museum also took part in exhibition event to introduce about ethnobotanical to society, at least once or twice a year. She said that Ethnobotanical Museum is being planned to become a history and human activity museum. So, the young generation would know more about the diversity of botanical in Indonesia.
“If it happens in the future, we expect that the visitors not just come and see, but also could smell and feel, for example, the bitter taste of brotowali, the good smell and taste of cinnamon,” she said.
Astri Ihsan/Published by Indonesia Rising, Jurnal Nasional, 2nd November 2009
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