Jenang Candy Maker

We pass this small village called Rongkop Village, Gunung Kidul, Jogyakarta area during the trip to Borobudur Temple for Vesak Day 2015.

In this village we found out that most of the people are "Jenang/ Dodol Candy Maker". Some kind of Indonesian traditional candy that made of coconut syrup, brown sugar and pandan leave. What interest me is how the people  so dedicated to do this traditional cooking way where they inherited  from their ancestors.

The process of Jenang Maker takes about 9 hours stirring the big pots made of copper. And before that , it tooks about 3 hours to get all of the ingredient ready. So total 12 hours work in front of big copper pots with burning wood. You can imagine the heat and the smoke in this room.

They only cook the Jenang whenever they receive the order. During the day when they are not cooking, they'll be collecting ground peanut from the field. Yes this is not big city, people still walking bear footed in this area and collecting wood from the forest for cooking and other things.


From one big pots they can make around 65 wrap of candy and they sell it for Rp.15.000 each. So the total gross income is less than U$ 70 for 12 hours works.

Maybe not bad for them, Maybe not much for some of us, And yet, they are so dedicated.
What i learn from this experience, i never see them complaining about their work and they just keep doing what they can do , day by day.

Thanking God that they still have another day to make Jenang Candy.

end.