Lilir and her partner Westi are young Balinese who have committed themselves to keeping the traditional healing arts and medicines of Bali alive. Ni Wayan Lilir was born at home in 1972 in the village of Padang Tegal Kaja near Ubud. Her father and mother used Balinese herbs and other natural remedies and practices in treating family members. I Made Westi was born in Mambal, Badung in 1973. In addition to absorbing a wealth of information from their parents, they also studied herbal applications on their own. Together with a local children’s association, Yaysan Anak Bahagia, Lilir and Westi have contributed to an illustrated book on Balinese healing herbs which was published by Yayasan Bumi Sehat in June of 2008.
Where did you two meet?
We met during a course for tour guides where we discovered that we had a lot in common. My father and mother were devoted herbalists who depended heavily on traditional recipes to treat their family of 11 children. Westi’s parents were farmers who preferred organic farming over using chemicals which had even then become so widespread. We decided to use our jobs as guides to help preserve Bali’s unique indigenous healing arts. One effective way to do this was to teach tourists about local medicines and plants.
What is your educational background?
Our education is largely self-taught. Westi studied herbs so he could teach others about Bali’s living pharmacy. He posed endless questions to neighbors, collected specimens for local folk doctors to identify and researched the Balinese, Latin, Indonesian and English names of healing herbs. His father thought he was crazy at the time - he couldn’t see the value in it. But he was quite knowledgeable about herbs and he spent a lot of time learning as much as he could from the man before he died. We both still spend a great deal of time in the field studying Balinese plants and using them in daily life.
Is Bali a suitable place for the use of herbs and natural healing?
Bali has a strong tradition of Bali Usada, traditional healing, which uses natural herbs and spices, holistic therapies, massage and energy healing to cure physical and mental illnesses. The lush Bali landscape produces a wide range of herbal medicines known as jamu. A few examples are boreh for headaches and rheumatism and castor oil for wounds. The Balinese still regularly consult traditional healers or balian who work with divine energy. This respect for alternative healing has also attracted an impressive number of leading international holistic healers who have settled in Bali to run their own practices.
Why do you think that the study of herbs is so important?
The use of healing herbs on Bali has been passed down mostly through oral tradition. For hundreds of years, healers and herbalists taught their children and students the healing arts by word of mouth. But in the last several generations there have been fewer and fewer young people interested in mastering this body traditional wisdom. I study now with three traditional healers, but they are very old. Only the old people still have the knowledge and there’s a real danger that all of their wisdom will die with them if it’s not recorded. The understanding of how to use traditional plants is dying out as quickly as the plants themselves are disappearing in the face of rampant development on the island.
What are you doing about it?
In 1996 I was working as a pembantu with Melanie Templar. Melanie, who has lived in Bali for 14 years, became fascinated with herbs, and started to work with D’ayu Suci and others to develop herbal products. The following year Utama Spice was established to bring these products to the world. Utama Spice has now grown into a small sustainable company that works with other local producers and herbal businesses such as Bali Asli to develop new products rooted in Asian tradition. The company directly employs 15 staff and indirectly employs about 15 others. Westi is one of these, making herbal aromatic candles. His family also supplies the company with organic herbs. We also promote bee and seaweed farming.
Can you give me some examples of your products?
Our first product was a massage oil made according to traditional Balinese methods. We then experimented with a formula for a natural incense without using sandalwood, an endangered tree. In fact, we don’t cut down any trees to make our products. We have also invented a unique glue to adhere the herb powder to the incense stick. Now our range includes a natural insect repellent, candles made from coconut wax and tree resins, sea salts with plant extracts and body scrubs made with local tubers.
Where do you get your ingredients?
Just 5% of our ingredients, such as lavender oil, orange oil and green cardamom, are sourced in Indonesia. It is the company’s long-term goal to grow all the herbs it needs through local farmers’ cooperatives here and to be as organic as possible. However, this is difficult when farmers who live and work upstream use chemicals.
Do you do anything else besides sell herbs?
We are both qualified guides, so we have started offering herb walks, a 3-4 hour journey of exploration through Ubud’s rice terraces and ravines. During the walks, we introduce participants to the dozens of natural herbal remedies that grow everywhere in the fields and treat our guests to healthy traditional Balinese snacks and young coconut milk. Westi is also learning Japanese in order to broaden our client base.
Where can my readers learn more about your work?
For info on our Herb Walks and our products, email me:
herbwalk@astaga.com or supadupa@dps.centrin.net.id.
For anyone interested in being considered for Siapa, please contact: <pakbill2003@yahoo.com>
