The Spice Route to Cancer City

Visiting Ika in Welahan, a small town that functions as Jepara’s Chinatown (hence the Confucius Temple), I forgot how close we would be to the hipster holy grail: Kudus, the birthplace of the Kretek (with a sharp rolled-“R”). In Indonesia, clove cigarettes have an onomatopoetic name, and with that crisp, crackling of the burning clove oil, my white-Anglo skin tingled with colonial desire (okay, so the Irish were on the Colonized-end of things… let’s just ignore that for effect). I needed to follow the clove-smoke-wisps to the origin of the industry here in the Spice Islands.

In reality, the “Spice Islands” refer more directly to the Maluku Islands to the east of Java, which were famous for their density of spices – cloves and nutmeg in particular. But as far as my History and Social Studies education stretched in High School, the whole of Indonesia was the “Spice Islands”, and apparently Indonesia’s history ended with the inventions of Mrs. Dash and Refrigerators. So in the Middle Ages, when Marco Polo and his posse of Crusaders (or Monks… was Gregor Mendel there?) went in search of spices, he would have landed in the Malukus. For modern day Colonist Posses in search of clove cigarettes, they will land in the town of Kudus on the North coast of Java.

Driving through the streets, past the Djarum factory (Djarum Blacks were often the Hipster clove of choice before the US Government banned the import of clove cigarettes back in August or September of this year) and some of the smaller, local brands, the air is filled with a heavy scent of fresh clove, in contrast to the common scent of clove cigarette smoke. Winding past the factories, we opted to visit the Kretek Museum and get a little more history rather than take a factory tour. The simple and donation-based (FREE) museum consisted of a few awesome dioramas depicting the rural, cottage-industry kretek production and the modernization of the industry into factory-based production. Highlights include a Wall-of-Fame for influential individuals in the invention and industrialization of the kretek, as well an extensive display of special packages, including Djarum packages which were created just for Indonesia’s President and Vice-President (since we wouldn’t want them smoking cigarettes out of the same packaging as the lumpen, or even the proletariat for that matter…).

Inspired by the displays, we decided that Ika’s future children should be named Nico and Tiana, which combine to commemorate the genus of that nicotine-breathing plant we know as tobacco. The scary thing is that the names would actually work pretty well here with the local languages. I was satisfied with the museum, and we opted out of searching for the local, filter-less clove cigarettes which are still hand-rolled in corn husk. My lungs are appreciative.

Wall of Fame:

Cigarette boxes:

President's and VP's Boxes: