Editor’s Note:
This article is a personal expatriate story that captures one of the many cultural beliefs and urban legends that expatriates may encounter while living in Indonesia. While beliefs surrounding dukuns vary widely among Indonesians, the story offers an interesting glimpse into the intersection of modern life, traditional beliefs, and expatriate experiences in Jakarta.
For readers unfamiliar with the term, a dukun is a traditional Indonesian healer, spiritual practitioner, fortune teller, or shaman. Depending on the region and individual practitioner, a dukun may be consulted for traditional healing, spiritual guidance, finding lost objects, relationship matters, protection, or other supernatural concerns. While many Indonesians do not consult dukuns, belief in spiritual practitioners remains an enduring part of Indonesian culture and folklore, and stories involving dukuns continue to be widely shared throughout the country.
Mike’s Missing Underpants
Mike was not too worried when his laundry returned and he found two pairs of underpants missing; but his best friend, Rina, was. So concerned that she went to the laundry to find them, where the staff in the laundry could not find them.
Calling Mike that afternoon, asking him if he had had any girls around that week. Mike honestly answered, “Yes”, still puzzled over the behavior of his normally rational friend.
“Are you thinking about meeting any of them again?” she replied.
Mike, wondering if his best friend was getting a little jealous, said nothing.
The next few nights Rina came around and watched Mike suspiciously, and he began to get worried about her. Mike had never slept with Rina; they had been buddies at university together in the United States. When Rina returned to Indonesia after graduating, she found Mike a job in Jakarta, a kind of payback for all the help he gave her in America.
Mike put up with this behavior for a while, until he asked Rina if she was jealous considering they had both agreed they were only friends.
Rina laughed.
“No, but I am afraid one of the girls might have taken your underpants to a dukun.”
A dukun is the Indonesian version of a shaman, and many Indonesians believe in them. All over Jakarta, you can still find people who offer the services of a dukun. Not the stereotypical image of a witch doctor, many dukuns appear entirely modern and ordinary, while offering a variety of mystical services.
Some girls often go to a dukun to have susuk, which means tiny particles of gold or diamonds are believed to be inserted into the body to enhance beauty, charm, confidence, or attractiveness. I have seen many Indonesian girls whose faces seemed to glitter slightly with gold. Even one girl at my office, who was perfectly normal and religious, reportedly had susuk—though perhaps only for her husband.
Dukuns can also supposedly make someone fall in love with you; all you need to do is take them a pair of underpants or panties, and they will do the rest.
I am not sure it works, but many seasoned expatriates swear they have known friends who suddenly became devoted to people they previously had little interest in, and some attribute it to the intervention of a dukun.
One time I mislaid my passport. We could not find it anywhere. My fiancée’s mother was worried and told her that she knew a dukun who would know where it was.
The point is that my fiancée’s mother was a practicing Catholic and a professional businesswoman. So it made me wonder just how deeply rooted belief in the powers of a dukun can be in parts of Indonesian society.
Rina never found Mike’s underpants, and Mike swore he never saw any of the girls again that he had slept with that week.
He did marry someone a few months later—a village girl he met in a nightclub in Kota.
Rina, to this day, swears that somehow a dukun was involved and that the cause was the missing underpants.
By Mark W. Medley
Originally published in 2008.
Excerpted from and published with permission of Mark W. Medley, author of City of Dreams: An Extraordinary Journey Inside the Heart of Indonesia’s Capital – Jakarta.
Copyright © 2008 Mark W. Medley.
