Download Indonesia usually has two distinct seasons.
It rains for six months and then it’s dry for the rest of the year.
But this year the rains did not stop. It has rain almost everyday all year on the main island of Java.
As a result rice has not been able to dry and crops have rotted.
For the first time in three years the Indonesian government has imported rice.
Traditionally Indonesians have relied on the powers of a ‘rain-man’ or pawing hujan to control the rain.
But it seems even his powers are fading in the face of changing global weather patterns.
Esther de Jong went to met one in Tegalega in West-Java.
63 year old Muhamad Subadri is worried about the rain.
“I have never experienced this. Normally the rain falls in January February march, April, May, after that there should be a dry season, but this year it even rained on Indonesian independence day in late August!.”
Everybody calls him Ubad.
In the rainy season farmers hire him to stop the rain from falling.
In the dry season he is brought in to make rain.
“The almighty have given me this power. I bring the incense to someone who wants to stop the rain and I pray to god. The spell is mine, I cannot share that. If an area wants the rain to stop then people have to tell me where it is then with incense and I pray and then the incense goes to the house.”
This is the first year no one asked him to make it rain - and that worries him.
Especially because he’s also a farmer.
“Worried!! Because it will have affect the rice harvest, the rice cannot dry and for other plants and crops you need mor fertilizer and pesticides and that’s expensive.”
Ujang Majudin has hired the rain main several times.
“Sometimes we do that it is an effort to stop the rain but now days it does not always work it depends on the almighty. The rain maker is no longer strong enough to stop the rain.”
He heads a cooperation of more than 300 farmers.
He takes me to their storage shed to point out the crates and bags of rotting vegetables.
“This is a squash normally it is smooth not like this...see this a scar. It was only picked a few days ago. The Supermarkets don’t want it if it’s like this. These green beans are same, rotting because of the rain. I can’t sell these. We throw away more than we sell.”
Outside trucks are picking up food to take to supermarkets and farmers are dropping of their crops of motorbikes.
For the first time in three years the Indonesian government has imported rice to prevent a shortage.
Benni Soromin from the UN Food and Agriculture Organization says if the rain continues it could affect food supply across the region.
“It could be a very wide impact, on the whole of Asia. We’ll know by early next year, because it’s (rain) predicted to last to early 2011. But the impact is very significant.”
Back on the farm the wind picks up and grey clouds slowly make their way to the fields.
Ubad looks worried. He believes maybe his raining controlling powers have been overused.
“Last year during the rainy season many people want to stop the rain so the rain that did not fall then is falling now. But I don’t think it is a punishment it is a natural phenomenon.”
Ubad says the rains are getting too strong for him alone to stop.
If all the rain men in the area combined under a strong leadership maybe then they could do it.
