Download The global price of the spice nutmeg has tripled in recent months.
Farmers in the Banda islands, Indonesia’s famous Spice Islands are dreaming of a return to the Golden Age of the 1700s, when nutmeg was as valuable as gold.
It bought incredible wealth mainly to the Dutch who colonised Indonesia for more than 300 years.
Esther de Jong travelled to a small island to meet the relatives of the last Dutch nutmeg farmer.
In the tiny harbour of Banda Neira long motor boats arrive with bags filled with freshly harvested nutmeg.
53-year-old Maradji, a farmer from the island of Run, just made three times what he did last year.
“The money is for my kids to go to school and to eat. I also fish for tuna, just to make our life a bit better. Today I got 130.000 per kilo, so eight million in total.”
That’s 800 US dollars.
For centuries fierce battles were fought between colonial powers for control over these Spice Islands.
At one point nutmeg was worth even more than gold. It was used to preserve meat and was believe to have medicinal, almost mystical powers.
It was the Dutch that conquered the Banda islands and set up a strict system were the nutmeg plantations where run by Dutch landowners.
I am off to meet the last remaining Dutch spice farmer of this region...Paulus Pongky van den Broeke.
I find Ponky planting nutmeg plants into the fertile ground of his centuries old plantation.
Pongky’s ancestor Jan van den Broeke was one of the first spice farmers. He arrived here in the early 1600s.
“He did not know anything, he only had simple instructions. He had to learn from experience, from nature. And he got help from his local workers. In the time they worked out the best way to do it....”
His grandson went on to become the richest spice farmer in Banda’s.
Imported marble covered the floors of their house; some say it was laid with coins. Expensive chandeliers from Europe hung from the ceiling.
They held balls and concerts, where they ate imported European food and drivers picked up guests in carriages cover with gold with gold.
But the good times didn’t last.
At the end of the 19th century the price of nutmeg dropped. Some of the spice farmers went back to Europe, others tried their luck elsewhere.
The Van den Broekes stayed. But when Indonesia became independent after the Second World War their land was confiscated by the state.
“After the independence, my grandfather and father came back from the Japanese war camps. But when they came back they where not allowed to turn back to their houses and fields, the Indonesian government had taken all the gardens. In 1976 my father asked for compensation, he waited and waited but did not get anything. After years of waiting and filing complaints he got only 12,5 hectares back from Groot Waling, from the 40 hectares it once was.”
Ponky spent many lives living in the capital Jakarta, far away from the quiet of the nutmeg plantation.
“I came back to the Banda’s after my father sent me a telegram in with he summoned me to come back. I had to help him at the plantation. I thought: what do I have to do at those tiny islands; it will be so lonely, so quiet. But then my mum told me I had to come back, to help with the harvest. So I did.”
Pongky convinced his wife to join him.
And when his father died he took over the business and moved into the grand house of his forefathers.
But in 1999 inter-religious violence broke out in the region--- more than 9000 people were killed.
Pongky stands in the ruins of his great-grandfathers colonial house where five members of his family were murdered by a Muslim mob.
“All of a sudden a group of people were in front of the house. It was a whole group. I had to escape through the window. And hide myself in a nearby school. One of the men helped one of my daughters to escape. The others were executed. Three of them here, the rest over there close to the house. I never expected them to attack innocent women and children. But they did and killed them. All of them.”
Two of his children and his wife were killed.
Pongky thinks he was attacked because he was Christian and successful.
He fled to Jakarta, with his remaining children.
“I did not want to live any more, all the joy in my live was gone, but two of my kids were still alive. I had to stay alive for them and for them I have returned to Banda. I want to give them something.”
In Jakarta he converted to Islam and married a Muslim woman.
“On his deathbed I promised my father to forever take care of the nutmeg gardens, not only for me, but for our ancestors and for his grandchildren. That’s why I am still here.”
“I have the feeling that is goes better then ever. If that means I have to work really hard, as hard as my ancestors, I will do that. I want to rebuild this historic house for my family. The golden times will come back, like during the Dutch days. The prices are rising and I hope that for the first time Bandanese people will become rich from nutmeg.”
