SHEEP SHEARING IN INDRAMAYU

Several years ago, no, it's more than that, it's more than three decennia ago, I was working in Indramayu, a district on the north coast of West Java, on a regional and rural development project. Struck by the large number of sheep grazing on any available patch of grass, I decided to investigate whether we could develop a wool project. That is, shearing, spinning and weaving of decorative wall hangings—tapestry, or kelims, would be too exalted a word.

The weaving of decorative little carpets was taken care of through the involvement of the Arts Department at the Bandung Technical University (ITB). They would assist in getting the simple looms required for the purpose, train operators and produce designs. Spinning was to be a home industry for which a spinning wheel that we discovered in the attic of the main hospital in Bandung, was copied and distributed—it had been used for occupational therapy and the instructor was willing to teach our home workers.

That left the shearing. It had to be with hand-shears, electricity not being available at the venues the shearing would take place. So I turned to a friend who worked for an Australian engineering firm building a dam in the region. Several weeks later he called saying that they had located a shearer who was willing to come and train our group of aspiring shearers. Quite a mixed lot they were: farmers and farm labourers, trishaw pullers, a night guard and some unemployed youngsters, but they had come forward answering our search (spread by word of mouth).

The Bupati (District Head) was to officially open the training programme, a three week effort that would take us to every sub-district of Indramayu. For its first demonstration sheep owners had been prepared to bring their animals, and banners advertising the event  had been hung on the road leading to the location.

While waiting for the Bupati, the Australian shearer/instructor—at six-foot-six he stood out among the Indramayu crowd—looked around and asked, where are the sheep?
I pointed at some 20 to 30 animals assembled on the field and said, there, there and there.
No, he answered, those are goats! And why is that bloke washing his animal?
Probably to honour you, the foreign instructor, as the animal is quite dirty, I answered.
Doesn't he know about wet shearing? It's strictly prohibited. It causes a nasty disease that massively swells your balls. Tiny pieces of the wet wool penetrate the skin and somehow that's the cause of it
Oh my, I didn’t know, I'm sorry, I'll tell the participants to take the wet animals out.
Never mind, he said, I'm not fussy.

Now as you can see from the photo below the size of the shearer and the size of the sheep were not exactly compatible. And when it came to the shearing position shown in the photograph, the owners would cringe and hold their breath hoping that their animal would not be damaged. Later we heard that some of them had complained: not only were the ribs of their animal nearly crushed, but after being shorn their animals looked skinny and their market value had drastically dropped.

When several months later I checked the performance of the shearers, I found that they had adopted a new technique: they hypnotised the animals (or maybe it was some sort of magic) to make them lie down quietly; thus no crushing or tiring shearing-positions bent over the sheep, just squatting and leisurely cutting the wool off.