Women’s Story in A Cup of Tea

Kompas/Yuniadhi Agung

Tea is prepared for the sultan at Yogyakarta Palace on Saturday. The Patehan ritual, as the ceremony is known, has become a tourist attraction for palace visitors.

Every cup of tea tells a story; about women who wake up before sunrise, about those who spend their days working in the dust of bulk tea, about reality, tears and sacrifice.

In the early hours before sunrise in early July, female tea pickers on the western slope of Mount Slamet, Central Java, were leaving their homes. Dressed in thick clothes, they were carrying empty bamboo baskets to hold tea shoots.