Sulfur Night

Midnight. Time to get up. After a quick snack, we piled into the 4X4. The streets of Banyuwangi are deserted at that hour of the night, and the driver is going fast. Through the rice fields, the jungle, under the rain. The road winds and climbs into the night. An hour later, the Jeep parked on a solid ground among other vehicles. The driver will set the entry fee at the hut, while we'll join the miners, who begin to walk the path, bamboo baskets on their back, talking, laughing in the darkness, illuminated only by the headlamps and the kretek cigarettes they smoke. Increasingly steep, the trail travels between the thorn bushes and trunks of ghostly trees, black, charred. Regularily, a low rumble accompanied with distant explosions is heard: not far from there, hidden in the clouds that envelop it, the Raung volcano is erupting since a few days. After an hour climbing, the vegetation completely disappears, leaving a devastated landscape of gray and ocher rocks. A few hundred meters left on the mountainside, and we arrive to the crater. Immediately, the smell that prevails here leaves no doubt about what awaits us down: a hell of sulfur and acid vapors. A sign warns visitors: going further is forbidden, and if you choose not to take care of this advice, it is at your own risk.

In the dark night, among the curls of smoke, sometimes, we can see strange blue glows, dancing in the bottom of the crater. it's like a haunting call, mesmerizing your mind to draw you into his trap. As an enormous and monstrous plant exhaling its putrid smell to attract and capture you.

The Miners then put their masks before descending into the crater. Years ago, it was a simple scarf tied over their face, but today they all have gas masks. Not always appropriate or effective completely, but it's still a real progress for the health of miners. Everywhere along the way and inside the crater, the miners leave bamboo baskets, what allows them to always have one on hand, and while the descent, those who did not had one yet grab one. If at the top or on the way we could have feel cold, here, the downer we go, the more we enter into the vapors. the atmosphere gets moist, loaded. 20 minutes later I'm down, next to the acid lake. In front of me, a yellow rock wall, and above, the blue flames crawling like eels on the side of the crater before disappearing into thin air. I try to photograph them, but the task is not simple, and with the fisheye, I have to get close to them at maximum.

Blue flames, fumaroles and sulfur rocks

Gas mask on the nose, I climb and sneak between the boulders and pipes that are trying to channel the fumes and find myself a few meters away from the flames, regularly taken in sulfur dioxide clouds spewed by the fumaroles around. I try to focus with my lens but each time a cloud passes over me, I'm good for cleaning it because the gases leave a sticky film .... When a cloud is around me, I close my eyes and wait for it to pass over. Impossible to differentiate, eyes closed, the caress of a cloud and the wind, so I open the eyes time to time to see where I stand. After a few minutes, I understood that I won't succeed this way, so i tried to turn back, but the numerous gas clouds that overwhelm me preventing me to move on, I was stuck there, half suffocating and waiting to open my eyes to see clearly enough to move. Suddenly, someone grabbed my arm. "Follow-me". I opened my eyes and saw in the smoke a small stocky figure that pulls me back. Out fumaroles, I cough a good shot and rub my eyes as if i had been through tear gas: gas take by the throat and eyes. "Ok? Good?" he looks at me smiling "Yes, now Good. Thanks" "Not go this way, this dangerous" he told me, pointing to the side of the flame carpet where I had ventured. He smiles again, then turns and leaves for a few steps down where he left his baskets. then, he grabbed a crowbar, that was lying there, and starts to hit the yellow rock strongly with the tip. Splinters fly under the battering and plates of about twenty centimeters thick rapidly detach from the rock. I digress a little to breathe...

The sun rises on the Kawah Ijen (foreground fumaroles and sulfur field. in the background the acid lake and vapors.)

Later, after the sunrise and the blue flames had become invisible again with daylight, I found my savior always busy the crater. He had time to carry a first shipment to the top, since, and he is now preparing his second and last load of the day: later it would be too hot and the conditions would no longer be tenable.

Halim sorts his blocks

Directly from the ground or from the pipes that have been installed on the deposits, the sulfur is flowing, red-ocher, in the liquid state. Immediately upon contact with the air it cools and solidifies in bright yellow smoldering plaques that minors crowbar to break. they tend to fight over the best corners and crowbars. Halim, he remains calm, he gathers his blocks, and even when his annoying neighbor takes his crowbar or claims that this block is, in fact, one of his, he remains calm and continues to load his baskets as if nothing was.

Once the baskets are full, with well-calibrated blocks, a folded towel on the shoulder and he carry on it the flat bamboo rod that connects and supports both baskets. A good half-hour, that's what it takes to go back up to the edge of the crater.

On the way we'll stop twice to rest a little. We'll use the opportunity to chat a bit while eating chocolate cereal bar and smoking cigarettes. Halim is 31 years old, is married and has a little girl of 2 years. He's working here as a miner for 4 years, and brings about 80 kilos of sulfur each load. it is bought by the company for 1000 Indonesian Rupees per kilo, which assures him a daily wage between 11 and 15 euros, which is, as far as i know, quite a good wage in Java. Then the company treats the sulfur, and exports it all over the world for the chemical industry. the Kawah Ijen Sulfur is worldwidly recognized as one of the purest.

Once on the crater rim, Halim load the blocks into big white jute bags, tie them, weighed and branded before entrusting them to a trolley pusher. Once back down to the hut of the company, Halim will retrieve all his bags, which will be weighed again, then he'll get paid.

07h in the morning, down the path, face drawn, moist, impregnated with sulfur to the bone, I watch the morning sky getting clear, and a little further, still hidden in a scarf of ashes, Raung (the one who roars, in Indonesian) continues to rumble slowly ...

The writer, down to the bottom, but taking reassurance with a chocolate bar ;-) I've been helped for this article by Céline-Eva Devos, who corrected my mistakes ans translations.