The yellow Hell of the Ijen and the Soldiers of Sulphur

For many people coming to terms with a globalized everyday life became quite an essential daily task. In the East of the Indonesian island of Java, at the Ijen volcano (Kawah Ijen) to be more precise, courageous men are ruining their health day by day. To make their living, everyone literally transforms into a hell of a guy, when wresting the yellow gold from the fumaroles in a height of 2400 meters. And also for me visiting the Kawah Ijen and its acid lake should mean a test of mettle.

Shortly after sunrise the road from Banyuwangi up to Kawah Ijen is populated by hundreds of coffee pickers. To both coffee types, Arabica as well as Robusta, the volcanic soil is offering perfect conditions necessary for growth. A few meters further up, short before the sheer crater rocks start to dominate the scenery, some other men just woke up. They do it the same way the coffee pickers do and derive advantage from the early morning, when the midday heat is still far away. They put on their shoes, drink a Kopi (coffee), grab for a cloth or perforated gas mask and make their way to the volcano.

Over night the sulphur-saturated vapours of the Ijen volcano restored the original condition of the crater bottom near the fumaroles and the area at the feet of the steaming metal tubes is homogeneously covered with yellow again. “That’s what we’ll mine now”, says Mohamed, having a certain experienced undertone in his voice. The small, about 1.64 meters tall man is the supervisor, whereas the word supervisor sounds like labour protection, shutoffs and good working conditions. At the Kawah Ijen it just means that somebody is a bit more in charge than others. “Ten days a month we are working down here. The rest of the month we spend with our families. Personally I am living with my wife and five children in Banyuwangi“, explains Mohamed in more or less fluent English.

From the visitor’s entrance to the crater it is another 3 kilometre long way to the volcano’s summit and when reaching the crater region you also made it through an altitude difference of 500 meters. Along that way you also pass the shelter where the workers are staying over night and where the sulphur loads get weighed and paid off. The scenery around the crater looks spooky. Imagine standing on the edge of a huge, more than 1 kilometre wide and heavily eroded caldera, whose upper slopes are literally free of life as everything died off gas-caused. The gas leaking from the crater bottom is a hair-raising stink; you even can smell it standing on the crater rim only, the so called Ijen plateau. When looking through the smoke screen you can already spot small yellow moving spots deep down in the volcano – the workers.

The crater and the whole scenery looks like standing on the fringe of a giant cooling tower. Tons of sulphur steam emphasize that impression. In the southeast of the caldera giant fumaroles are emerging and rising up to sky; fumaroles being so strongly saturated with sulphur that cooling down the steam is enough for making the sulphur sublimate out. Red like blood the chemical element “S” is creeping out of the barrels that are mounted at the end of the cooling pipes. It doesn’t take much time until it turns yellow and becomes as hard as stone. On productive days in the morning those sulphur beds can be up to 8 meters thick.

Ijen’s crater bowl is the home of a magically shimmering turquoise lake being 1km long and up to 200 meters deep. A pH-value of less than 0,3 makes it one of the most acidic volcanic waters in the world. Easily the acid absorbs the egg that I have taken with me from Banyuwangi just for that purpose. Standing at the lake’s bank Mohamed disappears in the tent calling “Wait Mister Flo, I have thermometer!” After rummaging around he comes back and holds the temperature sensor into the lake. 40°C, 80°C, 120°C – when the thermometer stopped at more than 200°C, my brows start to knit and I don’t want to know how surprised I was looking. However, soon it turned out that the temperature sensor saw the acid lake a few times too often and that the actual average temperature of the lake is about 40 degrees. Those several feeding rivers around the lake are much hotter though, they’re literally boiling. Shortly it is clear: the Ijen is only sleeping and he’s keeps an eye open while doing that…

Being back on the mining plateau the wind suddenly shifts and pushes the steam into the crater. My hands automatically take the gas mask and push it in my face with might and main. I am breathing voraciously, but even the air filtered by the mask is beyond all bearing; it feels like your lungs are burning. Not to mention the pain in the eyes. My blood curdles when throwing a glance at what is happening around me. One of Mohamed’s workers passed out and faded away in the sulphur steam. Meanwhile the steam is that dense that you literally cannot see your hand in front of your face; visibility is less than 10cm. All that happened within few seconds only.

Being completely surrounded by dense sulphur fumes and standing not far away from an acid lake, orientation and the feeling where is left and right becomes pretty essential. I hunkered down and tied down the gas mask belt so tight, that it literally cut into my face skin. There are only a few moments in life when the human’s dependency on technics, in my case the dependency on the mask’s thin plastic layer, becomes that apparent. In small steps I felt my way through the yellow fog and suddenly touched the worker’s pants. It wasn’t pretty difficult to take the small man on my shoulders and like an insect I duck-walked towards the bright side of life, as meanwhile the sulphur fumes fortunately allowed to identify from what side the sunlight is coming from. Immediately all other men flock to us and, blessing in disguise, the bloke’s vital function didn’t take a back seat. To my utter dismay he walked directly back to work after waking up from his severe black out………

“Don’t say, up, back!”, followed by “Lose job…” were the first tremulous words that crossed Mohamed’s lips. At the latest when sharing my rations and having a luxurious apple feast it was clear, that my lips are sealed and all things happened will remain in the crater. The 11a.m. landmark was already in sight and it was time to go either way. To boot there were more and more tourists were daring to climb down to the crater bottom. Wearing flip-flops and a pulp facemask only, a Frenchman hit the nail on head: “The smoke is killing me!”

Mohamed insisted on helping me to carry the photo equipment back to the crater rim. The small brown eyes were quite flabbergasted when realizing that he made the promise to have 20 kilogram on his back all the time :-) Still that is not a real competition to the usual 70-80kg heavy sulphur load that the workers have to carry on their shoulders over the crater rim. Tread-less rubber boots aren’t a big help if you have to climb a steep and rugged rock face; one blunder and you plus the people behind you get a serious problem. For a last time the wind came back and pushed the sulphur fumes against the crater wall, instantly making the sulphur soldiers moan loudly. A spooky scenery. However that comes as no surprise, as many of the workers have only a cloth to “protect” their mouth and nose from the fumes. Most of the cloths are that coarsely meshed, they are a better fishing net, but not an inhalation protection.

Having reached the crater rim the tourists were pretty surprised when we climbed out of the volcano arm in arm, giggling and speaking about all the world and his wife in broken English-Indonesian. Together with the last porters we were heading to the valley. At the shelter they get the money for their cargo, which is 600 rupees per kilogram at the moment. That is 4 Euro-Cent, making a sulphur load as valuable as 2,80 Euros. Not much cash for an exertion whose final stage is for example a carelessly inflamed matchstick. But that’s only one field of sulphur application – for Mohamed the track of the yellow gold disappears in Surabaya, when the ships are taking the sulphur away. The Ijen adventure draws to a close. After local volcanologist Heri marvelled at my pictures of the erupting Yasur volcano, it was already time to say goodbye. But I didn’t go without giving Mohamed a better gas mask, which was my gas mask. I didn’t need it anymore…

A job that actually means dying by degrees is never done voluntary by anybody. But unlike slaves the boys are identifying themselves with their profession. They know that they are little heroes and that’s why they’re posing whenever a camera comes into reach. Hence generally seen the word choice of many reports does not fit, when the workers become titled again as “slaves”.

However, sometimes Ijen’s crater rim can be quite a playground for tourists. At peak time you can even meet up to 200 people looking down into the crater. Beside flip-flops and insufficient breathing protection (face mask), also crazy people taking a newborn baby on the volcano can be seen……………

The Ijen and its workers are a favoured photo motif. Though, most of the pictures doing the rounds are posed; not a few workers are getting money or cigarettes for that. Often they also try to sell cones of solified sulphur, or figures cast in yellow gold. Caution: only a few airlines are accepting sulphur in your normal baggage and literally never in hand luggage. The big airlines don’t belong to them. To boot that stuff evaporates incredibly, making your baggage stink as hell, literally… :-)

If visiting the Kawah Ijen is on your traveler’s mind, then please don’t forget that the whole scenery is located higher than 2000m. Air is pretty thin in such altitudes and the sulphur vapours surely won’t serve as an additional source of oxygen ;-) Hence the crunch might come. The men told me that actually every week they pick up a tourist being not able to get on with the conditions in the crater. “The smoke is killing me…!”