Werdi, Devotion of A Temple Worker
Heart and the senses are a mantra for Werdi, 64, a stonemason who works in in temple reconstruction. He devoted more than half of his life to restoring the stone blocks of Borobudur Temple to their rightful place. His long experience has made the junior high school graduate a source of learning among graduate and post-graduate students studying Borobudur conservation.
Restoring the temple’s stone blocks has been Werdi’s life work. Like a jigsaw puzzle, placing one piece wrong means an unsolvable puzzle. In the case of Borobudur, there is no blueprint for the thousands of stone blocks that were used to build it.
“It was our hands that did the work. But this work also requires our heart and senses to succeed,” Werdi said in mid-October at his home in Candirejo village of Borobudur district, Magelang regency, Central Java. His house is only 4 kilometers southeast of the temple complex.
Restoring the temple stones, Werdi said, required special skills. And each rock weighs tens to hundreds of kilograms. Persons who have high skill in pairing temple rocks are called zoeker and steller. In Dutch, zoeker means “object finder” and steller means “fine-tuner”.
Before retiring eight years ago, Werdi was a dedicated steller at the Borobudur Conservation Center. Even though he is no longer a formal employee, he is constantly involved in conservation. He is still invited every year for maintenance work on managing leaks at Borobudur Temple.
This job requires his expertise because it involves dismantling and reinstalling the temple stones. The maintenance project usually lasts three months. Whenever he is asked to help, Werdi usually contacts several colleagues who also worked as stellers. However, many decline.
“Some colleagues don’t want to handle the temple stones anymore. They say they have comfortable lives now, farming or just enjoying life with their children and grandchildren,” he said.
As for Werdi, he never turns down such opportunities. He said he had a personal attachment to the historic complex, which was built in the 8th century during the ancient Mataram Kingdom.
Although he might be the only stonemason who is regularly asked to help maintain the temple structure, Werdi does not take advantage of this by setting exorbitant fees. Instead, he never names a fee whenever he is asked to help and leaves it to the client.
He is also regularly asked to speak at a variety of training programs for professional
archeologists and restoration workers. He generally provides an on-site explanation on the arrangement of the stone blocks. Werdi, who only finished his schooling up to junior high, mostly trains master or doctoral graduates from research institutions and universities at these training programs.
Borobudur Restoration
Werdi first became involved in Borobudur’s restoration and conservation in 1973. He was one of around 700 people who were recruited for the third phase of the Borobudur restoration project, directly under the supervision of UNESCO.
He said that Borobudur Temple was in ruins back then. “In addition to leaning, some stones of the temple’s foundation had sunk into the ground,” he recalled.
In the 1960s, the Indonesian government had started restoration work on Borobudur Temple, but the restoration was halted in the turmoil of the Sept. 30, 1965 incident and its aftermath.
Back then, Werdi, who was not an archeologist and knew nothing about stone temples, merely followed instructions. The main work of the restoration project to dismantle the stones, wash them, treat them with chemicals and then reinstall them.
However, Werdi said, reinstalling the stones was actually the hardest part. The most difficult part was adjusting and reassembling the vertical and horizontal sections, which is often referred to as “pairing” the stones. This part was often left unfinished and weighed on Werdi.
“During the one year I worked [there], the unfinished sections often kept me awake,” he said. However, he did not want to give up and tried to focus his senses when rearranging and pairing the stones.
In 1979, Werdi became an employee and official held the position of reconstruction stonemason. He had ambitions to work at the Yogyakarta Archeological Preservation Office and subsequently became an employee of the Borobudur Conservation Center (BKB).
In 1983, the restoration of the Borobudur Temple was declared complete. However, the restoration of the stone structure has not been declared 100 percent complete, because 9,500 loose stones – stone blocks that have not been restored to their original placement – remain. These stone blocks are stored at the Borobudur Museum.
Following the restoration project, Werdi regularly went to climb the temple and walk around it. In addition to better familiarizing himself with the structure, he did this to fulfill his curiosity in trying to locate the possible placement of the loose stones.
Werdi also took it upon himself to documenting the loose stones that were successfully restored through sketches. He has recorded every detail on dozens of sheets of paper filled with illustrations and data on the sections’ names and the year the stone was restored.
After retiring, he took his sketches and stored them at his house. He uses them as teaching aids when explaining how the stones were prepared to conservation workers or visitors to the BKB.
No regrets
Werdi said that being a steller was a unique job. To restore the stones to its appropriate place is a job that could remain unfinished, even after a steller had retired.
“From starting the job to retirement, a steller is constantly saying to himself that his work is almost done. This proves that the work of restoring the temple stones is not an easy job,” he said.
So difficult is the work of reassembling the temple stones that it is a euphoric moment when a steller finds the correct placement and pairing for the loose stones. It is difficult for Werdi to find the words to express this joy.
“It can’t be described. At any rate, the joy that comes after successfully putting a temple stone in its place is far greater than the happiness that comes from a portion of nasi pecel,” he joked.
After retiring, Werdi has kept himself busy with farming rice. However, no matter how busy he might be, he will not refuse any opportunity to be involved in the conservation and restoration of temple stones, especially the stone blocks of Borobudur. It could be said that he is the last steller still living near Borobudur Temple.
In concluding the conversation, he said, “I feel like I was reborn as a steller here, at Borobudur Temple. I feel I must do my part in caring for it until the end of time.”
Werdi
Born: Magelang, Feb. 21, 1954
Wife: Kusmiyatun, 55
Children: Eka Sumitra, 36; Dwi Purnomo, 29
Education: SMP Pancasila Borobudur junior high school (formerly SMP Marhaenisme Borobudur)