Risk Of Ear Disorders, Cannon Lighters At The Rangkasbitung Mosque Ikhlas Paid IDR 100,000

Opik, the gun lighter at the Grand Mosque of Al A'raf Rangkasbitung (Photo: ANTARA)

JAKARTA - The gun lighter at the Al A'raf Rangkasbitung Grand Mosque, Lebak Regency, Banten Province was happy and sincere to receive an honorarium of Rp. 100,000 for sounding a boom. This voice is the arrival of breaking the fast in Ramadan 1422 Hijriah.

"Maybe in Banten there is only Rangkasbitung every Ramadan, the tradition of cannon blasts is still preserved," said Opik, a cannon firing officer at the Al A'raf Rangkasbitung Grand Mosque, Lebak, as reported by Antara, Thursday, May 6.

The sound of a bang is predicted to be 10 kilometers away and can be heard in 3 sub-districts. Among others, Rangkasbitung, Cibadak and Kalanganyar. Since the Dutch era, the boom was the only medium for breaking the fast.

"The tradition of cannon blasts in Rangkasbitung has been going on since 1928 until now," he said.

He admitted that at first he felt scared when he started a fire that was inserted into the hole of the cannon so that a loud boom came out. However, he said, currently as a gun lighter for 26 years, he still feels happy, even though there is a risk of an accident.

"Even the ignition officer named Sai in 1956 cut off his arm when he was about to fire a locok cannon," said Opik.

Now the locok gun has been replaced with a pipe and is two meters long, which also uses explosives from carbide and water.

Cannon firing officers are also not equipped with silencers and have the potential to experience hearing loss, because they can damage the eardrums due to a loud explosion. If the eardrum is disturbed, he said, of course it will automatically have an impact on hearing loss in the ear or torek.

"We ignited the cannon, of course we were careful starting to fill the explosives from the carbide to ignite the fire into the cannon hole so as not to have an accident," he said.

According to him, he felt happy to ignite the sound of cannons, because many local people who gathered at the mosque were able to break their fast together.

In addition, many parents and young people also longed to hear the sound of the cannons which lasted for one to two seconds.

They are parents and generations of people gathered in front of the mosque to hear the sound of cannons.

Sounding the cannon is only done once a year. The people there also really miss this unique tradition. "We are still brave enough to carry out risky tasks, because there are no other officers who ignite the cannons," said Opik.