Commentary: President of the United States, made in Indonesia

Endy M. Bayuni ,  The Jakarta Post ,  Jakarta   |  Wed, 01/21/2009 8:25 AM  |  Headlines

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2009/01/21/commentary-president-united-states-made-indonesia.html
 
How much of Indonesia is there in Barack Hussein Obama, the man who became the 44th president of the United States on Tuesday? More than many people may care to admit.

Obama may not have any Indonesian blood in him, but he spent his first four school years in Indonesia, going to a local rather than an international school, speaking  Indonesian and learning the local cultures. In short, he grew up in part as an Indonesian between 1967 and 1971.

The time children spend in primary school are crucial formative years as they get their first taste of social interaction beyond their immediate family. They acquire some core values and develop aspects of personal character that will be refined in time as they grow up to become the men and women they are destined to be.

In Obama’s case, that means being chosen to serve as president of the United States.

Most articles only mention in passing the four years Obama, born to a Kenyan father and a mother from Kansas, spent as a child in Indonesia. At most, these casual reference note Obama was exposed to the extensive poverty this country was grappling with during those years.

His election campaign managers downplayed his years in predominantly Muslim Indonesia.
During the race for the Democratic Party nomination, the camp of Hillary Clinton – now his choice for Secretary of State but then his chief rival – claimed Obama had attended a madrasah and been schooled in Islamic radicalism.

This allegation set off a US media blitz about Indonesia. To the chagrin of their bosses back home, journalists had to report Obama had gone to first a Catholic school and then a state school in Jakarta. No story there – come home, boys.

If Obama had actually gone to a madrasah, the media would have stayed and gone out of their way to root out what radical teachings he had picked up. But they could not justify digging deeper into what little Obama might have absorbed at a regular Indonesian public school.

They have no idea the story they missed. Time and place do make a man, and they would have understood their new president better if they had lingered a while.

When little Obama arrived in Jakarta in 1967 with his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, Indonesia was just emerging from a major political crisis and a severe economic recession.

General Soeharto had come to power a year earlier, having crushed the communist movement that claimed – by conservative estimates – more than half a million people. His American-trained economic team was just restoring stability after  runaway inflation of more than 600 percent had done considerable damage in 1966.

While his American peers grew up witnessing the civil rights movement, little Obama grew up thousands of miles away in a country that was barely out of the tumultuous situation aptly described in the 1982 Hollywood film The Year of Living Dangerously.

Obama was not poor by Indonesian standards, but his family did not lead a life of luxury either. They did not live in Jakarta’s exclusive Menteng area where most American expatriates resided then and his parents did not send him to an international school or to Singapore, as most other American parents would have done.

Obama wrote in his 1995 biography Dreams of My Father that he had attended Indonesian schools and played with neighborhood kids: flying kites, roaming the streets and peddling odd stuff for pocket money.

What he did not say in that book was that, in spite of his appearance, the African-American was in large part accepted both at school and in his neighborhood. He could have been mistaken for an Indonesian from Maluku, though he would have been taller, making his adaptation to living like Indonesians easier.

Jakarta then was already a microcosm of Indonesia, where people of different races, ethnicities, cultures and languages mix. Little Obama, or Barry as his friends called him, was exposed to the multicultural life that Jakarta had to offer early in his life.

This is probably one of the main Indonesian take-aways, along with the exposure to poverty around him, which prepared Obama for his return in 1971 to the United States, a country still very much divided by race. And this week, that same man broke the racial barrier to become the first elected African-American president.

Obama would have developed into a completely different person had he gone to an international school in Jakarta or been sent to school in Kenya with his father. His life path – or personal legend, to use Paulo Coelho’s expression – would have been different and may not have led him to the American presidency.

Granted, we should not make too much of a meal from his years in Indonesia. At the end of the day, it was his mother, with her Midwestern values, who had the greatest influence upon him. But we should also not play down how the years he spent growing up in Indonesia may have shaped the new US president.

Sure, he left in 1971 before he could complete his Indonesian schooling. Bill Gates never finished his Harvard degree either, returning to Cambridge anyway to collect his diploma after becoming successful and wealthy.

Barry, next time you come to Jakarta, we’ll be sure to give you that diploma. You don’t need to attend classes again, just brush up your Indonesian a little.
See you in the not-too-distant future.