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When Barack Obama and his mother arrived in Jakarta in 1967, Indonesia was just emerging from major political upheaval and a deep economic crisis. The city's few high-rise buildings only highlighted the poverty around them. Those who had cars competed for space on asphalt roads with public buses, motorcycles, three-wheeled rickshaws, pedestrians and hawkers peddling food, cigarettes and whatever else they could sell.
The Indonesia that Barack Obama found was a densely populated country that had to be propped up with huge infusions of foreign aid. Not long before his arrival, hundreds of thousands of people accused of membership in the Indonesian Communist Party had been massacred, and the staunchly pro-American General Suharto had seized power from the left-leaning President Sukarno.
Under Suharto, the army took firm control of the government, and increasingly every facet of people's lives. Anyone suspected of harboring even the slightest sympathy for the communists risked incarceration.
Today in Opinion
Obama's family was not exactly poor, but they were not rich either. He lived on the outskirts of Jakarta, and not in the exclusive district where American expatriates mingled with Jakarta's high society. Instead he lived in a neighborhood that was not particularly affluent but did have houses with gardens. Barry, as he was called back then, went to Indonesian schools. He learned the local language and culture through playing and running in the streets with his Indonesian friends. His height may have drawn some attention, but otherwise he could have easily passed as an Indonesian from the Molucca archipelago, where people have dark skin and curly hair.
Anyone going to a public school in Jakarta would have had early exposure to a vast array of cultures. These schools were microcosms of Indonesia, a nation of many different races, ethnic groups and religions. Indonesia has certainly had its share of religious extremism, but its religious tolerance remains a point of pride. The Muslim-majority nation would have ceased to exist long ago if bigotry got the better of its people.
This openness did not extend to politics. By the time Barry left Indonesia at age 10, military control was widespread. Students attended indoctrination classes where they would profess their loyalty to the state. Dissent was not tolerated in public life. There was barely freedom of thought.
In 1971, Barry's mother wisely sent him back to Hawaii to live with his maternal grandparents. His childhood years in Indonesia served him well; growing up respecting cultural and religious differences probably helped prepare him for his return to the United States, a society still divided by race.
Indonesians wish him "selamat" (congratulations) in his new job.
Endy M. Bayuni is the chief editor of The Jakarta Post.
This man is an island
At Punahou, Hawaii's most exclusive private school, the class of 1979 would have been mostly uber rich "kama aina haole" (land-owning whites with missionary blood), filthy-rich Chinese (the first immigrant group to arrive as contract workers, leave the plantation and become business owners or marry into Hawaiian families with land) and descendants of plantation Japanese workers who rose to political and economical power after statehood in '59.
Then there was Barack Obama - a scholarship student with a single mother and an absent African father raised by his grandparents. No missionary ancestors, no wealthy Chinese popo and goonggoong giving him $100 lee see for being No. 1 grandson, no powerful government official Uncle Kazu who could pull strings for an easy state job counting bridges on the civil engineers' planning maps. The other students probably called him "the popolo guy in student gov," popolo being the word for black nightshade.
In Hawaii we all designate one another by race, using references that evolved from sugar plantation pidgin dating back to the late 1870s. When I was young I was the Japanee girl with the Dorothy Hamill hairdo. And the white guy who ate Rice-A-Roni was the haole who didn't speak pidgin or eat real rice. There was the pake (Chinese) girl who took calculus at the community college senior year. The hapa (half-blooded) babies fathered by military guys. The kuro-chan (literally, black man) who lived across the street. The bukbuk (Filipino), the yobo (Korean), the borinque (Puerto Rican), the portagee (Portuguese).
