"Obama Visits a Nation That Knew Him as Barry"

[Clio the Leo]

Obama Visits a Nation That Knew Him as Barry
By NORIMITSU ONISHI
Published: November 8, 2010

JAKARTA, Indonesia — The two houses where he spent part of his boyhood stand pretty much the way they did when he went back to Hawaii four decades ago. The two schools he attended have grown larger but, in spirit, remain unchanged. Some of his old friends can still be found around the neighborhood.

Near one of his homes here, the same family still runs a wooden stall selling gado-gado, an Indonesian salad covered in peanut sauce. Agus Salam, who took over the business from his mother years ago, played soccer with the American boy everybody here called Barry.

“His house — all the houses around here — haven’t changed,” said Mr. Salam, 56.

When President Obama visits Jakarta on Tuesday, he will find a city that, in some ways, has changed beyond recognition. A city of one luxury hotel and one shopping mall when Mr. Obama lived here between 1967 and 1971, Jakarta is now the overextended and overcrowded capital of the world’s fourth most populous nation. But Jakarta’s neighborhoods, including the two where Mr. Obama lived, retain enough of their former selves that the president would quickly find his bearings.

Jakarta regards Mr. Obama as a local boy made good, and he remains extremely popular throughout Indonesia. But his last-minute postponements of three previously planned visits here have clearly sapped the enthusiasm surrounding his homecoming, even among his most ardent supporters.

“He’s not as popular here as he was before,” Mr. Salam said.

In 1967, Indonesia was still reeling from the aftershocks of an attempted Communist coup that led to the killing of at least 500,000 people. Suharto, the general who would rule Indonesia through the late 1990s, was about to assume power and launch an authoritarian era called the New Order.

Mr. Obama, his mother, Stanley Ann Dunham, and his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro, moved into a one-story house in a district called Menteng-Dalam. At the time, it was a new neighborhood where natives of Jakarta, known as Betawis, lived with an increasing number of newcomers from different corners of Java and Sumatra, the main islands in Indonesia. The area was connected to the electric grid only a couple of years before Mr. Obama moved in.

“It was a very poor area when the family came here,” said Coenraad Satjakoesoemah, 79, a retired airline manager and a neighborhood leader. “There were still dirt roads, only a few houses and lots of large trees.”

In Mr. Satjakoesoemah’s living room, Mr. Obama’s mother taught English to the neighborhood women, including his wife, Djumiati. While the residents regarded Mr. Obama’s mother as a “free spirit,” Barry, who was chubby, was referred to as the “boy who runs like a duck,” said Mrs. Satjakoesoemah, 69.

much more...
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/09/world/asia/09indo.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&hp

[Enrique]

1. BBC radio interviewed one of his classmates

she said that whenever they had reunions, people would ask, "remember Barry, the tubby boy with the curly eyelashes?" And she said no one ever had news of him, until one of them mentioned that he was a U.S. Senator, and running for President. But they weren't impressed, because they thought everyone ran for president in the U.S.

[Clio the Leo]

2. Well, eventually someone figured it out....

http://www.voanews.com/english/news/usa/Little-Obama-Movie-Opens-in-Indonesia--97656619.html

[babylonsister]

3. Good article, thanks. nt