THE JAKARTA POST: Americans can be grateful to Indonesia for the contributions the Indonesian culture made to the character of a bright, sensitive, young boy named Barack Hussein Obama who was known to his Indonesian school mates from 1967 to 1971 as "Barry."
The United States will soon have a President who has a profound understanding and respect for Islam gained from having been immersed in "the real Indonesia" of the kampong during his first two years in Indonesia and from his later exposure to the tolerance and pluralistic attitudes at SD Besuki Mentang in Jakarta.
In The Audacity of Hope, the future President of the United States recalls that "our family was not well off in those early years; the Indonesian Army did not pay its lieutenants much. ...without the money to go to the international school that most expatriate children attended, I went to local Indonesian schools and ran the streets with the children of farmers, servants, tailors, and clerks."
Obama writes that he "remembered those years as a joyous time, full of adventure and mystery -- days of chasing down chickens and running from water buffalo, nights of shadow puppets and ghost stories and street vendors (kaki lima) bringing delectable sweets to our door." When his Indonesian stepfather left the military and obtained a job in the oil sector the young Obama was fortunate to attend SD Besuki Mentang, where he studied alongside Muslim, Christian, and Hindu students.
Today Obama knows the Muazzin's call to prayer by heart having lived in the shadow of a Mosque from when he was seven until he was eleven years old. He studied the tenets of Pancasila and can take to heart the motto enshrined on the Indonesian Coat of Arms, Bhinneka Tunggal lka (unity in diversity) which could well be the motto of his own administration. >>> Peter F. Spalding, Washington DC | November 22, 2008
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