Indonesia left deep imprint on Obama family

By Ed Davies

JAKARTA (Reuters) - A small group of Indonesians in their late 40s who attended the same elementary school in central Jakarta recently gathered for a reunion and to pledge their support for an absent former classmate -- Barack Obama.

Obama's late mother came to Indonesia with her young son in the late 1960s to join her second husband knowing next to nothing about the huge, developing Southeast Asian nation.

While her son left after four years to study in Hawaii, for the Kansas-born mother of the Democratic Party presidential hopeful the relationship with Indonesia was to grow into a lifetime affair.

Eschewing many of the cocktail parties and golf-type events in the expatriate community, friends said she tried to dig deep into the local culture and made many Indonesian friends.

"She wasn't the typical expat, who just experienced Indonesia from behind the windows of a chauffeur-driven limousine," said author and columnist Julia Suryakusuma, who became a friend of Obama's mother Ann Dunham in 1981.

For a six-year-old Obama too, the chaotic tropical nation clearly had an impact when he arrived with his mother, then 24, from Hawaii to join his Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro.

He recounts in his book "Dreams from My Father" being amazed to find the house they moved into on the outskirts of Jakarta had a collection of exotic animals including a monkey, birds of paradise, a cockatoo and even several baby crocodiles.

CALIBRATING MISERY

The grinding poverty of Indonesia was also a shock to the young boy and his mother, whom he said would initially give over her money freely to the countless beggars with outstretched arms.

"Later, when it became clear that the tide of pain was endless, she gave more selectively, learning to calibrate the levels of misery," Obama wrote in the best-selling book, where he also recounts his mother's initial loneliness in Indonesia.

She threw herself into a job teaching English to Indonesian business executives at the American embassy, but was never happy playing the expatriate wife from all accounts.

Obama's stepfather, who Dunham wed after her marriage to the senator's Kenyan father ended, started working for an American oil company and would grumble about his wife's refusal to attend company dinner parties with him.

John McGlynn, a friend and long-term resident of Jakarta, also recalls Dunham as someone who preferred a more local scene despite her access to expat circles and was fun to be around.

"She could enjoy a G&T and a good argument," said McGlynn.

Obama, who describes in his book his mother as "the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known", recalls her dedication to his education -- he was set a stiff regimen whereby he was woken by her at 4 a.m. for English lessons before school.