If you are in one of the big cities in Indonesia, you'll find that most taxi drivers want to talk about the new president in the USA. In fact, they have been since Barack Obama won the election last November.
Indonesia, like many other countries in the Asia Pacific region, has always been interested in US political development. So, on the face of it, the interest in last year's election campaigns was nothing unusual. But it was. Unusually personal, even swelling with emotion. Indonesians collectively felt proud as they watched Barack Obama approaching the White House, step by step, so to speak.
It is true Obama spent four years of his childhood in Jakarta. So what? Many Americans, Australians, Dutch, and other Western children spent as many, if not more, years in Indonesia. Yet generally, Indonesians have not been aware or cared if any of them reached the constellation of power in their respective countries.
Most such children live in Indonesia but are not grounded in the community. They go to international schools, mix with other expatriate children, probably have one or two local friends in their wealthy neighbourhood. Some grow up to be part of Indonesian society. But many more grow out of it soon after they leave Indonesia.
Barack Obama, known then as Barry Soetoro (his mother, Ann Dunham, had married Indonesian Lolo Soetoro after her divorce from Barack Obama Senior), lived with his parents and his younger half-sister, Maya, in the long established Jakarta suburb of Menteng. Their neighbours, though mostly of the comfortable middle-class, were neither rich expatriates nor filthy rich locals. In fact, both Ann and Lolo worked.
Barry went to a local Catholic school for the first two years, then to a local primary school for the remaining two. He did not go to an international school. His friends were mostly Indonesian school mates and neighbourhood children. If he did not make it in time to catch the company minibus which picked up his mother, Saman, a man employed by Ann Dunham to take care of him, would take him to school as a pillion passenger on his bicycle.
Barry lived so close to the ground that Saman, as well as his former neighbours, have vivid memories of him. Saman remembers that when taking him to school on his bicycle, Barry would yell back 'Hoooo, hicks' at children who teased him