AMONG the 6,000 or so students, dignitaries and other fans packing the University of Indonesia's cavernous concrete stadium to hear Barack Obama give his keynote speech on November 10th were some very special guests—Mr Obama's former classmates of 40 years ago.
The president spent four years in Jakarta in the late 1960s, when his mother moved from their home in Hawaii to live with her second husband, an Indonesian called Lolo Soetero. For two years the young Barry—as he was known then—was educated at a local Catholic school, and then for two further years at a local public school in a relatively posh bit of the city called Menteng, where his family had moved.
When Mr Obama first became famous in the United States, after giving an electrifying speech to the Democratic convention during the presidential race of 2004, those who had know him as a kid in Indonesia began to take notice. In 2006 his old classmates from his public school in Menteng got together to remember and celebrate their now famous old boy—and the class now meets once a year for a reunion dinner. Twenty-seven of them, out of an original class of 38, were at the university yesterday to hear Mr Obama's speech. Joining them was their old teacher, Mr Effendi, a fit-looking retiree in his late 60s or early 70s. A little bit of Mr Obama's stardust has rubbed off on them—they are now minor celebrities in Jakarta and beyond.
And just as the Kenyans are in no doubt as to the quite obvious fact that Mr Obama is really a Kenyan and owes everything to his Kenyan ancestry, so his Indonesian classmates are in no doubt as to the seminal influence of Barry's school years in Jakarta.
As they tell it, it was during this period of his life, when Obama was at the very impressionable ages of nine and ten, that the future president learned the core values that he believes in, values he spoke about at length in his latest visit to Jakarta.
Religious tolerance? His former classmate Rully Dasaad argues that it was in their shared classroom that Barry learned all about respecting religious and ethnic diversity. The class included several Muslims (the majority faith in Indonesia), but also a Hindu, a couple of Christians and Barry himself. This diversity itself reflected Indonesia's own enormous diversity—a theme that Mr Obama harked back to in his speech. And his class was not only religiously diverse: it was also made up of several of Indonesia's multitude of ethnic groups, as well as an Arab—not to mention an African-American.
All his classmates remember the young Obama fitting in smoothly and peacefully; his teacher just remembered him as a clever and energetic young kid. He became “used to living with diversity”, says another former classmate. Mr Dasaad remembers the day that young Barry was met by a white woman, and his amazement on learning that this was Barry's mum.
“Unity in diversity” was a phrase that Mr Obama returned to again and again in his Jakarta speech, and his classmates firmly believe that he came to appreciate this concept, emotionally and intellectually, at their school in Menteng. They also point out that although at the time Barry was there it was an Indonesian public school, only twenty-odd years before it had been a Dutch school run by the former colonialists. The Dutch teachers had gone, but the European values of discipline, tidiness, respect and orderliness lived on very strongly in the ethos of the school. Indeed, like Mr Obama himself, the alumni seem to be mostly high-achieving professionals. Mr Obama was not the only one from his class to become a politician; one of his female classmates is now a legislator in Indonesia's parliament. She was there yesterday too, cheering on her fellow-politician.
Judging by the warm words about his time in Jakarta at the university yesterday, the president still has very affectionate memories of Indonesia. But were his schooldays there the formative years of his life? Who knows. One thing's for sure—his old classmates certainly like to think so.