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JAKARTA-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...To read more go to:
As in the days of Noah....
