Israella Darmawan is every inch a teacher, from her shiny cap of black hair to her sensible shoes. In an office at the Fransiskus Assisi School, she shows me an old register with an entry for Barry Soetoro, as Barack Obama was know then. Bu Is taught Obama in the first grade. She admits she doesn't remember all her students well, but Barry ... well, he stood out.
"He really was different from the others. He was tall and heavy, black skin, curly hair."
Obama struggled with Indonesian, she says, but he was clearly a bright kid, especially at math. He had natural leadership qualities, she adds; other kids followed him around during playtime. "Barack ran somewhere, they went. He ran somewhere else, they followed."
And his childhood friends remember a boy with a head of iron:
Yunaldi was telling the truth; he did have family obligations. He's hanging out with his brothers, just like he did when he was a kid. They all remember Obama. Soon I'm sitting on the floor with them, listening to stories of childhood adventures.Jl. Haji Ramli really has changed. Back then it was just a dirt road. The neighborhood kids played soccer and staged swordfights with bamboo in the middle of the street. They also staged fistfights, pitting boys of similar size against each other. Johnny Askiar's voice is still filled with wonder as he recalls the feeling of hitting Obama's skull.
"Barry's head was really hard," he says. "My hand would hurt when I hit it. It was like iron, that head."
A useful quality in a president, perhaps?
The Askiars speak about Obama with what feels like genuine fondness, but as kids they weren't above taking advantage of his status as an outsider. "Sometimes we'd say, 'Barry, do you want a chocolate?' And we'd give him a chocolate. The next day we'd give him a chocolate again. The third time we'd give him terasi (fermented shrimp paste) wrapped up like chocolate," remembers Harmon Askiar.
Obama didn't get mad, they say. He would laugh it off.