Obama's Early Days in Jakarta

JAKARTA, Indonesia, Sept. 25, 2008 — -- It's been four decades since Barack Obama rode in a taxi with his mother through the streets of Indonesia's capital, a moment he immortalized in his book "Dreams From My Father."

"Our taxi driver shooed away a group of boys who were hawking gum and loose cigarettes, then barely avoided a motor scooter carrying an entire family on its back ... all leaning as one into a turn, their mouths wrapped with handkerchiefs to blunt the exhaust ..." he wrote.

Watch "Portrait of a President," anchored by Diane Sawyer on a special edition of "20/20" Friday, before the presidential debate on the East Coast and after the debate on the West Coast, and Oct. 3 at 10 p.m. ET.

The street scene today is similar -- only now, nearly all the taxi drivers know the Democratic presidential candidate by name.

Local media reference Obama's Indonesian influence in their election coverage -- the time he spent here; his mother's second husband, Lolo Soetoro; and his sister Maya, who was born in Jakarta.

Many Indonesians who remember him living here are excited and hopeful that it may be possible for someone to go from living in Jakarta to living in the White House.

A Humble Beginning

In 1967 Obama, then about 6 years old, moved to Indonesia with his mother, Ann Dunham.

"That was an extremely difficult time because Indonesia had just experienced a transfer of power from Sukarno to Suharto, and at that time [saying] the economy was in shambles would be an understatement," said writer and author Julia Suryakusuma, a close friend of Dunham's. "The country was just absolutely mired in poverty."

Obama's first home in Jakarta was in a humble "kampung," or village.

"In the backyard, we found what seemed like a small zoo," Obama wrote, "chickens and ducks running every which way, a big yellow dog with a baleful howl, two birds of paradise, a white cockatoo, and finally, two baby crocodiles, half-submerged in a fenced-off pond toward the edge of the compound."

Classmate Ati Kisjanto lived in a similar neighborhood.

"I was living in a house next to a river, and we got visitors like lizards from time to time from the river," she said, extending her arms to illustrate just how big the lizards were.

"It's not every day and at that time it's more open, unlike now," she said, adding that there were also monkeys and bats in the trees.

Though Obama's former home remains, as well as areas where he used to play ball and friends who lived next door, the kampung has since been developed.

At first, former classmates didn't realize that the Obama running for president of the United States was the boy they knew simply as "Barry."

"He changed a lot because he was very chubby," Kisjanto said of the only foreigner in their class. "Now he's very handsome and skinny."

'I Want to Be the President'

Fermina Katarina Sinaga Suhanda, Obama's third-grade teacher, remembered him distinctly because he looked different.

"He's the only black, he's the only one with curly hair," she said, adding that he was also bigger than the other children.

She also remembered a telling essay from the Illinois senator.

"He wrote like this," Suhanda said in Bahasa, the local language. "I am Barry Soetoro. I am in third grade [at] Fransiskus Asisi Elementary School."

He wrote about his friends, parents, Indonesia and ended the essay with "I want to be the president."

The president of what, the third-grader did not specify.

"To be President Taxi or where I don't know," Suhanda said.

Obama's teachers said he was already showing signs of leadership at a young age. They described him as a "number-two teacher," sharing how he used to lead his classmates to line up after recess and volunteer to erase the chalkboard.

They remembered how his mother walked Obama to school in the mornings and occasionally exchanged words with them in Bahasa.

His best subject, in a school taught in the local language, was math. Referring to teachers as "ma'am," he dressed neatly with his shirt tucked in and wore shoes and socks, while some of the other children wore sandals or flip-flops, his teachers remembered.

Friends said that Obama is left-handed, a noticeable trait in a predominately Muslim country, where the left hand is reserved for bodily hygiene.

He was fast and agile, good at playing ball, and hide and seek. In many ways, he was just like his energetic classmates.

"Some boys [were] always running around and teas[ing] the girls, and Barry was one of them," Kisjanto said, recalling how Obama sometimes pulled their long, braided hair.

Over time, Obama's mother's Indonesian husband landed a better job, and the family moved into another home in a better neighborhood. With a long side hallway connecting them, the rooms of their house were lined up back-to-back like a train. A bench the family of four sat in for a family portrait still sits in the front room.

In third grade, Obama transferred to Besuki Elementary School, a school political opponents would later proclaim was a "madrassas." Classmates who attended the school know otherwise and said the mosque that is there now wasn't there before.

"Everybody is exposed to both religion[s] -- both Muslim and Christian. So it was a very open, very tolerant school," said Kisjanto, who is Christian.

"Because our class[rooms] are open, we don't have air conditioning at that time, so we can hear [when] the Muslims are reciting the Koran, and I can still remember it, and I can recite it because I hear[d] it," she said. "It's lovely that we are exposed to both religion[s]."

Obama detailed in his book his recollection of living in a world with his mother so distant from America.

"She had taught me to disdain the blend of ignorance and arrogance that too often characterized Americans abroad. But she now learned, just as Lolo had learned, the chasm that separated the life chances of an American from those of an Indonesian," he wrote.

Leaving Indonesia

In 1971, Obama moved back to the United States and lived with his grandparents. His mother and sister stayed in Jakarta.

"Indonesia was not stable and it did not have kind of, the educational facilities that would be sufficient, that would meet up to Ann's, I would say, stringent standards," Suryakusuma said of Obama's mother whom she knew as Ann Soetoro.

"Knowing how attached she is to her children, it must have been heartbreaking for her to have to do that," she added, referring to Obama's move to Hawaii.

Years later, her son reflected on the bonds unbroken with his mother and on moments that could have been.

"I think sometimes that had I known she would not survive her illness, I might have written a different book," Obama wrote in an updated preface sharing that he had lost her to cancer, "less a meditation on the absent parent, more a celebration of the one who was the single constant in my life."

In Jakarta, Obama's mother immersed herself with the local people and their culture.

"She never lived the life of a typical expatriate behind the closed windows of a car or in [an] air conditioned house," said Suryakusuma, the daughter of an Indonesian diplomat.

The two women met in 1981 and soon became fast friends. Describing her as free-spirited, warm, tolerant and forgiving, Suryakusuma said that Dunham preferred African or Gamelan music over classical.

They shared a passion for travel, Indonesian handicrafts and wood carvings, as well as the occasional game of Trivial Pursuit.

"She had a very sharp analytical mind," Suryakusuma said. "Not just about her field or about events in Indonesia but also about the world, about world events."

Obama wrote of his mother, "She traveled the world, working in the distant villages of Asia and Africa, helping women buy a sewing machine or a milk cow or an education that might give them a foothold in the world's economy."

Over the years, as Obama continued his education in the United States, his mother would move back to Hawaii, return to Indonesia and travel to far-flung places such as London, Chicago, India and near the China border.

She sent colorful letters back to Suryakusuma in Indonesia.

"Meanwhile I have the whole upper floor to myself with an enormous veranda that looks out over flowering treetops, a cricket lawn and the canal beyond," Suryakusuma read aloud from a letter sent from Delhi. "It's a perfect place to drag a blanket out to about 6 a.m. and sit and meditate with nothing between me and God but the sky. My, I am whopping romantic today. It's also a good place for a cup of coffee in the evening with friends once the weather cools down a bit."

In another excerpt, Dunham's wanderlust continued from Pakistan.

"I spend all day in our regional office or in the project villages getting back to Lahore hot and dusty about 7 p.m.," Suryakusuma read. "Usually I stop at the Hilton on the way home and throw myself in their rooftop pool to wash the dust away. After two or three fresh lime sodas, I begin to feel human again. Two of my Pakistani women friends are also brave enough to swim there in the evenings, braving the glares of all the male guests who feel they should be in purdah."

A Proud Mother

Obama's mom wrote of her children's progress in school, her father's health and even described Michelle, her son's new girlfriend at the time.

"She is intelligent, very tall -- 6'1" and attractive. She did her BA at Princeton and her law degree at Harvard and has spent most of her life in Chicago. She is nice and if he goes ahead and marries her after he finishes law school, I will have no objections," Obama's mother wrote.

Some of the handwritten time capsules sent to Indonesia and the conversations the close friends had here are too private to share. Obama's mom was remembered by Suryakusuma through laughter and tears.

When Obama became president of the Harvard Law Review, his mother was "just bursting with pride as any mother would be, especially since she was so academically inclined herself that she knew exactly what it meant."

"It's so bittersweet for me to see Barack every time because I see Ann," said an emotional Suryakusuma. "The best of Ann is manifest in her children and in Barack Obama."

Obama seems to agree in his book. "I know that she was the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known, and that what is best in me I owe to her," he wrote.

"I know what Ann's reaction would be just at the thought of her son moving into the White House," Suryakusuma said, laughing. "She would be giggling and thinking of, oh the protocol, how she would deal with the protocol because Ann is so totally informal."

She would say, "OK, Barry, change the whole decor of the White House. Put in handicrafts from Indonesia and Africa and India, and have woven cloth as upholstery and instead of chandeliers."

In Indonesia, despite the distance and cultural differences, there is a hope that Obama will remember just how much was shared -- his mother's hopes, his own dreams, a bond that cannot be broken.