How fortunate to travel out of the country a week after the election, and to Indonesia, out of all the places in the world. Before leaving, friends had joked that probably everyone there would have a cousin who knew Barack’s sister, or went to school with him, or was the brother of his step-father’s aunt, or something. There was a certain amount of that, and my Indonesian friends laughed about it as much as anyone here But what I wasn’t prepared for was—the hope that total strangers expressed: hope for a real change in the direction of events of the world.
When I talked to anyone in Jakarta or Bali who figured out that I was an American, which took them oh about 2 seconds max, they would ask where I was from, and when I said “Chicago” one or two people still said “Michael Jordan,” but now it was “Barack Obama”. When we stopped to visit a Hindu temple on Bali, the ticket-taker asked where was I from, I said Chicago, and we said simultaneously “Barack Obama.” I’ve had other conversations where someone was star-struck when a famous name was dropped—”ooh, you know xxx, what’s she like”—but this was different. A waiter at a beachfront restaurant in Denpasar, on Bali said, “America will be different now I hope.” It is the reflection of the many times here since the election that people have said that now, for the first time (if they grew up under Bush) or for the first time in many years, that they felt proud to be an American. Indonesia is a country of young people. Barack’s election has already had a pervasive effect.
At High/Scope, it was multicultural week:
The country is incredibly diverse. Eko and Poppy, 2 of the principals at High/Scope, gave me a scarf with all the islands and groups:
There are probably 50 languages and dialects scattered among the islands. The country recognizes 5 religions officially—Hindu, Buddhist, Protestant, Catholic, and of course Islam, I wonder if there is a minyan anywhere—and everyone must study their own religion in school. (At the parent meeting, we had to laugh at the distribution of N’s, P’s and H’s for the 10th grade Catholicism class: there was only 1 student) While it is 80% or more Moslem, and calls to prayer can be heard from any place in the sprawling city of Jakarta, the range of styles of dress and of observance is very wide. One of the most committed feminists and internationalists I have met, the director of the Indonesian International Education Foundation, wears traditional dress outside her home. At High/Scope, the staff is also diverse:
Bali is 90% Hindu. The whole island is filled with temples, shrines, and prayer offerings.
Women on Bali do the hard physical labor of digging, building, and farming alongside the men, (I wasn’t able to take pictures of the many women carrying large and heavy baskets on their heads) and there is little mechanization to help them.
The terraced rice paddies are worked by hand, or by men with water buffalo.
Buildings are constructed by hand, with men and women carrying bricks on their heads, and using bamboo to construct scaffolding as they go.
It’s hard to know what the future will mean for such a place. Muslim extremists set off a huge bomb in the middle of the tourist district several years ago, and the leaders were executed only a few weeks ago. There is a memorial at the site of the explosion. As jarring as the tourist district is, and as obnoxious and oppressive as the party crowd of westerners undoubtedly is as they lurch from bar to bar, I can’t believe that there was much sympathy for either the men or the act on an island which is so given over to the ongoing celebration of the many Hindu deities, and of course the Balinese workers were blown up along with the backpackers. I hope that the era of the global robber barons is waning, and that the Balinese will find a way to live easier lives without trashing their souls or their island.
