Struggling to recognise the city of his childhood, Barack Obama today returned to Jakarta on a heavily curtailed trip to Indonesia. The US president, who spent four years living in the Indonesian capital, said it was "wonderful" to return to the city of his boyhood, even if it was unfamiliar.
"I have to tell you that when you visit a place that you spent some time in as a child, as a president, it's a little disorienting," Obama told journalists at the Indonesian presidential palace.
"Much has been made of the fact that this marks my return to where I lived as a boy. I barely recognise it. The landscape has changed completely," he said of Jakarta's radical transformation from a developing city into a global metropolis.
"When I first came here in 1967 everyone rode on becaks [cycle rickshaws], you stood in the back and it was very crowded. Now, as president, I couldn't see any traffic because they had blocked off all the streets."
This is Obama's third attempt to return to Indonesia. Two earlier visits were derailed this year by the controversy over his health reform bill and by the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But unlike the previous itineraries, which were to have included a visit to the government school he attended in Besuki Street, Menteng, there will be no trip down memory lane.
Indeed the visit, stripped to its diplomatic essentials and crammed into less than 24 hours, continued to be cut as Obama was en route from India. The centrepiece of the tour, Obama's speech to an audience of 25,000 at the University of Indonesia, was moved indoors, restricting the audience to 5,000.
A spokesman for the Indonesian president, Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, said it was in case of bad weather and the police said it was to improve security. But some have also speculated that the move to a more restricted space is linked to a disagreement between the White House and the Indonesian presidential palace over the speech.
It is also likely he will leave two hours earlier to avoid volcanic ash drifting from Mount Merapi to Jakarta. Soon after arriving, during a rather stilted press conference, Obama expressed "great affection for the people here", but downplayed the sentimental aspect of his visit. "Today I'm here to focus not on the past but on the future," he said.
His visit follows the formation of the US-Indonesia comprehensive partnership in June, aimed at improving bilateral relations between the two countries in trade, investment, education, environment, climate change and security.
In particular, the US is seeking co-operation in Asia to correct global economic imbalances it believes undermine the US economy, such as China's undervalued currency.
"Asia is the fastest growing part of the world," said Obama. "It's the fastest in terms of population and the fastest growing set of economies. There's enormous potential and enormous promise, but only if countries co-operate, if they observe the rules of the road, if potential conflict is to be resolved in a successful fashion." This was an indirect reference to America's currency disagreement with China over the value of the yuan.
But while Obama attempted to diminish his historical attachment, Indonesia's president, popularly known as SBY, said it was important. "It makes it easier for me to express the challenges that Indonesia is facing," he said.
Yudhoyono wooed Obama with an orchestra playing gamelan music and a meal of the Yudhoyono's favourite Indonesian dishes, including meatball soup, spicy rice, goat and Indonesian crackers.
Yudhoyono topped the meal with a presentation of a medal of honour for Obama's mother, Ann Dunham Sutoro, who took the young Obama to Jakarta in 1967 after marrying an Indonesian, Lolo Soetoro.
Dunham was an anthropologist specialising in rural development and wrote a thesis about the role of micro-credit finance in helping women in Indonesian villages.
"I'm proud and I'm humbled … I'm deeply moved," Obama said, accepting the medal on behalf of his mother who died in 1995. "You have honoured her spirit."
But not all Indonesians have welcomed Obama back. The information minister, Tifatul Sembiring, a member of the Islamic Prosperous Justice party, told followers on Twitter that he tried to avoid shaking the first lady, Michelle Obama, by the hand.
A conservative Muslim who avoids contact with women outside his family, Sembiring has a reputation for his provocative religious outbursts. Thousands of Indonesia's more hardline Muslims have also objected to Obama's arrival.
Tomorrow Obama will visit Jakarta's Istiqlal mosque, the biggest in south-east Asia, as part of his effort to mend America's relations with the Muslim world.
