Pulang kampung, nih!

Obama's Indonesia visit: President vows to end 'mistrust' between West and Muslim | Mail Online

He gave his speech at the University of Indonesia, where he drew rapturous applause and cheers from the mostly young audience, especially when he spoke in Indonesian.

Introducing himself, he prompted laughter when he said: ‘Pulang kampung, nih,’ meaning ‘I've come home to the village’.

Indonesia was the second stop on Mr Obama's four-country, ten-day tour of Asia, which will end with a visit to Japan before heading back to the U.S. on Monday.

He repeated the success of his visit to India by fondly recalling the four years he spent as a boy in Indonesia, where he moved as a six-year-old with his mother in 1967.

He lived in the village of Matraman-Dalam as a boy with his white American mother, Stanley Ann Durham, and his Indonesian stepfather, Lolo Soetoro.

Far from the suave and athletic figure he cuts today, his former neighbours there remembered him as ‘chubby Barry’, the ‘boy who runs like a duck’.

Djumiati Satjakoesoemah, 69, who recalled the nickname, revealed that Mr Obama attended the local school with classmates who couldn’t even afford shoes.

But even then, he seemed to have one eye on his destiny.

Another childhood friend, Slamet Januadi, told the New York Times that ‘Barry’ once asked a group of boys if they would rather be a president, a solider or a businessman when they grow up.

He said that, although a president would have nothing, the solider could have weapons and the businessman could have money.

None of the other boys said they wanted to one day be president.

‘Then Barry said he would become president and order the solider to guard him and the businessman to use his money to build him something.