November 06, 2008	Thursday	Ziqa'ad 7, 1429

JAKARTA, Nov 5: Former classmates in Indonesia reacted with pride and amazement on Wednesday as the chubby little boy they knew as Barry made history by becoming the first black president of the United States.

“It’s just amazing, I mean we’re so proud of him,” said Dewi Asmara Oetojo, a lawmaker in Indonesia’s parliament who was a school friend of US president elect Barack Obama at primary school here in the 1960s.

“He was a very easy-going person and also very wise. At that time we were so small we never thought he had the qualities of a leader. He said ‘I want to be president’ and we all thought that was so funny,” Oetojo said.

Oetojo said classmates were excited about having the president of the United States show up to their next three-monthly reunion, but understood that Obama might be a little busy.

“A reunion in the White House is not our target. Our task as classmates is to support him, but if we have the chance, why not?” she said.

“He can be a bridge for the West to understand people in the East. I think that will make him different from other American presidents.” The son of a white American mother and a black Kenyan father, Obama was raised in Hawaii and moved to Indonesia when he was six after his divorced mother remarried an Indonesian.—AFP