The Woman Behind Obama

by Elayne Clift

Thirty years ago, when Stanley Ann Dunham Soetoro lived in Yogyakarta, it was perhaps a less busy, tourist-filled metropolis than it is today. But probably little else has changed since the 1970s. Marlioboro, the wide boulevard that is home to copious Batik emporia, is still filled with 'becak' (bicycle rickshaws) and horse-drawn surreys. 'Warung' (street-side food vendors) continue to offer 'Martabak' (pancakes) and 'Nasi Gorung' (fried rice). And in this cultural capital of Indonesia, artists still thrive.Soetoro, who died in 1995 at age 52 from ovarian cancer, was the mother of Barack Obama, the Democratic candidate for president in the U.S. Her influence on her now-famous son cannot be underestimated. Although he wrote a bestseller about his search for the absent father, 'Dreams From My Father', Obama has said that his mother "was the single constant in my life." He describes her as "the kindest, most generous spirit I have ever known. What is best in me," he says, "I owe to her."Soetoro was a study in contradictions.
Married to Obama's Kenyan father when she was a pregnant teenager, she went on to earn a Ph.D. in anthropology and do vital work for women in the field of microfinance. A Midwestern American, she married first an African and then an Indonesian. A mother who adored her children, she insisted on working. She has been described by those who knew her as "fearless, capable, intelligent, curious and open."Stanley Ann Dunham (so named because her father wanted a boy) was born in 1942 in Kansas. The family moved frequently and lived in Honolulu when Ann enrolled at the University of Hawaii. There, she met Barack Obama Sr. in a Russian language class. Several months after they met, in February 1961, Ann and Barack married. Ann was three months pregnant. She dropped out of college. When Barack was not yet one, his father left for Harvard to earn a Ph.D. in economics and the marriage ended. Not long after, with help from family and friends, Ann returned to college to earn a bachelor's degree. During this time she met Lolo Soetoro at the University of Hawaii. In 1967, Ann and her young son Barack followed him to Jakarta, to a home without electricity, a backyard with chickens and a baby crocodile, and a neighborhood of unpaved streets.
Eventually Soetoro did well working for an American oil company but he and Ann grew apart as she became increasingly intrigued with traditional Indonesia.Ann began teaching English at the American embassy in Indonesia while giving her son English lessons in the early morning hours before he left for school. At night she would expose her young son to books about the American civil rights movement and her daughter, Maya, to multicultural dolls. "She believed that bigotry of any sort was wrong and that the goal was to treat everybody as unique individuals," Obama told TIME Magazine in an April interview.
In 1971, when Obama was 10 years old, his mother sent him back to Hawaii to live with his grandparents while attending prep school on scholarship. The separation was hard on both mother and son but a year later Ann was also back in Hawaii to earn a master's degree in anthropology, focusing on Indonesia. This also marked the end of her marriage to Soetoro from whom she was divorced in 1980. The move marked a turning point in Ann's life. She became increasingly self-assured and passionate about her work, eventually deciding to return to Indonesia for Ph.D. fieldwork. Obama, then 14, decided to stay in Hawaii for high school. Again, the separation was difficult but mother and son remained close.Ann began working for the Ford Foundation, as programme officer for women and employment and her home became a haven for politicians, artists and others who wanted to talk liberal politics.
Eventually she became a leader in microfinancing for women in Indonesia, well before the idea of giving women small loans became a major component of development. Her research helped the Bank Rakyat Indonesia set policy and today, according to TIME Magazine, "Indonesia's microfinance program is No. 1 in the world in terms of savers, with 31 million members, according to Microfinance Information eXchange Inc."By this time Obama, having graduated from Harvard Law School and having turned down lucrative work in a private law firm, was working in Chicago as a community organiser, an experience he sights often as he campaigns. He would soon go on to state and then national politics.
In 1992, two years before her premature death, Ann completed the extensive Ph.D. dissertation she had been working on for nearly two decades. The thesis, an in-depth analysis of peasant blacksmithing in Indonesia, is dedicated to Barack and Maya "who seldom complained when their mother was in the field."In an interview with 'The New York Times' in March, later reprinted by 'The Jakarta Post Sunday Magazine', Barack Obama's half-sister Maya said her mother "felt that somehow, wandering through uncharted territory, we might stumble upon something that will, in an instant, seem to represent who we are at the core." She did not want her children "to be limited by fear or narrow definitions," Maya added.
As Barack Obama campaigns for the presidency in America at a time of enormous social, political and economic change, those words seem prophetic. The first black to seek the highest office in the land, Ann Soetoro's son is certainly wandering through uncharted territory. He has spoken eloquently about not letting fear dominate voters' decisions and he has worked diligently to broaden crucial definitions that influence policy.In Indonesia, almost no one seems to be aware of Barack Obama's connection to this country. Not one person I spoke to informally for this article knew that he and his mother had lived here. No one realised he had an Indonesian half-sister (now working in Hawaii). And yet, ask anyone about Barack Obama and there is an immediate thumbs up, accompanied by a broad smile. (Some people think he is already president.) "Good man," they say. "Very good man."No doubt his mother would be very proud.(Elayne Clift, a writer from Vermont, USA, recently travelled in Thailand and Indonesia.)
September 14, 2008
By arrangement with WFS

Getting Whatever You want…Is As Easy As You Want It To Be

How soon do you want to get what you want in life?

Hold on a minute, ask yourself further, the following questions : What is it that you want in life? What is the purpose and benefit of your existence? Do you have a role model(s)? What I’m saying in essence is that you must have a fixed destination that you are aiming to reach from where you are. Any individual that does not have a desire, a specific goal, an objective, the purpose for which he’s living, is like somebody setting out on a journey and does not know where he is going. The result such person would get is obvious, instant failure.

The following are the 3 Simple Steps to getting whatever you want in life :

1. Fix a Definite and Precise Goal

After a serious brainstorming on the questions above, you can decide to fix a specific goal for yourself. Though, some of the idea that would be coming to your mind may be far fetch, just list them as they come to your mind. It may be to design or invent a better way of doing a particular task, it may be to make a certain amount of money within a specific time frame, and so on. You will later work on your list and pick the one you know you most desire and start working on it immediately. This goal must have specific terminal date, because a goal without a fix date is nothing but wishful thinking. Don’t get me wrong here, you can have a daily, weekly, monthly or even yearly goal. What you need do is to strive towards achieving your set goal on or before the target date.

2. Follow a Specific and Proven Strategy

Now that a goal has been set, which is the ‘what’, the next step will be the ‘how’ i.e. thinking about the strategy to use in achieving your set goal. The first step here is to acquire the necessary knowledge on the ‘how’. You can do this in two ways, either to learn it through somebody that is already successful in the area you are venturing into and let him take you by the hand through the step by step guide on how to achieve your desired goal or to search for enough proven strategies, study them and use them as guide. The first strategy is usually preferable. For instance, if you want to have a fleet of car, own and run a successful Leasing company. What you need do is to find someone who has done that business successfully and ask him how he does it or ask him to be your mentor. You don’t necessarily need to reinvent a new strategy.

3. Jump over the Hurdles to Success

Let’s hit the nail on the head here. This is the stumbling block that stops sincere, smart, hard working people from having all that they want. Until you let go of your internal blocks to having it all, you will struggle to have more happiness, wealth and better relationships. The internal hurdles may be numerous, but you need to jump over them. Thus getting more confidence and be bold to take any step moving forward. To be frank, letting go of these success blocks can seem almost impossible. And to make even a little progress maybe difficult.

At this level you may be having some challenges that would make you fill like quitting, but this is where the power of consistency and perseverance would be of immense help. These challenges are normal, and they may let you ask yourself whether you are even on the right path. Here, it is how strong your spirit of perseverance is, that will determine your success here. But, the moment you are able to scale over these hurdles, your confidence will grow and you will be able to set new goals and do it over and over again.

To your success

SELF IMPROVEMENT

Self Improvement Before Team Improvement - This is the story of how Nokia became the world’s producer of cell phones. As Illustrated by John Maxwell

It all started when the hundred year old company, now a huge conglomerate began losing money, having passed through a lot of ups and downs. About that time in 1990, a young executive was asked to take over an unprofitable division: mobile –phones, his name is Jorma Ollila. He was so successful at turning this division around that he was made the president and CEO of the company in 1992.

Subsequently, he was met with the challenge of turning the entire company around with a two headed approach. Believing that the company’s greatest potential lay in communications technology, he began to divest other interest. Second, he realized that for a technology company, human resources were more important than natural resources. Ollila says that today “The technology cycles are shorter. We must build on our discontinuities and turn them into our favour”

Ollila believes in constant self-renewal and has made his personal goal of self improvement the corporate goal as well. “Continuous learning entitles everyone at Nokia to develop themselves and find ways to improve their performance,” says Ollila. “And what’s true for the individual is just as true for the whole company.” To improve the team, improve the individuals on the team. Ollila’s philosophy of individual self-improvement helped turn Nokia into a $20 billion global telecommunications system.

Additional Information:

The Nokia people are always self-improving, and are therefore ready to face new situations. “People who are constantly improving themselves make three processes an ongoing cycle in their lives:”

1. Preparation
Self-improving team members think about what they can do to improve themselves in the present, not in some far off future. They look for today’s potential learning moments, and they seize them. At the end of the day, they think about what they have learned and what they need to learn more about tomorrow. In this way, they become deliberate and continuing learners, which prepares them for challenges.

2. Contemplation
People who have greatly influence the world have spent considerable amount of time alone – contemplating, meditating, and listening. “Time alone is essential to self-improvement.” It allows us to evaluate our actions, to make adjustments where they are needed, and to plan for improved future action based on what was learned in the past.

3. Application
Now is the time to start applying what you have learned; don’t keep putting off that difficult change. Maxwell says change generally comes when: 1) people hurt enough that they have to, 2)they learn enough that they want to, and 3)they receive enough that they are able to. The goal is to keep learning so that you want to change for the better daily.

Furthermore, to become self-improving….
· Become highly teachable; learn and adopt the attitude of a learner, not an expert;
· Plan your progress. Adopt two levels of learning. First, choose an area that you want to improve and select books, lectures, conferences, experts to speak in the coming months. Second, create learning moments each day so that you learn something new everyday.
· Value self-improvement over self-promotion: “Make your next career move based on how it will improve you personally rather than how it will enhance you financially.”

Maxwell concludes with an anecdote of Charles Lindberg, the great Aviator. He says that Lindberg’s historic solo flight across the Atlanta was not a solo endeavour. It took the collaboration of others to make it happen. But, when it was time for the pilot to make his thirty-three hour flight, he was ready. A friend of his tells a story that shows that Lindberg had begun years earlier “just practicing” staying awake all night so that he would be ready when the opportunity to make that monumental flight presented itself. We all have much “practicing” to do to be ready when our big moment comes.