Obama Mystery Theater: SDN Menteng 1 School Graduation Photo

We’ve been having fun lately, comparing photos of various Indonesian personages to our current president. See here,  here and here, for examples. The photo at the top of this post is said to be of Barry Soetoro (aka Barack Hussein Obama II, circled) in 1969 or 1970, depending upon which source you read. As captioned by the Washington Post, the photo was taken at a graduation ceremony at SDN Menteng 1, the Muslim public school that Obama attended while he lived in Indonesia. Our post at this link examines Obama’s numerous schools and teachers, for more context.

The official story tells us that Barry attended Menteng for less than a year (’70-August ’71) and was in third grade when he began there, so he would have been about 8 years old at the time. The Huffington Post also stated that the photo shown above was taken at SDN Menteng. Yet Barry looks much too young, unless he’s younger than he admits.

Why would Barry be at that school unless he attended the school at the time? The Jakarta Forum places the photo “circa 1970″ and refers to the other students as his “classmates,” which leads one to believe that he was a student there, too. Perhaps the graduate was his adopted sister Holiyah “Lia” Soetoro Sobah, whom he disavows?

Lia said that she was four years older than Barry, so perhaps she did graduate from elementary school in 1970, with her new brother being there to congratulate her. The young lady in the white dress, standing in the center, next to the teacher, looks very much like Lia.

More about Lia here.

Now look closely at the two boys whose faces are circled in the image at this link: Rully Dasaad and Widiyanto. See the image below.

These two boys were particular friends of Barry’s; Rully being often quoted with regard to his time at school with his new found friend Barry. Both boys apparently attended the Besuki school (aka SDN Menteng) with Barry. Was the photo taken at Santo Fransiskus Asisi, the Catholic school, and not at SDN Menteng? Why the confusion? Or is it deliberate obfuscation? We’re told that Barry spent 3 of his 4 Indonesian years at the Catholic school, and yet there are no photos. All the photos are from the Muslim school; and there are Rully and Widiyanto, with a very young-looking Barry at the Muslim school.

Rully looks taller than Barry and, in my opinion, Widiyanto looks heavier. Does Barry  look taller or significantly chubbier than the others, as is often claimed by numerous informants, who were interviewed about their initial recollections of young Barry Soetoro?

By the way, the girl in the white dress who may be Lia is second from left, in front.

Because she’s wearing that pretty white dress and standing near the teacher, she seems to be a person of honor and so, perhaps, a graduate.

A closer look at all of the children in the photo reveals that several look decidedly not “Asian”. Click to enlarge.
Many who claim to remember Barry from his time in Indonesia make it a point to state that he was taller, fatter, darker, and had curlier hair than all of the other children, which made him stand out and caused him to be the butt of bullying, teasing, and jokes. Look carefully again at the photo. There’s a boy on the far left, standing in front, who looks more like Barry than Barry himself. His hair looks curly and his skin looks dark. He seems taller, too. Could someone have misidentified Barry Soetoro, circling the wrong child?

Either the news agencies are wrong about the year and the school, or Obama attended the Muslim school earlier than the official story says, or else he was much younger when he attended the Muslim school than the official story says. Oddly enough, Barry also was spotted in school in Hawaii in 1969, so about the same time. Below is a photo of Barry with another friend, Scott. That photo was captioned by Scott’s mother, identifying the year as 1969. The drawings on the bulletin board indicate this was near Christmas, 1969.

How could Barry look younger in 1970 than he did in 1969?

Another photo of Barry at school in Indonesia turned up recently. A blogger kindly captioned the photo to indicate who’s shown. Many of these children are mentioned in a story at this link. Another story mentions Onny Padmo, and says that he and Barry went to school together in 1971. This photo is captioned “3rd Grade ’70″, but Barry looks older than he did in the photo at the top of the post.

Both Pak Effendi and Ibu Karim, the teachers, are mentioned in our post about Barry’s teachers. The photo above is blurry, but the version at this source is clearer and provides more information about the image:

Caption: JAKARTA, INDONESIA – UNDATED: … photo of Obama and his classmates at Elementary School SDN Menteng 1 in Central Jakarta, Indonesia. President Barrack Obama’s Third Grade school photograph taken in 1970. The future president is in the centre of the picture, standing behind a teacher in the third row, three pupils in from the right, wearing a beret. His class teacher, Effendi, is standing back left. President Obama must pull American troops out of Afghanistan and Iraq if he is to win over the Muslim world, says his cousin, Haryo Soetendro. … (Photo by Barcroft Media / Getty Images)

The caption states that the photo was taken at the Muslim school, but the name given to the jpg image at the blog source includes “obama-catholic-school”. Another mistake?

The photo of Barry in a beret must have been taken only months after the photo of Barry with Scott in Hawaii. The article at this link contains the beret photo and other images of Barry in school in Indonesia, as shown by yet another childhood friend of Barry’s: Sonni Gondokusumo. Perhaps it’s only an illusion that Barry seems younger in one photo than in the other.

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