Peeping the sights: A White House protocol officer takes a photo during a visit to the SDN 01 state elementary school in Menteng, Central Jakarta, on Thursday. The visit was in preparation for the arrival of former student, US President Barack Obama, in Jakarta next month.

Mike Johansson and Hasyim Widhiarto,  The Jakarta Post,  Jakarta
 

Barack Obama may still have more than a month before landing in Indonesia, but for the US president’s security services, their job began the day the president confirmed his homecoming visit.

On Thursday, dozens of US secret service agents, along with officials from the US Embassy in Jakarta, started their work in the city by inspecting the SDN 01 elementary school in Menteng, Central Jakarta, the school Obama attended for two years.

“The agents are coming to inspect the school before making plans to secure Obama’s visit here,” school spokesman Ahmad Solikhin told The Jakarta Post on Thursday.

During the inspection, however,  journalists were only allowed to observe from outside the school.
“I am really sorry for this, but these are security procedures that we must obey,” Ahmad said.

Paul Belmont, a spokesman for the US Embassy in Jakarta, however, neither confirmed nor denied that it was secret service men that had been scoping the school.

“There’s been reports about it in the press, but there is nothing I can really say about it,” he said.
“But the embassy is working together with the White House on this one [Obama’s visit].”

Earlier this week, Indonesian presidential spokesman Dino Patti Djalal confirmed that Obama would visit Jakarta in the second half of March to launch a comprehensive partnership with Indonesia and make a “sentimental” return to his childhood hometown.

Dino said Obama would spend “a couple of days” in his childhood hometown with First Lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters.

Hawaii-born Obama moved to Indonesia at the age of six to live with his mother, Ann Dunham,
and Indonesian stepfather Lolo Soetoro.

Obama was in the third grade at the school — then named SD Besuki — in 1968.

Prior to SD Besuki, he attended the Fransiskus Asisi Catholic school.

He returned to Hawaii at the age of 10 to live with his maternal grandparents.

To welcome Obama, Ahmad said the school, supported by its alumni association, had been training its students to perform, among others, choir and dancing performances.

“We really want to create a nostalgic memory about his [Obama’s] childhood here,” he said.

Founded in 1934 by the Dutch colonial administration, the 2,500-square meter school was then exclusively for the children of the Dutch, and Indonesian nobility.

The Indonesian government took charge of the school in 1962.

The Jakarta-based Friends of Obama Foundation is also planning to commemorate the occasion by organizing special events, said foundation chairman Ron Muller.

“We are now working with the government to make arrangements to welcome Obama,” he said.