I am just a white Shaquille O’Neil living in Jakarta…

...except I am tan, 6’1’’, have curly hair, green eyes and nice teeth –still, I am a minority through-and-through (or a Greek-god depending who you talk to). Here are a few stories I feel best represent my, hmmm, looking different?

Story One: The program, FINIP, gave us enough money to go out and purchase mobile phones so that in the case we get stranded on some dismal, shady street corner by a sketch taxi driver we would be able to call for help. Well, the only problem is they sent all twenty students in the program at once to get the phones from one of the nearby malls. Of course we were a sight to see; ten Americans and ten Indonesians walking into an Indonesian mega-mall, wow. It was like we had walked out of a circus act and into South East Asia daily life; I felt as though I needed to juggle knives or breathe fire or something to appease their strange stares. The Indonesia students gibber-gabbered in Bahasa with the store clerks trying to negotiate prices. A few of them strongly urged me to walk away from the bargaining battle ground because my luminescent white skin was making it difficult for them to get the price lower – apparently a stereotype here is that white people have money….go figure. We ended up getting phones and then promptly exited the mall, single file. In hindsight we really didn’t do much to make ourselves incognito.

Story Two. The first Friday here in Indonesia about half of us decided we wanted to go to Friday prayers. Since Indonesia has the world’s largest population of Muslims it was rather easy to appease our cultural craving since religion is such a part of daily life here. We hitched a few taxis to a market near a local mosque. Picture this. A small group of American’s along with three or four Indonesians winding our way through this maze of an open-air-market towards the source of the call-to-worship. I am practically walking sideways, bent at the waste as to not knock my head against the low lying electrical wires and lines supporting the colorful tarps and tents covering the periphery of the narrow path I wander through. The people I pass either stare or do a double-take; their confusion is understandable. They must be wondering to themselves what we are doing there…we ask ourselves the same question. A quick smile and nod goes a long way in this country as it melts away the concern and curiosity chiseled into the Indonesian’s faces: they always smile back.

Story Three: Children are infatuated with white-people. It is not uncommon for us to walk past a group of Indonesian children on the street and then have one of the Indonesian counterparts lean over and whisper to me that they just called one of us beautiful. I actually had a group of women say I was very handsome in one of the malls this past week…of course they said it in Bahasa so I had no idea I had just been complemented…again smiling goes a long way. Back to the children. We were standing at a queue yesterday for about an hour waiting to ride a sky-rail at a local cultural theme park and for sixty minutes we were like television to those kids. Honestly, I feel like a celebrity sometimes. Every time the line wrapped around the children would tug on their parents sleeve so they too could sneak a peek. Some would chatter with one another and giggle before returning to their whispering. There was one instance when this baby was just crying and crying –clearly unhappy—and then the little runt caught sight of us. Literally within two seconds the kid stopped crying and just looked at us with those big, dark watery eyes.

Basically, I could write about every single day here in Jakarta and have similar stories to the ones above. Some people get frustrated being under the spotlight all the time; they begin to crack under the pressure of the stares, glares, and whispers. As for me, I embrace it. The way I look at it, I strive to give them something to look at. No, not like “hey look at me, I’m an American!” as I flaunt my lanky self around the streets of Jakarta. Rather, I try to radiate sincerity and kindness and be an ambassador for my country, to be a model “white-person.”