Anticipation that Barack Obama may become the next president has sent a steady stream of visitors to the colonial-era Jakarta house he lived in as a child, from potential buyers and journalists to an entrepreneur who wants to turn it into the “Sweet Home Obama Bar.”
Tata Aboe Bakar, the 78-year-old owner, is in no mood to move out.
His family has lived in the airy, cream-colored house, located on a sprawling plot of land in one of the most prestigious neighborhoods in Indonesia’s capital, since it was built in 1939.
But with a potential price tag of $3 million — and even more if Aboe Bakar can believe one broker’s claims that a U.S. Embassy official is ready to pay five times the market price if Obama wins — he says he’ll seriously consider it.
Obama’s family moved to Indonesia in 1967 and spent two years in a humble home where chickens and ducks cackled in the backyard and two baby crocodiles slithered around in a fenced-off pond.