Armando Siahaan

"Amerikaku" tells the tales of Indonesian students and their new friends and families in the US. (Photo courtesy of the US Embassy.)

‘Amerikaku’ Shows the Stories of Indonesian Students in the USA

It is always keen to project its self-image as a place where the world wants to go to live, and now America is making a TV show about how a group of Indonesians get on when their wish to do just that is realized.

Indonesian students increasingly travel to the United States to expand their educational horizons, often as part of exchange programs or to attain a college degree, and four are now being trailed on their voyage by camera crews, courtesy of the US Embassy.

Running as a six-part series exclusively on O Channel, “Amerikaku” (“My America”) documents the story of the four high school students, selected from among thousands of applicants, who are studying in the United States as part of the US State Department’s Youth Exchange and Study program.

Established in 2002, with about 100 Indonesian participants every year, the scholarship program is available for students in “countries with significant Muslim populations to spend up to one academic year in the US,” said Tristram Perry, who, as the public diplomacy officer at the US Embassy in Indonesia, is in charge of the program here.

“Students live with host families, attend high school, engage in activities to learn about American society and values, acquire leadership skills and help educate Americans about their countries and cultures,” he said.

There’s not much Hollywood magic about the show, but the interest in “Amerikaku” lies in the comparing the tales of students all coming from different backgrounds and being sent to live with different families in four different US cities.

The first episode, which aired on Sunday, introduces the audience to the students and their American host families. It begins with a scene at the US Embassy in Jakarta, where the batik-wearing student applicants are nervously waiting for their visa interviews. The students appear edgy, but after the interviews are over, some say it was “not that hard,” and one is surprised that the American interviewer conducted the whole process in Indonesian.

Flying all the way from Banda Aceh to Ballston Spa in New York is Miftah Sugesti, a student whom friends describe as “sometimes mature, but sometimes childish,” and “intellectual [with] a sense of leadership and very active.”

Miftah is deciding whether her career goal should be to aim to be minister for the environment, a communications expert or an anthropologist. She has gone to live with a family of five, the Browers, who have two adopted children from Taiwan.

Nindy Silvie, also from Banda Aceh, describes herself by saying, “I can be serious, but can be funny too.” She says she has “something big in mind,” to make a change in social and political arenas.

During her temporary stay in the United States, Nindy stays with a family of big Barack Obama fans in Yellow Spring, Ohio. In the first episode, the chatty student gives a tour of the exotically decorated house where she lives, showing her backyard, the study and her bedroom.

Anisa Devi is a petite, headscarf-wearing vivacious girl from Jepara, a small city near Semarang, Central Java. Her mother said she wasn’t eager to have her daughter travel to the United States at first. But her father said that despite her small stature, Anisa is “outgoing” and “brave.”

Anisa goes to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to live with the Blakes. Her host dad calls her “very fun” and says she “likes to get involved with activities,” while her host brother says “she’s crazy.”

Bespectacled Waskito Jati comes from Yogyakarta and is sent to Charlotte, North Carolina. There, he lives with a family of three, with a Hispanic mother.

In the first episode, Waskito tries Mexican food for the first time — tortilla and pimento. He then scrutinizes the house’s refrigerator, which holds beer, zucchini, peanut butter and jelly, things he solemnly identifies as “American.”

Based on the first episode, the show’s value lies pretty much all in its presentation of cross-cultural exchanges. The host families come from a variety of backgrounds, providing an unambiguous backdrop to show America as a diverse country.

It is intriguing to see Indonesian students learning about alien cultures, but the first episode was a little short of what might be called an entertainment factor. The stories are at times flat, the characters not as engaging or lively as they could be.

But Perry adds that Hollywood-style fizz is not the show’s main selling point. “People who want to see the real America will be very interested in the program, because it is not a Hollywood version of what life is like in America,” he said. “It deals with their everyday lives, and you can see that both [the students] and their host families are real people with lots in common. It’s not like anything else you’ll see on television.”

And if that doesn’t make you want to move there, what would?

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