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Jakarta Post

The spirit of a nation

When I was young I promised myself that I would never marry a doctor because a doctor would care more for other people than their own

Roby Muhamad (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Fri, May 20, 2011

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The spirit of a nation

W

hen I was young I promised myself that I would never marry a doctor because a doctor would care more for other people than their own.

There was a time after the war when my mother was suffering from severe typhoid fever. While struggling for her life, with no doctor able to come to her aid, she made a promise that if she survived she would become a doctor and would make sure that she would come to all the people who needed her help.

My mother was studying to become a pediatrician when I was born, therefore I spent most of my early years with my 10-year-old sister. My mother had to spend nights at the hospital every other day as an “on-duty doctor”.

After completing her studies she was even busier than ever. She spent her time in the hospital every morning until afternoon, taking care of patients and training countless would-be Indonesian doctors. In the evenings she attended to her private practice.

We rarely had our meals together. Sometimes the phone rang in the middle of the night and she had to go to the hospital or a patient’s home for emergency assistance.

Once she had to stay for months in the Netherlands doing research and my grades at school fell and my hair got infected by lice. Another time she left for India and spent several weeks conducting research for the World Health Organization.

I am her youngest son and I always followed her around as she traveled to medical conferences, from Semarang and Bali to Honolulu and New York. Consequently, when I graduated from elementary school I had had the rare chance to see most of the world.

My mother also traveled to the most remote parts of West Java to train community health center workers how to treat diarrhea. She appeared on local TV giving her best acting performance in one of those highly scripted dialogues between doctor and patient explaining that oralite was the best medicine for diarrhea.

About seven years ago, we found her kidneys started to fail and she needed to have dialysis twice a week. Her dedicated life as both doctor and educator did not give her enough means to pay for all the medical treatment, so she had to borrow money from her close relatives and children.

Once she was infected with hepatitis from the dialysis machine, but she recovered miraculously. Laying on the hospital bed, she kept working: grading exams from her biochemistry class of more than 100 students. When she finally left the hospital, her students rushed to kiss her hand and expressed how grateful they were to have her back.

On my birthday a few days ago, she organized a wonderful party for me and our closest relatives, although it had then become difficult for her to stand and walk around.

I always wonder how and where my mother found her determined spirit to fulfill her promises.

It was Sunday morning at 9 a.m. on May 20, 1908, when several young students gathered at the auditorium of the STOVIA medical school in Weltevreden, Batavia, to fulfill a similar promise. They included students from seven upper schools all over Java: Cultuurschool (Bogor), OSVIA (Magelang, Probolinggo), Normaalschool (Yogyakarta, Bandung, Probolinggo) and HBS (Surabaya). The meeting resulted in the creation of Boedi Oetomo, the first organization that spurred the road to Indonesia’s independence.

The students were inspired by the efforts of Dr. Wahidin Soedirohoesodo, who had traveled all over Java to collect “student funds” to promote education for the people. Wahidin believed that modern education, while still maintaining a strong sense of cultural identity, helped people understand and emerge from their plights.

He traveled all over Java on this mission, but unfortunately his efforts failed. Nevertheless, it united and inspired others to take up the fight and continue his mission.

My mother’s determination was born out of the long and rich history of our nation, ignited by a passion to liberate people from their sufferings. Her struggle was not without despair. At each low point in her life, when she felt she couldn’t stand another day studying for her pediatric specialization while still taking care of her four young children, when she felt she couldn’t take more hours lying in bed for dialysis, she was always reminded why she had to survive.

The spirit of how a nation came to be was all that allowed my mother to keep going and fulfill her promises. This spirit has propelled countless others to do the same in their own way. Emulating my mother’s struggle, I found the only way to remove my helplessness was by helping to relieve others. This I think was the spirit that inspired the young generation of Indonesia around the time when Boedi Oetomo was born.

I have seen countless Indonesians from all over the nation and beyond work to fulfill their own promises. There are many of us, more than at the time when Dr. Wahidin traveled around Java to raise his “student funds”.

We are all connected by the spirit that made us a nation. I can only hope that by taking up this promise, my young son will also grow to learn and understand.

The writer is a sociologist in the psychology department at the University of Indonesia and founder of AkonLabs.

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