U

S President Barack Obama's half-sister, Maya Soetoro, has been enjoying her visit to her childhood home of Yogyakarta during the past few days.

Maya spent part of her childhood in an area behind the former Ngasem bird market in 1976 when she was six years old.

'I am very happy that I can return to Yogyakarta, meeting old friends and making new ones. Yogyakarta has not changed. It still has the same spirit,' Maya said in Indonesian.

Referring to the visit to the ancient city as private and intellectual, she said she would reminisce while in Yogyakarta and at the same time, exchange ideas with natural disaster experts from Indonesia, to help create resilient people that are capable of reducing the risks of a disaster.

A lecturer at the University of Hawaii, Maya was one of the speakers at the Indonesia Symposium on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience organized by the Asia-Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (APDR3) in Yogyakarta on Thursday and Friday.

'This is the first time I have returned in 23 years. I lived here with my mother. Whenever I am here, I remember my mother,' she said as she delivered a remark during the opening ceremony of the symposium on Thursday.

Maya said that when she was still a little girl, her mother Ann Dunham had always woken her up in the middle of the night when there was a full moon out. She said she tried to refuse but her mother always insisted on waking her up. Together they then enjoyed the beauty of the full moon while she listened as her mother told stories.

'I love looking at the moon. The thing I love most about it is, that the moon always looks the same wherever you look at it from,' Maya said.

Born in Jakarta on Aug. 15, 1970, Maya also delivered public lectures at two of the city's prominent universities: Gadjah Mada University (UGM) and the Indonesian Islamic University (UII).

She also had the chance to visit the people living along the slope of Mount Merapi volcano and those living on the hilly regions in Karanganyar regency, Central Java.

'I am happy because I can still see Mount Merapi and Mount Merbabu just like the old days,' Maya said.

She said she lived in Yogyakarta for about two and a half years. She then moved to Semarang and lived there for about two years, then to Jakarta and resided there for another two years, before leaving to live in the US.

She said, while staying in Yogyakarta, she often spent her leisure time at Tamansari and Ngasen bird market, which were not too far from her house.

'With my son and my husband, I will visit the places where I spent my childhood,' said the smiling Maya.

During the symposium Maya was just like a celebrity. Many of the Indonesian participants and speakers, including Volcanology and Geological Disaster Mitigation Center head Surono, asked her to pose in pictures with him.

'Please, take our picture,' Surono said as he handed over his smart phone to a journalist to take their photo together.