THE DROP
Hasanah and Ariyanti pose for a photo on the College Green on Jan. 25, 2022.
THE COUNTRY of ISLANDS & KINDNESS An OU teacher and a doctoral student from Indonesia feel their culture is united by the generosity of their neighbors.
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BY MCKENNA CHRISTY | PHOTOS BY AZIZ AL FADHA | DESIGN BY BROOKE GARRETT
uring the first week of fall semester, Uswatun “… I was like, ‘no way it would ever happen in my country.’ Hasanah was standing outside of Baker Center We talk about that, and they feel really excited to learn about talking about her home country of Indonesia. something new. Even in my class, I asked them to call me ‘Ibu Hasanah asked what I knew about Indonesia, which was Uswatun,’ Ibu means mother,” Hasanah says. “But that’s the way little to nothing, but she took the time to teach me about we call our teachers or maybe older women.” the tens of thousands of islands making up the country Hasanah had two students in her class for the fall semester. She and the hundreds of millions of people living there. explains that Indonesian is considered a less commonly taught Hasanah currently teaches Elementary Indonesian I at Ohio language compared to Spanish or German. University and is a Fulbright Foreign Language Teaching “I’m really thankful that those two students enrolled into my Assistant — an exchange program for abroad studies, teaching class and my very first question is like, ‘what is your reason?’ and more. Hasanah came to teach at the beginning of the I mean I’m very grateful school year and traveled far from home to do so. and those two students are “I live in Banten province so it’s only two hours driving from very nice and then we are Jakarta, the capital. It’s in Java Island because as we know that comfortable in this very Indonesia is the country of islands,” Hasanah says. small class,” Hasanah says. Although the Embassy of the Republic of Indonesia states “It’s more like [a] private there are 17,508 islands, with 6,000 being inhabited by the class and we can be very population, there are five that are considered to be the open and be the way we are.” “main” islands. The two students learning “We&have five big islands: Island, andDESIGN then Java Indonesian in Hasanah’s STORY PHOTOGRAPHS BY Sumatra DYLAN BENEDICT| BY Island BROOKE GARRETT — where the capital is located [and] includes my province of class do not represent the course,” Hasanah says. “Then Sulawesi Island, Kalimantan popularity of the language Island [and] Papua Island. And then one of them, Sumatra in Indonesia and the Island, it’s one of the biggest islands in the world, it’s maybe in amount of people living the sixth [largest] range.” there. Statista states that as In Hasanah’s class she balances teaching Indonesian language, of 2021, the population of which she says can be called Bahasan Indonesia, along with the Indonesia is 272.25 million cultural aspects of the country such as how Indonesian students people and as of 2010, 87 address their teachers. When Hasanah took a few classes at the percent of those people University of Virginia Tech in 2011, her professor asked to be are Muslim. “So, we are called by their first name and Hasanah recalls being shocked by not applying Islamic law the request. but since most people are Hasanah inside the office, making peace symbol with her hands.
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backdrop | Spring 2022
