Jun 12 / It's a Different World

This article was originally published in the Brattleboro Reformer

by ROBERT PLAIN, Reformer Staff

Tuesday, May 27
Editor’s note: The Reformer first wrote about Anggita Paramesti last November, when she was enjoying her first Thanksgiving with her host family.

BRATTLEBORO —Anggita Paramesti, an 18-year-old senior at Brattleboro Union High School, is also an international correspondent for a radio program broadcast on the other side of the world.

Gita, as her friends know her, is an exchange student from Indonesia. As part of the Youth Exchange Study program, she files regular dispatches about life in the United States for a U.S. State Department radio show that broadcasts in Indonesia.

“Greetings From America” uses foreign exchange students, primarily from Indonesia and Pakistan, as on-the-ground reporters who tell of their experiences abroad. The show starts out with a remix version of James Brown’s “Living in America” but Paramesti’s reports are delivered in Indonesian. Her topics, however, are often very culturally American: Daylight Saving time, the first time seeing snow (“It was just like in the movies,” she said) and prom.

She’s also interviewed state department diplomats and had her picture taken with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, though she wasn’t granted an interview. After all, according to Paramesti, one of the purposes of the YES program and her radio broadcasts is to “create a better relationship between Muslims and Americans.”

As a Muslim hailing from a country where the United States’ reputation has been damaged in recent years, her experiences here are not what she was expecting.

“Before coming to America, I only knew this stereotype that the American government was bad,” she said. “I didn’t think people would discriminate against me or think I was a terrorist, but there is a feeling that American people hate Muslim people.”

But contrary to her preconception, and after visiting with Muslim-Americans in Washington, D.C., and Providence, R.I., she concluded that “being a Muslim in America is not that bad.”

“It’s part of American diversity,” she said. “It really opened my eyes.”

BUHS history teacher Bill Holiday said having exchange students like Paramesti in class is as much a benefit to her as it is to his Vermont-born students.

“One of the themes of my class is tackling the tunnel vision we have about how we are viewed by the world,” he said. “She’s done something just by being here. We get a much deeper appreciation that we are a people in the world, not the people in the world.”

He described Paramesti as being “very bright and very committed.” On a recent school trip to Selma, Ala., to study the civil rights movement, Holiday said she asked “the most probing questions of any student on the trip.”

In an essay about her experiences in the deep south, Paramesti wrote, “We should remember that the right to vote for every single American was not simply made. But it was a result from thousands of people who have enough courage to face anything in order to stand up for justice and equality. The attempt for justice and equality for human rights is not over yet. Just like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘Until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream’ what can we do?’”

The trip to Selma, and many of her experiences here in the U.S., have inspired her to see what it is she can do. She returns to Indonesia in June, but would like to come back here for college to study international affairs and diplomacy.

In the meantime, Paramesti is enjoying finding out about the many differences between the two cultures. Although she prefers Indonesian food, she’s proud of the 20 pounds she has gained since arriving in America.

“I think it’s cute,” she said. “Americans don’t want to gain weight but when we call someone fat it’s not offensive. We don’t put a standard on beautiful or skinny or fat.”

She also explored the religious freedoms Americans enjoy, having attended a Baptist church in Alabama and frequently holding philosophical conversations with her host family’s Catholic grandmother.

“In my country, if you are Muslim you just learn about Islam and if you are Christian you just learn about Christianity,” she said. “Before, I knew about Christianity but I didn’t understand why people worshiped Jesus. I still believe in my God, but I understand why people believe in Jesus.”

Robert Plain can be reached at rplain@reformer.com or 802-254-2311 ext. 271.

photo: Gita with host mother and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice