Balige, Indonesia

Halo! Apa kabar? ... in English: Hello! How are you?

According my AncestryDNA results, I have 30% "Southern Chinese & Southeast Asian" DNA. Indonesia is grouped into the Southeast Asia region, but due to Ancestry's limited reference panel here, I suspect that this percentage may change to increase if they refine their data. See my blog "Brick Walls & Research Challenges" for more on this!

Pictured above is the beautiful Lake Toba, a lake nearby the town of Balige in North Sumatra, Indonesia. This gorgeous body of water is actually a crater lake as it sits atop a supervolcano.

My grandma, Emma, grew up in Balige and always tells me stories describing childhood memories of playing by Lake Toba as a young girl. She always talks about how much joy the simple wonders of nature in Sumatra brought her and her 4 siblings as children, which I see persist in her love of gardening today outside her home in New Jersey.

Through many interviews with her, I learned that while living in Balige it was very common for people to truly live off the land. They planted their own rice, grew their own vegetables, ate lots of fish, and harvested fruit right off the many mango and pineapple plants around the area!

When the Japanese occupied this area of Indonesia, my grandma moved to go live with her uncle in Medan, Indonesia, a city that has strong Batak roots much like the Indonesian part of my heritage.

Fun Fact: In traditional Batak architecture, the houses featured a boat-like shape and stilts built underneath for air ventilation and protection from potential human and animal threats in the natural wilderness of Indonesia.

A traditional Batak house found in the Lake Toba area.

My grandmother came to the U.S. for college, where she earned an Education degree and eventually became a science teacher in the state of New York where she raised my mom, Jennifer.