NAIROBI—He wasn’t born here; the father who was didn’t raise him; and he’s only visited three times in his life. But now that he’s got a clear shot at the White House, Barack Obama is every Kenyan’s Kenyan. The country’s Luo community, robbed by that Kikuyu antichrist Mwai Kibaki last Christmas, suddenly has a new presidential candidate to cheer for. But for once in Kenyan politics, tribe’s got nothing to do with it. All forty-two of them are cheering Obama on, and who cares if this time no one gets to vote?

Obama’s confident visage beamed out the front page of every paper in the country this morning, his first as the official Democratic nominee. And why not? There’s been precious little fodder for the patriotic cannon around here lately; Obama may be a distant son of the soil, but he’s a son nonetheless. Or perhaps more accurately, a grandson—the lineup outside his grandma’s hut on Lake Victoria is four reporters deep, and counting. Whether or not her humble lifestyle or down-to-earth views on Barack junior can shed any light on how he might behave in the Oval Office is debatable, but that won’t stop journalists from scouring his genetic homeland (half of it, anyway) for insights into how Kenya has influenced the man who would be Prez.
And what of the effect that man now has on the country that would be His? My Kenyan colleagues and I had an interesting day at the office today, debating exactly what it is that makes this country so happy about Obama’s surging fortunes.

Do Kenyans hope, or even expect, that an Obama presidency will translate into a shower of money and good tidings here on the far side of the planet? Some do, sure. It’s a vain and naïve thing way to think, and perfectly natural to boot. Less comfortable is the notion that the man Obama hopes to replace actually has the best record in the history of his office when it comes to spending in—and on—Africa; whatever either man’s motivations (strategic ingratiation versus filial solidarity, I’d say) Obama will have tall shoes to fill if wants to improve on Bush’s performance back “home.”

Or what about plain old pride—is it vain and naïve to feel a patriotic twinge that a product, however partial, of your own turf should come within striking distance of the most powerful office on earth? Of course it is; vanity underlies all patriotic sentiment, which again is no reason for it not to exist. It’s a long, long ways from the shores of Lake Victoria to the White House lawn, after all, and the Obama family (if not Obama himself) has just crossed it in the shortest time humanly and legally possible. It would be practically impossible for Kenyans not to blow the man a national kiss.

Who isn’t a sucker when it comes to this kind of thing? Personally, I’m happy that people like Margaret Atwood, Jim Carey, and Steve Nash (to name just a few) are Canadian, whether or not we have anything whatsoever to do with one another. But of course, we do. This is a world of connections, after all, where influence is achieved through contact, and contact is so much more than physical. Great men and women aren’t produced in a vacuum; conversely, having achieved greatness, they enrich the earth they come from.
Anyone who doubts whether Kenya’s influence on Obama extends beyond the geographic past and into the philosophic present would do well to read his book, Dreams From My Father. Or, to save time, you might read a seminal paper written by that father, a distinguished economist, on the subject of African socialism at the dawn of this continent’s independence.

It’s not that the ideas of the father, or the fatherland, are necessarily the ideas of the son—nothing so literal. It’s simply that there had to be something great and universal about those influences, however geographically removed, for Obama to even consider becoming the man he is today. And now, it’s time for that stream to flow two ways.

An idealist’s portrait of reality, true. It’s also true that Kenya has produced plenty of greats from within—some of whom I’ve had the good fortune to meet myself—and doesn’t need a Western hero to validate itself. But I’d argue that a little recognition is never a bad thing, and doubly so when you’re ego’s as bruised as this country’s is at the moment.

And who knows? Maybe President Obama will come back to visit his grandma after all. He may not owe this country much, but after all the interviews she’s fielded on his behalf, he at least owes the lady a foot rub.

More in Notes from Nairobi | Blogs Home | Current Issue | SUBSCRIBE »

Posted on Thursday, June 5th, 2008 at 2:29 pm. Follow comments through the RSS 2.0 feed. Comment or trackback.