What I’d Tell Obama - Grandmother

Sarah ObamaBumps, like the bone-jarring craters that mark the approach to Kogelo, where Mama Sarah, Barack's paternal grandmother, lords benignly over a gaggle of Obamas, young and old.

Bad bumps, too, for there is no living in these parts without taking turbulence from the wicked trifecta of malaria, AIDS and crushing poverty that makes the region one of Kenya's most troubled patches.

And yes, little bumps – like the one that dealt a wobble this week to their prodigal son's path to the US presidency, when a misty Hillary Clinton took New Hampshire, against all prognostications.

That last one doesn't worry Mama Sarah too much. In her 85 years, she has seen her reality shift from beneath the colonial control of imperial Britain to the momentous now, when she envisions that soon "Barack may become president of the world."

"If Barack were here with me today I would give him a big hug and say, ‘Don't worry. Keep going,’” Sarah told the Toronto Star.

"It is in God's hands. But I believe God is with him." Obama's father, Barack Sr., finished out his life in his native Kenya. By most accounts a brilliant economist, the Harvard graduate died in a 1982 car crash, never living to realise the promise of his son's talent and ambition. He last saw his son in 1971, a difficult encounter the younger Obama described with candour in his 1995 autobiography, Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance.

Yet, in that same book, Obama describes the first of his three extended visits to his ancestral Kenyan home, a journey of self-discovery that knitted anew the family ties torn by his father's abandonment.

Speaking in her native Luo tongue, Sarah points proudly to the family photos that line the walls of her humble, single-storey, tin-roof house, in which the creamy complexion of Barack stands out among his darker Obama kin.

"Just by showing Barack who we are and where he comes from, Barack learnt so much," she said of Obama's first odyssey in 1987.

The American-born Obama feasted on the family stories, learning that the Obamas of Siaya district have a history as local peacemakers. He fell in love with Sarah's chapati, the pan-grilled flatbread introduced by Indian migrants and now a favourite in Kenyan households. He awoke each day to the crowing of the family's rooster from a small patch of land that has been in the family at least five generations.

The village, in turn, has come to regard Barack Obama as its foremost native son, according to Mary Kemundo Ogala, a family friend and public health nurse at the Kogelo district drug dispensary, where there is a pharmacist but no doctor.

Obama"Barack Obama, I think, has a magical effect on all Africans. Maybe, in a way, he has that effect on the whole world," Ogala said in an interview at the dispensary, where a "disease-management" class for 40 HIV-infected women and children was underway.

"But I think the impact here is deeper because the district is so deprived, even by Kenyan standards. Most of this country's rural poor are able to grow some cash crops to get by. Here, the soil is not good and this year there was not enough rain to grow anything to sell. It makes life such a struggle. So, of course everyone loves Barack Obama. He is a source of pride. And for many, a source of hope that by bringing attention to this part of Kenya, we will finally see some development."

Mama Sarah Obama, like most people in Kogelo, has patches for maize and other vegetables on her humble but picturesque property. Said Obama – Barack's uncle –augments the family income as a mechanic at an industrial plant in Kisumu, 60 kilometres south.

Others in the village scrounge extra shillings to make ends meet, however they can. One of the Obama's neighbours, Ndalu Lukadiya, 75, said she survives on her vegetable garden, and by weaving string from the fibres of a native plant for sale in the local market.

Those with younger legs pedal boda-boda – a Chinese-made bicycle with a heavily padded banana seat, which taxies people up and down the washboard roads around Kogelo for 15 cents a kilometre.

Lukadiya, who has known Mama Sarah all her life, describes the matriarch of the Obama household as a "free-hearted woman”.

"Long before Barack Obama became famous, Mama Sarah was known for her hospitality. Her door was always open and whoever walked through it was invited to eat. She was always jovial, all the time," said Lukadiya.

"We believe that when you share what you have with visitors, they leave good luck behind. But with Sarah, it is not about luck. She is just a very generous woman."

Saidi Obama, an articulate and thoughtful man of 41, who is also emerging as the gatekeeper for the elderly Mama Sarah, who today finds herself subjected to a daily wave of journalists and curiosity-seekers who want to learn the back-story of the US presidential hopeful.

"I don't mind the visitors. It is a thrill for me. I know people come here in good faith. I am still a strong woman," insists Mama Sarah.

Saidi interrupts: "We worry; she is not as strong as she thinks she is. Soon, she will be 86 and she still tends her garden. She works very hard. I think at some point we have started saying 'No, sorry.'

Or at least to tell people to contact me so they don't burden Mama Sarah.

Source: Toroto Star

... As Kenyans Pray For Him

Nearly all the village of Kongelo, the presiden tial candidate’s impoverished ancestral home in western Kenya trooped to makeshift local churches.

“It is calm here, we have been lucky but we are all praying for peace elsewhere in Kenya and we know Barack is thinking of us even though he is very busy right now,” said his Uncle. Said Obama, 41, the brother of Barack Obama Sr who left Kenya to study in America.

Kongelo, a remote AIDS-ravaged, dirt-poor hamlet of brick houses with corrugated iron roofs, where barefoot children, goats and hens roam free, was spared the ethnic-strife that has seen 375 killed and tens of thousands forced to leave their homes.

The tribalism that colours Kenyan life. The eruption of violence following Kenya's elections has brought to the fore the latent tribalism present in everyday life.

The village, which Mr Obama last visited in 2006, is some 45 miles west of the industrial town of Kisumu, nestling on the edge of Lake Victoria, where angry Luo youths turned on their Kikuyu neighbours who tended to support their fellow Kikuyu and “victor”, the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki.

Like nearly all the other residents of Kongelo, Barack Obama Sr, who died in a car accident in 1982, was a Luo. However, some of the men in the village have married women from Kenya’s other 41 tribes, including Kikuyus.

“Here there is no trouble, we are all going to Church together. The worst of the violence is in the towns,” explained Said Obama. “We heard Barack has appealed for calm and we know he is right; nothing can be gained by Kenyan turning on Kenyan.”

The village is probably the only one in Kenya that boasts more election posters of Mr Obama than it does of the rival Kenyan candidates. The home of Sarah Onyango Obama, 85, Barack Obama’s grandmother, is plastered with photographs of her famous grandson’s successes, most recently his election as Senator of Illinois.

“Sarah is fine. God blessed us that no one in the village was caught up in this violence. Now we are just praying for Barack’s success... even if we never get a Luo in Kenya’s State House, we may have one soon in the White House.

“We are praying for that so our politicians here can have a real role model and see what they should do.”

Mr Obama enraged Kenyan politicians on his last visit by accusing them of dragging the continent backwards with poor government and corruption the reason for the strong showing of Mr Odinga who alleges the Kenyan President and his supporters rigged the ballot when they realised they were losing.