Posted on 08/13/2004 3:41:09 PM PDT by kattracks
KOGELO, Kenya (Reuters) - When it comes to U.S. politics the world may be focused on the presidential election but in Kenya, a U.S. Senate race in Illinois is grabbing the headlines and the attention.No matter that Barack Obama, the rising star of last month's Democratic convention in Boston, lives thousands of miles away and is the favorite to win a job where his primary influence will be in the United States, not in this East African nation where politics are a byword for corruption and tribal rivalries.
Nor does it matter that the 43-year-old Harvard trained lawyer and activist has as much Kansas blood as he has Kenyan, and was born in Hawaii to a Kenyan father and a white American mother.
Obama, whose name Barack means "blessed" in Swahili, is to Kenya what John F. Kennedy was to Ireland -- the country's favorite American son and a source of hope for a better future.
His bid to become only the third African-American U.S. senator since the 19th century is closely followed by the Kenyan press, by politicians eager to bask in his reflected glow and by a population looking for a savior.
"If he were to be lucky enough to win the race, the community of Africa will be accepted by the Western cultures," said James Oballo Ojwang, a tribal chief meeting with junior chiefs not far from the village where Obama's father was raised.
"All of the African countries will be happy about Obama. He has brought all of this community and Kenya in relation with all of America."
Many Kenyans, inspired by Obama's quintessentially American story of rising from humble beginnings by hard work and education, dream it will become the norm in their country, where two decades of government has shown corruption and tribal connections often trump those ideals.
"There is hope that a U.S. politician can leverage against corruption and help be a source here that people can use to influence American government," said George Odera Outa, a commentator on Kenya and University of Nairobi professor.
UNLIKELY EPICENTER
"I think the hope sometimes beats the actual possibilities that an intelligent analysis might give," Odera said.
Nonetheless, that hope lives across Kenya, from the bustling capital of Nairobi to the rural village in western Kenya where Obama's father was raised and buried.
Local media have reported that many members of the Luo tribe of Obama's family are naming their babies after him. Kogelo, about 5 miles down a dirt road branching off the paved two-lane highway heading northwest to the Ugandan-Kenyan border, is the unlikely epicenter of an international political phenomenon.
Stooping in the muddy, humid field of her ample farm, Obama's paternal grandmother, Sarah Hussein Onyango Obama, plants sweet potatoes with her bare hands in the late-morning sun.
The farming village's fields, full of sugar cane and corn, are part of the rocky western Kenyan hills whose southern terminus is the shores of Lake Victoria.
Of late, the robust 82-year-old woman said, she has been entertaining "many strange visitors" -- media -- who have come to the village, about 300 km (186 miles) northwest of Nairobi, to inquire about her grandson.
"He has made the country proud by representing Kenya in a tough election," she said, speaking in the language of her Luo tribe.
Walking into a nearby tin-roof hut where roosters stole pecks of corn from a wheelbarrow in the corner, she wiped the mud from her bare feet, dusted off her hands and pulled out a sheaf of photographs of her grandson and his late father, noted Kenyan economist Barack Obama Sr.
She keeps in touch with Obama by e-mail, trekking 5 miles to Siaya, the nearest village with Internet access. Like many others in Kogelo, the surrounding countryside and Nairobi, she hopes to join him for his anticipated victory in November.
"I will go to Chicago if he invites me," she said.
"SENATOR OBAMA"
That is indeed one of the hottest tickets in Kenya. Several top Kenyan politicians traveled to Boston for the Democratic Convention, where the telegenic Obama won accolades for a keynote address that began with an homage to his father's humble roots on a Kenyan goat farm.
"It has become an issue of ownership in the political and social groups," Odera said.
According to local media reports, the Kenyan delegation spoke to Obama for just a minute at a party in his honor afterward.
But that didn't dampen the response in the Kenyan press, whose headlines proclaimed "Star Role For Obama at Party Convention" and "Obama Basks in Glory as He Rallies Support."
Even though he now has a Republican challenger, failed presidential candidate Alan Keyes (news - web sites), Kenyans are so excited that many already refer to him as "Senator Obama" and his name is often bruited about as a future presidential contender.
Kenyan? In some people's dreams, perhaps, but they'd settle for seeing him in the White House in Washington.
In the meantime, tribal chief Ojwang said he expected villagers to slaughter a few bulls to make nyama choma, traditional Kenya barbecuing meat, to celebrate Obama's victory in Illinois.
Is Obama Muslim? Anybody know?
Let me know if you find out. I've asked multiple times myself.
Obama's theological point of view was shaped by his uniquely multicultural upbringing. He was born in 1961 in Hawaii to a white mother who came from Protestant Midwestern stock and a black African father who hailed from the Luo tribe of Kenya.
Obama describes his father, after whom he is named, as "agnostic." His paternal grandfather was a Muslim. His mother, he says, was a Christian.
"My mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve," he says. "We'd go to church for Easter. She wasn't a 'church lady.' "
In his 1993 memoir, Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance, Obama describes his mother as "a lonely witness for secular humanism."
"My mother's confidence in needlepoint virtues depended on a faith I didn't possess, a faith that she would refuse to describe as religious; that, in fact, her experience told her was sacrilegious: a faith that rational, thoughtful people could shape their own destiny," he says in the book.
When he was 6 years old, after his parents divorced, Obama moved with his mother and her new husband -- a non-practicing Muslim -- to Indonesia, where he lived until he was 10 and attended a Roman Catholic school.
"I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country, so I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and, at night, you'd hear the [Muslim] prayer call," Obama recalls. "My mother was a deeply spiritual person and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions and talk to me about them.
"Her view always was that underlying these religions was a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself, but also for the greater good."
Obama earned a degree in political science from New York's Columbia University in 1983 and in 1991 graduated magna cum laude with a law degree from Harvard University. Since 1993, he has been a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School.
Those experiences, as much as his multireligious childhood, affect how he expresses his faith, Obama says.
"Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion," he says. "I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law.
No matter that Barack Obama, the rising star of last month's Democratic convention in Boston, lives thousands of miles away and is the favorite to win a job where his primary influence will be in the United States, not in this East African nation where politics are a byword for corruption and tribal rivalries. Well, he is trying to represent Chicago.
Make it stop!!!
New Jersey?
I had to look this up, because something didn't smell right.
Basically, the statement is true, but it is a "loan word" from Arabic.
Barack's mamma, the spiritual non-church lady, apparently became a Moslem after she married her second husband, an Indonesian (i.e. after Barack's father deserted her.)
What did she have against American men? Barack seems a little too eager to play up his father who abandoned him. How African can he be if he never even knew the dad?
bobama bama bo bama
bo bama bama bo bama
bobama
Kinda fits nicely into the name game. That ought to be worth a percentage point or two.
He went to Catholic school last time I checked.
What's a "non-practicing Muslim"?
Anybody know?
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