HOPE AND LITTLE CHANGE
Barack Obama and America’s relationship with Africa,
KOGELO, KENYA— Barack Obama Okoth was tugging at his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt, trying to remember everything he could about the man he was named after.
“He lives in America, and he’s a king,” the 7-year-old said after a long pause. It’s easy to understand why the young Barack would think so. He attends Sen. Barack Obama Primary School, a stop on the Barack Obama Safari Tour, near a hotel that offers a Barack Obama Suite.
For as long as Barack has been alive, his village has been peppered with tributes to his namesake, the American president whose father was born here in 1936. Thousands of tourists have come to see the village the president described in his memoir — writing that his life’s trajectory “was connected with this small plot of earth an ocean away.” After Obama was elected, electricity arrived in Kogelo. The only road to the village was paved. A Kenyan security detail was dispatched.
Later this month, Obama will make his first trip to Kenya as president. If he returns to Kogelo, he’ll find a village still wrestling with disease and poverty. He’ll find people proud enough to name their boys Barack Obama but disappointed that he waited until the seventh year of his presidency to return to his father’s homeland.
“When he comes, we will present our problems,” said Edwin Okoth, Barack Obama Okoth’s father, his hands on his son’s shoulders.
It’s not only Kogelo that remains unsatisfied. Given the president’s familial connection to East Africa, many expected Obama to transform America’s relationship with the region. That hasn’t happened. The White House has launched an initiative to expand access to electricity across the continent, and funding for public health and counterterrorism programs has increased, but by most measures, Africa has remained on the periphery of Obama’s foreign policy agenda.
“As a country, we expected more,” said Augustus Muluvi, head of foreign policy at the Kenya Institute for Public Policy Research and Analysis, one of the country’s top think tanks. “We expected him to come earlier and we expected him to come with specific programs for Kenya and East Africa. This hasn’t been the case.”
The small hospital where Barack Obama Okoth was born is also where hundreds of the village’s HIV/AIDS patients are treated. Nearly 18 per cent of Siaya County, where Kogelo is located, is HIV positive, according to Kenya’s National AIDS control council, nearly three times the national average. In 2006, Obama took an HIV test here, an effort to remove the stigma from the exam. But since then, the fight against the disease has run up against cultural barriers to prevention and a lack of public health funding.
“We have been waiting for assistance from outside,” said the clinic’s doctor, George Musa.
Also in 2006, Obama visited the village’s primary and secondary schools, where his father attended. The schools were promptly renamed after him. And although some aid funds arrived when Obama became president, mostly from individual donors, the schools remain largely unchanged. The roofs leak. Many students drop out before high school because the fees are too expensive for their families.
In Barack Obama Okoth’s Grade 1 classroom recently, there were 84 students in one room.
“What’s seven plus three?” the teacher asked. She paused before choosing who to call on. “Obama,” she said. There was a brief moment of confusion — the class had two Barack Obamas.
Barack Obama Okoth stood up, but his nerves caught up with him. He froze in place before opening his mouth. “Nine?” he said. “Anyone else?” the teacher asked. The boy sat back down. His mother had sewn the word “Obama” on his backpack, and he wore it everywhere, even now that he was sitting down in class. His father had explained what it meant to carry the name, the expectations that came along with it. It’s a sentiment repeated across Kenya.
“Huenda akawa Obama,” croons the group Sauti Sol in Swahili in one of Kenya’s most popular songs. “Maybe you will be Obama.”
Edwin Okoth is proud of his job as a motorcycle taxi driver. The income is reliable, and it keeps him from descending into alcoholism, like so many others in Kogelo. But he wanted more for his son. Barack Obama Okoth would learn English, he said. He would go to college.
“I’m going to be a doctor,” said Barack Obama Okoth, standing outside Kogelo’s market. His father smiled.
Obama’s visit to Kenya will focus on the Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, where the president will probably emphasize the economic potential and innovation in East Africa, now home to dozens of small tech startups. Perhaps most famously, a mobile banking system, called Mpesa, has revolutionized the way Kenyans do business.
For its part, though, Kogelo has remained mostly untouched by the kinds of innovation visible in places such as Nairobi. If he does end up going to college, Barack Obama Okoth would be a rare exception.
Last month, a group of French donors were scheduled to visit Barack Obama Secondary School, where they were expected to offer funds for renovations. But at the last minute, the donors learned that the school didn’t possess a deed for the land on which it was built, another sign of Kogelo’s undeveloped economy. They cancelled their trip.
“It’s a big inconvenience,” said the principal, Henry Odongo, as the children waited to perform a dance planned in honour of the now-cancelled visit.
But that visit paled in comparison to the one Kogelo was really waiting for. A local radio program had announced that Obama would “visit Kogelo for three hours” as a part of his Kenya trip. Though the White House hasn’t confirmed that report, it was enough to send a shock of excitement through the village.
Would his helicopter land on a farm? Would he finally pledge financial assistance? Would he dine with his grandmother, Sarah Obama, who still lives in Kogelo, in a small house with a red roof? Residents guessed at the details.
Nicholas Rajula, owner of Kogelo Village Resort, got to work fixing up his hotel. He hired an artist to make a lifesize sculpture of the president.
“We need to be ready,” he said, standing in front of the hotel restaurant called the White House.
Edwin Okoth was getting ready, too. This time, he would get closer to the president. He would bring his son forward and make the introduction.
“I will tell him, ‘This is my son, Barack Obama.’ ”