Kogelo still waiting for Obama
Villagers hope president’s visit to Kenya will include a stop in his father’s hometown
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 seven-year-old said after a long pause.
It’s easy to understand why the young Barack would think so. He attends Senator 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.
Next month, Obama will make his first trip to Kenya as president. If he returns to Kogelo, he’ll find a village lifted by its association with the world’s most powerful man, but 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.”
Edwin Okoth remembers when Obama visited Kogelo in 2006 as a senator. When Obama walked through the village’s open-air market, a crowd gathered. Okoth got as close as he could and waved. It amazed him that a man just one generation removed from Kogelo could become so important. When Okoth’s wife became pregnant the next year, he knew they would name the baby Barack Obama.
“Maybe the spirit of the man will follow the boy,” he recalled thinking.
The small hospital where Barack Obama Okoth was born is also where hundreds of the village’s HIV 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 in 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 firstgrade classroom last week, 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, but he wants 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.
“We expected (Obama) to come earlier and we expected him to come with specific programs for Kenya and East Africa. This hasn’t been the case.
AUGUSTUS MULUVI
ANALYST, KENYA INSTITUTE FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS