Letter from Kenya: Dreaming of Obama

[DonViejo]

The Kenyan-American president inspires the land of his father to extremes of devotion.
By Edward-Isaac Dovere

7/26/15 9:52 AM EDT
Updated 7/26/15 11:54 AM EDT

NAIROBI — The woman danced on the sidewalk by herself, singing, her right hand clutching a flag with President Barack Obama’s picture and the day’s newspaper with him on the front page. Her left hand moved to her own music, keeping the beat, waving over her head.

“Obama, Obama!” she said. “Our most powerful cousin!”

Even some Kenyans — including a few extra police officers who’d already closed down the side street leading to central Nairobi’s Kenyatta Avenue, started taking pictures and videos on their cellphones. She saw them. She kept dancing and singing.

Across the street, the message was bigger and more corporate, but still exultant: a building-wide, three-story banner from Pioneer Holdings (Africa) Ltd. with a giant photo of Obama making a point at a news conference, captured between images of a Kenyan and a waving American flag: “Welcome Home President Obama!”

“Relax, Mr. President. We’ll build you a Kenyan home for free!” reads a sign along the highway from the airport. Obama, pictured from behind, looks on in the picture at a wooden frame under construction, his thumb up.

“President Obama, welcome to Tusker Country,” says another, from the country’s biggest, most popular beer.

He’s the president of the United States. But to many here, he’s “our son,” to the point that there’s a rumor going around among some that Obama will return after he’s done in Washington to run for president here and clean things up in his father’s country. <---- right wing brains


Read more: http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/president-obama-kenya-visit-120629.html#ixzz3h3kP11vL