Chicago Tribune - August 27, 2006
Jeff Zeleny, Tribune correspondent, jzeleny@tribune.com

He arrived in this western Kenyan city aboard an overnight train, rumbling across the mountainous Rift Valley, walking a half-mile to the bus depot. A gaggle of family led the tour, making a pilgrimage designed to show the American-born relative his African roots.

On Saturday morning, he arrived here again. This time, he came by plane. And they called him Sen. Barack Obama.

"Obviously there's been a big shift in terms of my travel accommodations," the Illinois Democrat said, moments after stepping off East African Flight 301 and into a waiting motorcade. "The last time I arrived in my grandmother's village, there was a goat in my lap and some chickens."

As a caravan of Land Rovers, buses and cars barreled through town, thousands of people lined the road, waving, whistling and wondering if they would catch a glimpse of Obama.

It was a Saturday market day, but the huts selling fruit, shoes and furniture were practically empty as the streets were filled with men, women and children, all shouting Obama's name. Songs had been composed for him, too, as a group of women sang a tribal tune with "Obama" as the refrain.

To grasp the full backdrop of the senator's highly-publicized visit to his father's homeland, to understand the true story of the journey, it might be wise to turn back to his thoughts 14 years ago. Well before he found a life in politics, Obama chronicled his uneasy feelings in the pages of an autobiography.

"A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largess of the Western world," a young Obama wrote. "But of course I wasn't either of those things."

Now, as he returns to Kenya, he is all of those things and more.

His hand is on a golden spigot that few could have imagined. The largess, which he once mocked, is within reach. Though he insists he doesn't have the ability--or the inclination--to give Kenyans a hand financially, is anyone likely to believe him after treating him more like a prophet than a politician?

"Kenya is not my country. It's the country of my father," Obama said to reporters before arriving here. "I feel a connection, but ultimately, it's not going to be me, it's going to be them who are climbing a path to improving their new lives."

Still, if conversations in Nairobi are any guide, the senator has work left to do convincing the people of this nation that he won't help solve at least some of the problems of Kenya, from deep-seated poverty to poor education to combating an epidemic of AIDS.

"He's a hero and people are really expecting much from him," said Benjamin Okola, a member of the same Kenyan tribe as Obama's ancestors, the Luo. "Is he rich?"

Pride in his success

Here in Kenya, the scenes unfolding since Obama arrived are unlike anything that could easily be imagined in American politics. It's not political intensity over a certain issue, but pride in his success.

On the streets of downtown Nairobi on Friday, thousands of people stood on rooftops, peered from windows or simply stood on the street. As the senator emerged from a solemn visit to the site of the 1998 U.S. Embassy bombing, the crowd came alive and began chanting: "Obama come to us! Obama come to us! Obama come to us!"

Earlier, Obama was waving to throngs of people behind an iron gate. When he signaled his intention to step around the gate to greet a few of the people who had been waiting for hours, the U.S. Embassy's security detail abruptly hurried him along.

"These people don't know personal space," a Diplomatic Security agent said, looking out into crowds that largely were filled with young people. "It's not in their vocabulary."

The welcome, Obama said, surprised him.

"It can be a little awkward in the sense that you don't have that much to offer," he said. "But hopefully my presence serves as some contribution to improving Kenya and American relations."

In his 1995 autobiography, "Dreams From My Father," which was rereleased in 2004, he offers a telling self-description of how he struggles with his mixed race as he prepared to visit his family for the first time in Kenya. He was, he wrote, "A Westerner not entirely at home in the West, an African on his way to a land full of strangers."

Indeed, it is the complex fabric of biography--a black father from Kenya, a white mother from Kansas, his adolescence in the white world, his adulthood in the black--that adds to his allure as a public figure.

But is too much being made of his visit to the home of his late father, whom he met only once in his life? He was extraordinarily close to his late mother, yet he barely mentions that part of the story line.

Indeed, here in Kenya, there is only one part of his biography that seems to matter.

"Your father is your bloodline, not your mother," said Catherine Oganda, 40, who waited in a large crowd for hours Friday afternoon to shake the senator's hand outside a Nairobi restaurant. "We want him back. He should make a change. He should come home."

With that in mind, the countdown to Obama's visit has been filled with anticipation and expectation.

Local politicians asked neighbors to donate bulls and goats for a feast. Obama's grandmother, Sara Hussein Obama, told a local newspaper reporter that she intended to fix her grandson a meal of eggs.

In Kogelo, an impoverished rural village about an hour's drive from Kisumu, roads have been leveled and paved leading to the family's homestead. The walls of the Obama Elementary School have been painted. Luo elders prepared to welcome him into the tribe.

But while the entire Siaya District has spent months preparing for his arrival, it was unclear whether they were aware of the senator's official itinerary: He is scheduled to stay in his family's village for precisely 2 hours and 25 minutes, according to his schedule.

So is his visit to Kogelo, where his grandmother and uncle live, as much a photo opportunity as a family reunion?

"The truth is, I think that it's going to be a big, crowded, rushed scene. My family understands that," Obama said Friday. "They understand that some of this is going to be dominated by spectacle."

Hope in his example

After arriving in Kisumu, Obama is scheduled to get an HIV test at a mobile clinic operated by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This region of Kenya has the highest incidence of AIDS in the country, which is what prompted Obama to attempt to raise awareness and reduce the stigma of being tested among African men. Many top government leaders have declined to take tests, but officials expect the publicity surrounding Obama's test to encourage others to follow.

"This is an area that has been decimated by AIDS as well as out-migration," Obama said Friday. "When you go up there, what's striking is, there aren't that many men who live there. There are a lot of women, a lot of older people, but not a lot of people in the prime of their lives."

The trip to his late father's home territory closes the first week of a two-week trip to Africa. Obama, who sits on the Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee on Africa, is on a fact-finding tour of four countries on the continent.

Michelle Obama, the senator's wife, and their two daughters, Malia and Sasha, are joining Obama for the trip Saturday to Kogelo. Obama is paying for their trip personally, a spokesman said.

As he prepared to leave Nairobi to visit his family's home district, Obama was bracing for large crowds and lofty expectations when he arrived.

"No matter what happens, there's going to always be some level of disappointment just because there's this huge gulf between life in the United States and life in Kenya," he said. "I just have to remind everybody that I'm not a Kenyan politician."

He might have to remind them of another point, too, he said. He's no longer called Barry.

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