Editor’s note: The Joplin, Mo., Globe staff writer Melissa Dunson was in Kenya in Africa on Election Day last year. The following are her observations of the reaction
of the people of that country to the election of the first black president of the United States.
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By Melissa Dunson
CNHI News Service
I knew when I heard the drums in the middle of the night that Barack Obama would be the next president of the United States.
It was hard to sleep that night. There were shouts, marches and the incessant electronic drums from the casino inside the 680 Hotel in the city center of Nairobi, Kenya, the country to which Obama traces his heritage.
It was an appropriate climax to the frenzied energy that had been building since I had arrived in the city three days before. Kenya had Obama fever.
Splashed across the front pages of newspapers and on the local news, all delivered in English, Obama’s face shone across the East African country. On T-shirts and posters, Obama resembled famed Cuban hero Che Guevara in the iconic image with a beret.
People in the Kibera slums with scrap-metal huts and no food modeled Obama-wear and flashed knowing, white smiles when they were asked about Obama. “He’s our brother,” they would reply.
The Kenyans all wanted to know if we had come to Africa to celebrate the surety of Obama’s election in his “home country.” The truth was, it was by accident. I ended up in the middle of history because of a schedule change.
I was supposed to help put on a Christian leadership conference for pastors from across Kenya and neighboring Tanzania back in March, just when the turbulent Kenyan elections incited so much violence.
By the time the trip ended up back on the calendar, it was November.
I voted before I left, scratching onto the absentee ballot my reason for not being here on Election Day. “I’d say that’s a pretty good reason to vote absentee,” the woman at the voting counter teased me.
On the plane, it was all the Norwegian and African passengers wanted to talk to us about. Obama’s face was on every newspaper in every country we traveled through.
Once we were in Africa, normally quiet elevator riders would suddenly burst into exclamations of “Isn’t it wonderful?” and “It is a historic day for all of us.” Many of the Kenyans apparently were unaware of the typical American courtesy of not asking for whom you voted. They were so excited, they
couldn’t help themselves.
White people are not a common sight in Kenya, even in the bustling city of Nairobi with its population of 3 million people. But Western influences have created an atmosphere that is particularly friendly to Americans. As we walked along the streets or drove through villages, whispers of “mazungo”
and “Obama” were used interchangeably. Mazungo is the Swahili word for a white person.
Kenya is more than eight hours different from the United States time-wise, and the day after Obama was elected in America, Kenyans got the day off to celebrate. The president declared a national holiday as the son of one of its native sons was to lead the most powerful country on Earth.
People went marching through the streets, waving American and Kenyan flags together.
But despite all the good will and cheering voices, there were undercurrents of the same kind of resentment Obama must have faced his entire life, with his lineage of a black father and white mother. A Kenyan guard at the National Wildlife Park said he was glad Obama had been elected; he said they were “brothers,” but that “he is not black like we are black.”
And, in a crowded outdoor market, vendors who were angry that we were not buying things started to shout, “You cannot expect us to behave like those in the White House.”
In their happiest moment, some of the Kenyans had fallen into the age-old practice of finding differences rather than celebrating similarities. Even their “brother,” their “native son,” didn’t really belong.
