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Discovering Obama in Kenya
The seeds for this book were sown in the multitude of places we visited and the variety of voices we encountered as eager graduate students fumbling through our dissertation fieldwork across Kenya’s diverse landscape in 2004. As we read through stacks of dusty files at the Kenya National Archives (KNA), conducted interviews along the rocky shores of Lake Victoria, and engaged in more casual debates in the bustling cafés and nightclubs of Nairobi, Kenya’s energetic, cosmopolitan capital city, we never imagined that ten years later our multifaceted research experiences would lead us to write a book about the place of an American president in the history of Kenya.
While in the last decade we have engaged in countless conversations about and collected many examples of the local and global significance of Barack Obama’s ties to Kenya, one episode at an American embassy event in Nairobi pointed to a need for and shaped the vision of our book. Fortunate to be supported by Fulbright fellowships through the US Department of Education, we received formal invitations in the fall of 2004 to attend an exclusive celebration that takes place in the early morning hours only once every four years during the first week of November—an Election Day breakfast held by the American embassy in Nairobi. Flattered to be invited to a special gathering at the posh Nairobi residence of the then US ambassador to Kenya, William Bellamy,1 excited about whom we might meet, and like all graduate students pleased by the prospect of a free meal, we luckily landed at what must have been the very bottom of an exclusive invite list that included much of Kenya’s political elite.
On the morning of November 3, with Kenya some eight hours ahead of eastern standard time, much of the diplomatic and expatriate American community in Kenya had been up all night, tracking the election returns in the US presidential race. Having followed the campaign all fall as we completed our research projects on colonial and postcolonial Kenyan history, we, too, had stayed up, bleary-eyed and eager for the results. Focused mainly on the presidential race between Republican incumbent George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, we had paid little attention to a more minor contest in the midwestern state of Illinois that had already begun to overshadow the presidential race for many Kenyan audiences.
Unaware of the singular moment that would unfold that morning, we left the congested confines of Nairobi’s central business district during the predawn hours to make our way to the ambassador’s residence in the leafy suburb of Muthaiga. Heading out of the city center during the ritual tussle of Nairobi’s hectic morning commute, we escaped the brunt of the daily bumper-to-bumper line of packed buses, overflowing matatu (van taxis), and commercial traffic that Kenyans simply refer to as “the jam.” Turning off the main highway not too far from downtown, we entered a tranquil suburban relic of the colonial past. Now a mixed bastion home to international aid workers, diplomatic personnel, and Kenya’s political elite, the tony neighborhood of Muthaiga has roots dating back to the early twentieth century, complete with the golf outings and colonial cocktail parties that made up the days of Britain’s privileged white settler class.2 Like many of the homes and businesses, the US ambassadorial residence still reflects the imposing architecture and manicured style of the British colonial past and is hardly visible behind the razor wire–topped walls and guarded gates that dot one of Nairobi’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
Arriving just before six in the morning, we waited in the long security line along with an array of impeccably dressed guests to be welcomed to the traditional American election party, already off to a lively start despite the hour and the fact that US media outlets more than seven thousand miles away had yet to finalize the tally of votes cast the day before. Clearing the armed security and entering the residence, we were struck by the chatter expressing the broad Kenyan interest in the US elections as well as the lavish spread of food and the numerous satellite televisions scattered across the living room, veranda, and pristine gardens of the residence compound that displayed real-time CNN election results.
Mixing in this unfamiliar world, we tentatively scanned the slew of guests and noticed faces familiar to us from the pages of the Kenyan press, including influential members of the international diplomatic corps and a sampling of Kenya’s political elites. Spotting figures ranging from then official government spokesperson Alfred Mutua to then minister for the environment Kalonzo Musyoka, we spent the next few hours sipping tea and trying to make awkward small talk with a sea of parliamentarians, permanent secretaries, and other government officials who operate high above the daily lives of the everyday Kenyans, the wananchi as they are known in Kiswahili, and certainly outside the sphere of the average US graduate student.
In our awe of the overall gathering that day, one group of Kenyan politicians stood out from the rest and instantly captured our attention. Entering amid an entourage of supporters, the Luo leader Raila Odinga was clearly a visible star among this elite group of “Big Men.” Hailing from Siaya, the Western Kenyan county that was also the birthplace of Barack Obama Sr., Odinga has been a fixture in Kenyan politics at the national level since the 1980s. Son of Kenya’s first vice president, Oginga Odinga, and scion of one of Kenya’s most prominent political dynasties, by 2004 Raila, as he is popularly called, was known in local circles as the edgy political dissident and exile from the 1980s who had risen to represent Nairobi’s Langata Constituency in Parliament in the 1990s and was easily the most recognizable politician from Kenya’s relatively small but politically important Luo community. That day, however, Raila was not flying the metaphorical flag of Kenya’s political opposition, but he was instead sporting a wide American flag tie set off by a large Obama pin stuck prominently to the lapel of his pricey suit. His entourage was similarly, though less flamboyantly, kitted out in visible support for the United States broadly and Obama particularly.
While it was not unusual for guests to demonstrate their support for the American electoral process during a gathering at the US ambassador’s home, we were immediately struck by how Raila exhibited fervent enthusiasm for a relatively unknown senatorial candidate from Illinois, Barack Obama. In the months leading up to the November election, Matt Carotenuto had fielded an increasing number of questions from Kenyans about this “Obama fellow” during his fieldwork near Raila’s home areas in Western Kenya. Word had gotten around that the Democratic candidate campaigning to represent Illinois in the US Senate was in fact the son of the same Barack Obama Sr. who was born in the 1930s not far from Raila’s hometown close to Lake Victoria in the Western Kenyan county of Siaya. Some nine years older than Raila, Obama Sr., a onetime government employee and midlevel technocrat, had died tragically in an automobile accident in Nairobi in 1982.3 Though successful in his own right, Obama Sr. was certainly not of the same political pedigree or elevated achievement as Raila, yet, in Western Kenya, a strange sense of dynasty had nonetheless begun to emerge around Barack Obama Jr., the US senatorial candidate whose ties to Kenya generally and to the history of the Luo community particularly had been seized upon by Luo people in the months leading up to the American elections. However, it was not until the lopsided victory of Obama Jr. over his Republican challenger in Illinois was declared that we began to witness the significance of this US electoral victory to international relations and to “Big Man” politics in Kenya.
Called long before the presidential race, the senatorial victory of Barack Obama Jr. drew the most dramatic response from the Kenyan guests of any election results announced that morning. A sporting cheer and rounds of overwhelming applause led by Raila’s group erupted when CNN declared Obama the winner.4 However, instead of simply joining politely in the applause celebrating the election of a junior senator with paternal ties to Kenya, Ambassador Bellamy made his way straight for the Odinga contingent and began shaking Raila’s hand boisterously as if the Kenyan politician’s own brother had been elected. In congratulating Raila, first among the cream of the Kenyan political elite present at the party, and doing so in such a public space, Ambassador Bellamy, who drew some subtle stares from various other Kenyans at the gathering, seemed to imply that Obama’s victory was not something to be celebrated by the wananchi across Kenya but something belonging more narrowly to a particular
