Obama's Kenyan roots

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David ET
by David ET
25-Feb-2008
 

CNN VIDEO

(International Herald Tribune)  KOGELO, Kenya: A barefoot old woman in a ripped dress is sitting on a log in front of her tin-roof bungalow in this remote village in western Kenya, jovially greeting visitors.

Mama Sarah, as she is known around here, lives without electricity or running water. She is illiterate and doesn't know when she was born. Yet she may have a seat of honor at the next presidential inauguration in Washington - depending on what happens to her step-grandson, Barack Obama.

Mama Sarah cannot communicate with Obama, who calls her his grandmother, because she speaks only her Luo tribal language and a little Swahili. Obama's Luo is pretty much limited to "musawa," meaning "how are you?"

People around here are giddy at the prospect of a President Obama.

"I'm up at 4 a.m. or 5 a.m. to listen to BBC news and get the latest on the campaign," said Nicholas Rajula, who describes himself as a cousin of the senator. "By the way, what's the latest news about the superdelegates?" 

 

You might think that all Kenyans would be vigorously supporting Obama. But Kenya has been fractured along ethnic lines in the last two months, so now Obama draws frenzied support from the Luo ethnic group of his ancestors, while many members of the rival Kikuyu group fervently support Hillary Rodham Clinton.

The Obamas are better off than most in the area, for Mama Sarah's house has a tin roof - a step up from the mud huts with thatch roofs that are common in the village. Mama Sarah also has a cell phone, which she charges from a solar panel, and a radio that she uses to follow primaries in America.

But the poverty is unmistakable. Jane Raila, who says she is another relative of the senator's, was hobbling barefoot with a homemade crutch, for she had been crippled by polio as a child.

"We're all very excited by the news from the U.S.," she said. "We stay up late to listen to the news bulletins."

Obama's late grandfather is said to have been the first person in the area to wear Western clothes rather than just a loincloth. For a time he converted to Christianity and adopted the family name Johnson.

Later he converted to Islam, taking four wives. Obama's father, who apparently converted to Catholicism while attending a Roman Catholic school, was also polygamous in keeping with local custom, taking an informal Kenyan wife who preceded Obama's mother but remained a consort, according to accounts by local people and the senator himself.

The father, also named Barack Hussein Obama, was as much of a pathbreaker as his son. He went from herding goats in Kogelo to studying in Hawaii and at Harvard, even if his career as an economist was frustrated in part by ethnic rivalries.

Obama barely knew his father and does not know his Kenyan relatives well. He has visited Kenya three times, most recently very briefly in 2006.

On his last visit, Obama visited two area schools that had been renamed for him. The intention in renaming the schools seems to have been partly to attract funding. One person after another noted pointedly that it was a shame that a school named for a great American should be so dilapidated.

Some of Obama's innumerable relatives also see him as a meal ticket. They have made arrangements with a tour group to bring buses of visitors to have tea with Mama Sarah.

They are also trying to raise money from interviews with her. I had made arrangements to visit Mama Sarah weeks ago, and she had agreed to speak. But when I showed up, she said that her children had told her to keep quiet. Frantic phone calls. Fierce arguments. Hints that money might make an interview possible. I didn't pay. I didn't get the interview.

That's O.K. Having seen the poverty in Kogelo, I'm less offended by the outstretched palms than awed by the distance that the Obama family spans.

Frankly, I worry that enemies of Obama will seize upon details like his grandfather's Islamic faith or his father's polygamy to portray him as an alien or a threat to American values. But snobbishness and paranoia ill-become a nation of immigrants, where one of our truest values is to judge people by their own merits, not their pedigrees. If we call ourselves a land of opportunity, then Obama's heritage doesn't threaten American values but showcases them.

The step-grandson of an illiterate, barefoot woman in this village of mud huts in Africa may be the next president of the United States.

Such mobility - powered by education, immigration and hard work - is cause not for disparagement but for celebration.

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I Want To Vote Too

by RG (not verified) on Tue Jun 17, 2008 01:24 AM PDT

www.IWantToVoteToo.com

Press release

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The objective of www.iwanttovotetoo.com is to raise the democratic elections of different countries to the global level and to operate a global platform for expressing opinions as a free, interest neutral service.
By using the www.iwanttovotetoo.com website anybody - even people living in the most obscure locations - can communicate their opinions that are relevant to the candidates of democratic elections that are taking place in any country of the world.

When we decide who will be the next president of the United States, we form an opinion based on our value system. US Presidential candidates are known to all, they are in the spotlight of media attention. Everybody forms an opinion about the candidates and - given the opportunity - chooses among them.
The short-term objective of the www.iwanttovotetoo.com web site is to establish the framework and channels of expressing opinions globally, and to extend it to all prospective democratic elections in the long run.

It may be educational for the elected politicians of a given country to learn about the preferences and value choices of people living in faraway places. The decision of the country’s own voters, however, is even more interesting for the analysts and politicians of that respective country. The web site does not take sides and does not try to influence anybody. It exclusively collects data and assembles a database of collected results, which may be freely used, analyzed, and interpreted by the public.

If you find it worthwhile, please help disseminate the information about the web site to as many people as possible, so that even more people can cast their vote for the presidential candidates of the Unites States on November 4 and for other prospective democratic elections worldwide.

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www.iwanttovotetoo.com


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President OBAMA

by Babak52 (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 07:52 PM PST


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OBAMA a Sheep in Wolves

by Babak56 (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 02:40 PM PST

Go here and see OBAMA a Sheep in Wolves clothing=> //nl.youtube.com/watch?v=_9P15YZrnv0


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I think Hussein is dangerous

by Babk12 (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 01:40 PM PST

I think "Obamby" is a Muslim Manchurian candidate, funded by Auchi to Rezko. He's an insidious 5th column set up and very dangerous.


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A Spry Farrakhan Sings Obama's Praises

by Babk56 (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 01:35 PM PST

A Spry Farrakhan Sings Obama's Praises

Sunday, February 24, 2008 9:00 PM

Article Font Size

In his first major public address since a cancer crisis, Nation of Islam Minister Louis Farrakhan said Sunday that presidential candidate Barack Obama is the "hope of the entire world" that the U.S. will change for the better.

The 74-year-old Farrakhan, addressing an estimated crowd of 20,000 people at the annual Saviours' Day celebration, never outrightly endorsed Obama but spent most of the nearly two-hour speech praising the Illinois senator.

"This young man is the hope of the entire world that America will change and be made better," he said. "This young man is capturing audiences of black and brown and red and yellow. If you look at Barack Obama's audiences and look at the effect of his words, those people are being transformed."

Farrakhan compared Obama to the religion's founder, Fard Muhammad, who also had a white mother and black father.

"A black man with a white mother became a savior to us," he told the crowd of mostly followers. "A black man with a white mother could turn out to be one who can lift America from her fall."

Farrakhan also leveled small jabs at Hillary Rodham Clinton, Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, suggesting that she represents the politics of the past and has been engaging in dirty politics.

Farrakhan's keynote address at McCormick Place, the city's convention center, wrapped up three days of events geared at unifying followers and targeting youth.

It had a different tone from a year ago, when Farrakhan made what was called his final public address at a Saviours' Day event in Detroit. The 74-year-old was recovering from complications from prostate cancer and months earlier had temporarily passed on leadership duties of the organization's day-to-day activities to an executive board.

© 2008 Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

//www.newsmax.com/insidecover/farrakhan_savio...


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My Fellow Muslims

by Babah56 (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 01:31 PM PST

A PAID POLITICAL ANNOUNCEMENT BY SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D- ILL)

My fellow Identity-Americans.

As your future President I want to thank my supporters, for their... well, support.

Your mindless support of me, despite my complete lack of any legislative achievement, my pastor's relations with Louis Farrakhan and Libyan dictator Moamar Quadafi, or my blatantly leftist voting record while I present myself as some sort of bi-partisan agent of change.

I also like how my supporters claim my youthful drug use and criminal behavior somehow qualifies me for the Presidency after 8 years of claiming Bush's youthful drinking disqualifies him. Your hypocrisy is a beacon of hope shining over a sea of political posing.

I would also like to thank the Kennedy's for coming out in support of me. There's a lot of glamour behind the Kennedy name, even though JFK started the Vietnam War, his brother Robert illegally wiretapped Martin Luther King, Jr. and Teddy killed a teenage girl. And I'm not going anywhere near the cousins, both literally and figuratively.

And I'd like to thank Oprah Winfrey for her support. Her love of meaningless empty platitudes will be the force that propels me to the White House.

Americans should vote for me, not because of my lack of experience or achievement, but because I make people feel good. Voting for me causes some white folk to feel relieved of their imagined, racist guilt.

I say things that sound meaningful, but don't really mean anything because Americans are tired of things having meaning. If things have meaning, then that means you have to think about them.

Americans are tired of thinking.

It's time to shut down the brain, and open up the heart.

So when you go to vote in the primaries, remember don't think, just do.

And do it for me.

Thank You.


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Dear Ben

by an observer (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 09:01 AM PST

your statement: "America is the pride of humanity"
is just ridiculous! are you talking about US attack in Iraq, or are you going all the way back to Vietnam's time? are you speaking of Abu-Qareb? or allowing the serbs to kill for years before intervening? or maybe closing their eyes on Rwanda until the number of dead rose unbelievably, or maybe just denying the genocide of the armenians in Turkey...
Americans are very open minded and charitable people, but USA is not pro-humanity nevermind being the pride of it!
Please don't confuse the nation's people and their government's actions.

and it's ok if you don't vote for Obama, we didn't vote for Brown either.
it just doesn't work that way ;-)


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obsession

by ET give us a break! (not verified) on Mon Feb 25, 2008 07:23 AM PST

your obsession with obama is redicilous. It's all hype with this guy. off chance that he becomes president, nothing fundementaly will change. it's a system now in the hand of more influential and larger people than him. he is just usefull toy who suffers from diareia of mouth!


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Ben Madadi

America and Obama

by Ben Madadi on Mon Feb 25, 2008 01:59 AM PST

Americans have shown us all how tolerant, open-minded and progressive they can be. They know his roots (father side) are Islamic and they don't care. They know he is African (father side) and they don't care. That is a great country. America is the pride of humanity.

However I still don't want Obama as president :P


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