Elly Wamari
5 June 2008
column
One day in September 1959, a chartered Bristol Britannia aircraft touched down in New York, USA, having made a special trip from Nairobi, Kenya.
The flight was special in two ways. It was the first "airlift" of young Kenyans to the US on a scholarship arrangement initiated by charismatic politician Thomas Joseph Mboya, and supported by African-American Students Foundation in the US.
Just before independence, Mr Mboya thought it would be necessary to have a crop of university-educated young Kenyans to assume key roles in developing their country once it attained self-rule. Kenya had no university at that time and Kenyans seeking tertiary education had to study at Makerere or overseas.
Among the 81 young Kenyans who eventually disembarked from that maiden flight was 23-year-old Barack Hussein Obama.
With the benefit of hindsight, that young man's presence was the second reason that the New York flight was special.
Sow a seed
The young, reportedly charming Obama from Alego Location in Siaya District, Nyanza Province, would in later days sow a seed in the US that is now promising to shift the dynamics of politics in the world's most powerful country.
A brilliant young man eager to study economics, Obama joined the University of Hawaii, where he later met Ann Dunham - a young white woman from Kansas - and married her.
On August 4, 1961 their son Barack Obama Jnr was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. Today, Barack Obama Jnr is famous worldwide after clinching the Democratic Party nomination to run for the Oval Office, the most powerful political office in the world.
Presidential bid
The younger Obama will face off with John McCain of the Republican Party. Should he succeed in his presidential bid, the six feet tall, 46-year-old political scientist and Harvard Law School graduate will make history as the first African-American to become president of the United States of America.
Obama's campaign for the Democratic ticket was energised by his powerful voice and accomplished oratorical skills that endeared him to many voters. Not many thought that the Illinois senator, who once described himself as the "skinny kid with a funny name", would get this far. Not even his main challenger in the race to the Democratic nominations, former First Lady Hillary Clinton. Obama's background had little or nothing to show that he would one day stand a real chance of becoming the US president. He said so himself some four years ago.
"Tonight is a particular honour for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant.
"...While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression." And he is himself not very wealthy either, compared to the other presidential candidates the US has had. According to the Chicago Tribune, the large old brick house he lives in - valued at about Sh118 million ($1.9 million) - is a "96-year-old Georgian revival home that has four fireplaces, glass-door bookcases fashioned from Honduran mahogany, and a 1,000-bottle wine cellar." His other assets are not worth more than Sh68.2 million ($1.1 million). Compare that with the Clintons' wealth valued at between Sh620 million ($10 million) and Sh3.1 billion ($50 million).
Mr Obama, who is married to Michelle and has two daughters - Malia (nine) and Sasha (six) - has used those very odds to his advantage and made it this far by riding on the "audacity of hope" like his second book suggests. He was driven by a conviction that change is possible. That, and a determination to convince American voters that he signifies, and can therefore deliver, the kind of change they yearn for.
He has some powerful words that express his beliefs in a way that inspire others. One of the most powerful speeches he delivered in recent years was made during the Democratic National Convention on July 27, 2004. He said: " The people I meet in small towns and big cities, in dinners and office parks; they don't expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead and they want to.... They know that parents have to parent; that children can't achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. No, people don't expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all. They know we can do better. And they want that choice."
The life dynamics that may have moulded Obama to the person now standing before Americans to ask for presidential votes started in 1963 - the year Kenya earned its independence from Britain's colonial rule. He was only two years old then, and his father had won a scholarship to continue studies at Harvard University.
And so Obama Snr left Hawaii, went to Harvard, separated from his small family, completed his studies, and returned to Kenya alone to take up a senior job at the Ministry of Planning, having been divorced by Ann. Baby Obama never saw him again until much later. Following the separation, Ann married an Indonesian she had met also in Hawaii, called Lolo Soetoro. That is how in 1967, six-year-old Obama was to find himself in Jakarta, Indonesia, attending school there. His mother and step father had moved there with him. His half sister, Maya Soetoro-NG, was born while they lived in Indonesia.
Obama's opponents have attempted to use the Indonesian connection as propaganda fodder against him, suggesting that he is a product of radical Muslim ideologies imparted on him while schooling in Asia. The attack went empty after it was established that in Indonesia, young Obama attended a secular school before he returned to Hawaii four years later to continue his education in the US while living with his maternal grandparents.
It was upon his return to Hawaii that his father paid him a visit. That was in 1971, and it would be the first and last time for him to have a clear image of his father. Later, while still attending the prestigious Punahou School as one of the only three black students there, he was to become conscious of the implications of his mixed race identity in American society for the first time, according to his memoirs in Dreams from my father, first published in 1995.
A brilliant boy, however, Obama fought off temptations to get sucked into alcohol and drugs, and graduated from Punahou with honours in 1979. Four years later, he graduated from Columbia University in New York with a degree in political science. The making of a politician had began. In 1985, after working for only two years with a business information firm and a non-partisan political research organisation, Obama's political instincts were stirred. He moved to Chicago to join a church-based group in mobilising communities in poor neighbourhoods to demand better living conditions such as decent public housing.
He took a break three years later to pursue law studies at Harvard, reportedly to become more effective in creating change. The "change" language that Obama is speaking now, it would appear, started quite a while back. States his campaign website (www.barackobama.com), about his community organising work: "The group had some success, but Barack had come to realise that in order to truly improve the lives of people in that community and other communities, it would take not just a change at the local level, but a change in our laws and in our politics.
"He went on to earn his law degree from Harvard in 1991, where he became the first African-American president of the Harvard Law Review. Soon after, he returned to Chicago to practise as a civil rights lawyer and teach constitutional law. Finally, his advocacy work led him to run for the Illinois State Senate, where he served for eight years (from 1996). In 2004, he became the third African American since Reconstruction to be elected to the US Senate."
Political work
Over the three years he has served in the Senate, Obama's political work has concentrated on championing for the needs of the common people. This must be the crucial factor in the support he has earned from the masses. And it is manifest in the overwhelming contributions people from a variety of backgrounds have made in favour of his campaign for the presidency. It explains the dramatic swings of delegates to his side during the nomination primaries.
During his time as Illinois senator, Obama pushed a number of legislations meant to address specific needs of the masses. Most prominent are legislations on expanded healthcare services for the poor, and broadened early childhood education support.
And while still holding the seat he earned with a 70 per cent electoral victory never experienced in the history of Illinois politics - Obama initiated a push for a website that would enable all Americans to track how the government spent their money, the aim being to heighten government accountability and to limit corruption.
Alternative energy
He has been championing the development of alternative energy and improved efficiency in oil consumption, often voicing the importance of politics that add value to the living standards of people, rather than politics of power and self-aggrandizement.
That is the change the man who lives in Chicago and is also known by his nickname, "Barry", has been selling in his campaign messages, alongside hope and the belief that change can actually be achieved.
His strong stance against racist attitudes recently provoked him to cut links with the Trinity United Church of Christ he has been a member of for 16 years. His move came after a pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and later Catholic priest Michael Pfleger, visiting the church, made unsavoury racial comments that Obama was uncomfortable with. Obama was also aware that the clergymen's sentiments weighed negatively on his presidential campaign. He severed links with the church and thanks to his gifted campaign team, and his eloquence, he managed to sail through the challenge, just as he had done with others before.
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