Randy Smith
7 November 2008
Nairobi — On January 29, 2002, I sat in a pool of blood at the top of the stairs of my home. I had been listening to George W. Bush address the nation and declare that our country was facing an "axis of evil."
I was greatly upset because Bush was painting a complex world in simplistic terms. The speech was a call to war, which played out a year later in Iraq.
Angered at what was happening that night, I left the living room and trudged up the stairs in a rage to find a good book. I tripped on the final step and went head-first into a glass book case. Shards of glass stuck into my head and caused a deep gash in my middle finger.
At the hospital, the doctors worked on me. My head wounds were more bloody than serious, but my finger took nearly 30 stitches. The faint outline remains on my finger today, and will always be a physical reminder of the Bush presidency.
On Tuesday evening, I wept. So many of the historic moments in my lifetime have been occasions of sadness, including the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr and John F. Kennedy and the September 11, 2001, terrorist arid on US targets.
What touched me was the message Barack Obama sent instantly to the world. It said so many things that I'd tried to say about the heart of this country during some of our darkest moments.
A few years ago, I was at a dinner party in Nairobi. Once the pleasantries were exchanged, the questions were aimed at me. At the end of the evening, I had astonished the guests. My world views were similar to their own.
When I arrived in Kenya, I did not know how to text message. But friends quickly taught me and soon I was dashing off missives.
So it was with a smile that I received this note on election night from a Kenyan friend at 11pm. "Rafiki ((friend)," the message began. "Kenya is in the streets. Celebrations everywhere! Thursday has been declared a public holiday! We are on the moon. Congrats, America."
During the height of the Bush lunacy, a dear French friend wrote to me: "What has happened to my dear America?" As I watched European reaction on election night, I wondered if I'd spot her on TV in the ecstatic crowds that seemed to sprout simultaneously throughout our world.
Astonishingly, I saw my own daughter on ABC news, celebrating in South Korea, where she now attends college.
At Grant Park in Chicago, I was particularly touched by the Rev Jesse Jackson, the well known civil rights leader, standing amid a crowd of perhaps 100,000, awaiting Obama's acceptance speech.
Like me, he could only weep. As a young man in high school, I watched Jackson walk with Dr King in the marches in the 1960s for civil rights. I witnessed his unsuccessful run for the presidency.
And etched in my mind is him standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, beside the body of Dr King on the night he was shot by a sniper in 1968. Jackson's tear-stained face on Tuesday was a transformational moment.
A few weeks ago, I travelled to Texas for a wedding. The bride was an Ivy League- educated daughter of immigrants from Pakistan. The groom's family was from Holland and they flew in for the event.
I ended up on short car rides with both families. On the way to a henna party, I was on a van with seven Pakistanis, the women dressed in elaborately embroidered dresses and the men in long, white flowing shirts.
On another trip, I was with the group from Holland. They dressed in suits like me, but I did not understand one word because the conversation was all in Dutch.
The wedding was conducted by an African American academic. And when the vows were finished, a 10-piece mariachi band serenaded the couple down the aisle in typical Mexican fashion. We Americans are many tribes under one roof.
Like so many, I will carry a scar from the Bush years around with me for the rest of my life.
On a trip to Eldoret, I was amazed at how black the evening was away from the Nairobi lights. It was there that I realised that stars are most brilliant on the darkest of nights. America is shining once more.
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