'He is our biggest hope'
2004-11-03 13:56
Nyang'Oma - Barack Obama's landslide senatorial victory in the United States state of Illinois topped the news agenda in Kenya on Wednesday and brought joy and hope to his ancestral village in the west of the country, a journalist has reported.
News of the win brought the entire membership of the local county council to the village of Nyang'oma, an impoverished, dusty collection of mud and thatched huts ravaged by Aids and unemployment.
"Obama is our biggest hope in Africa, in Kenya, and more particularly, in Nyang'oma," council vice chairman Odero Kagenya told Sarah Onyango Hussein, the grandmother of Obama, in her house, one of the few brick constructions in the village.
"We expect him to return home, promote good relations between Kenya and the United States, and to be our good ambassador," said Kagenya.
"He has made us look like Americans, because he is now one of the leading people in the US," Kagenya said.
Television signals do not reach Nyang'Oma, which boasts just a single paved road, so residents will not have known that their most famous son had topped the news bulletins of most Kenyan television stations.
"What has uplifted my spirits so far in the US election is the win of Obama."
"That in a way brings back the belief that in America anyone can get to the top if one works hard," Kenyan vice-president Moody Awori told Nation TV.
"Although he is one person out of 100, I know he is going to do his best. We want to pray for him, his roots are here, but let us know he is American," he added.
"If he can continue right up to the end, up to the top, he will probably provide unbiased leadership, which will inspire a lot of people who come from disadvantaged countries," Awori said.