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Hope stirred in Kenyan village
28/10/2004 14:00 - (SA)
Ulrike Koltermann
Nyangomo - Out in Kenya's green western reaches, the dwellers in one mud hut will be watching the upcoming US elections with particular interest.
There is no electricity in Nyangomo, so the villagers sit together and listen to the radio by candlelight. But it is not the battle between George W Bush and John Kerry that interests them.
The 83-year-old family matriarch, Sarah Obama, will be eagerly listening to hear whether, in the Senate elections being held at the same time, her grandson manages to become the senator for Illinois.
If he does, Barack Obama will become the sole Afro-American senator - and some are already hailing the Democrat as the first non-white president of the United States.
Obama is the son of a Kenyan father and an American mother. His father left the family when his son was a small boy. Obama grew up in Hawaii and Indonesia and went on to study law at Harvard.
At the end of the 1980s, he visited his relatives in Kenya for the first time. Years earlier, his father had died in a car accident.
Later, he was to write that he sat between his father's grave and his grandfather's and wept. When his tears dried, he felt he had come a full circle.
His Kenyan family sows corn, beans and sweet potatoes on 12ha of land for the village market, and is extremely proud of Obama.
"I'm excited and praying for him to win," says his grandmother, sitting in a worn armchair amid a dozen water canisters.
She has just returned from the field that is ploughed manually. Flies buzz beneath the corrugated iron roof. A crooked row of framed family photographs lines the wall, including one of Barack Obama senior, complete with black horn-rimmed spectacles, and his gangly son on his first visit to Kenya.
Excitement mounting
Excitement is rising in the tiny village near Lake Victoria. For weeks, Obama's uncle Said has been doing nothing but receiving journalists and inquisitive people.
"People change the subject as soon as I arrive and talk about Obama," he said.
The local beer is called "Senator", but now people simply order "an Obama", while the school is soon to be renamed "Barack Obama School".
The Obamas belong to the Luo tribe. A man who boasts 130 wives lives nearby. If someone prospers, they are obliged to share their wealth with everyone, according to Luo tradition.
So the entire village hopes that Obama will win in Illinois, and that they will literally be showered with wealth.
"It will be good if one of us has a US Senate seat," says Said as he walks beside his small maize field, adding, "He'll surely help us then."
The wish list is long. There are no water pipes, there is electricity, and there are no roads.
In the school soon to be renamed after Obama, childish hands have scrawled his name dozens of times across the blackboard. Boys in blue shorts sit at roughly-hewn desks, copying from the blackboard.
There is not enough money for school books. Asked whether anyone wants to study in the US later like Obama, the whole class shouts: "Yes!"
- SAPA
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