|
Kenya: For about 400 people in western Kenya who can call the next US president "part of the family," the business of being an Obama has a whole new meaning.
The modest family compound here has been inundated by hordes of visitors, from reporters and local politicians to ordinary Kenyans looking for help in getting US visas, scholarships, jobs or cash. Family matriarch Sarah Onyango, the grandmother of President-elect Barack Obama, is treated like a celebrity wherever she goes.
The Kenyan government, which once ostracised Obama's father, suddenly is falling over itself to attend to the family. There's a new road, 24-hour police security and an electricity line - the first in the village. It was installed hours after election results were announced, bypassing neighbours who've been waiting years for a connection.
"Dealing with all this," sighed Obama, the president-elect's uncle, "has been like a full-time job."
In US politics, presidential relatives are always something of a wild card, often the subject of curiosity or controversy. But the Obamas of Kenya promise to be a first family like none America has seen.
Here in sleepy Nyangoma-Kogelo, the Obamas are admired widely as the richest family in this town of about 2,000 successful farmers who always have helped neighbours in need, and flirted with the political elite when Obama's Harvard-educated father rose to a prominent government post.
But while they're at the top of the social ladder at home, the international spotlight has cast the family in an unfamiliar role: as poor relations who've suddenly hit it big.
By US standards many family members are relatively poor, living in mud-brick homes without running water.
|
