Obama is a sandwich between Mboya and JFK
Nov 04, 2008
NOVEMBER 4 will go down in history as the defining moment in the life for one African-American called Barack Obama. It will be remembered as the day all of America put him on the ballot box to compete with fellow American and Senator John McCain for the most powerful political office in the world.
AN EAST AFRICAN PERSPECTIVE - By Jerry Obama
NOVEMBER 4 will go down in history as the defining moment in the life for one African-American called Barack Obama. It will be remembered as the day all of America put him on the ballot box to compete with fellow American and Senator John McCain for the most powerful political office in the world.
As we sit back and wait for the polls to roll, many coincidents keep coming up in the minds of many Kenyans who may remember the hands of fate and destiny in the life of Barack Obama.
As the world sits and waits, the sheer ecstasy, excitement, anxiety and joy all come together in a confusing way. There is fear of loss and even of death yet there is hope and high expectation.
At 47, Barack Obama is competing with 72-year-old John McCain for the Oval Office. His own father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was born in 1936. He too would be 72 years today. In essence, Obama is running against his father’s agemate.
In the final days of his campaign, Obama suspended his campaign to visit his ailing American grandmother in Hawaii.
He was sure he would never see her alive again after that visit. As sure as he predicted, the 86-year-old lady passed away just one day before Americans went to the polls to elect the first Black American president.
The irony and hand of fate in the life of Barack Obama is mind-boggling if not perplexing.
At 47, he had lost all his American relatives, mother and grandparents not to mention his father Barack Obama Sr. who was the first to die; the most important people in his life he would have loved to see him scale the heights of American politics. Yet, in God’s own mercy and grace, he now has an adoring family of wife Michelle and two young beautiful daughters that have stood by him through and through.
Beyond his immediate American family, he is supported by numerous step-sisters and brothers in Africa, Asia and Europe; thanks to the multiple marriages of his father and mother’s second marriage in Indonesia.
Back here in Kenya, there is a direct link between what is today the world’s phenomenon and what happened in Kenya in the 1950s and ‘60s.
These were the years the late Tom Mboya; Kenya’s most brilliant and gifted politician airlifted Kenyan students to go and study in the United States of America. Mboya was influential enough to convince the incoming American president, JF Kennedy to support the programme.
This was the programme that benefited Barack Obama Sr. at the tender age of 23. His admission to a university in Hawaii made it possible for him to meet a young American lady who later became the Senator’s mother in 1961.
When Mboya set out to send Kenyan young men and women to the United States, merit was the first consideration. It did not matter that one was a Luo, Luhya, Kamba, Kisii or Kikuyu.
To Mboya, they were simply young Kenyans who needed to be given an opportunity to learn and come back home to serve their young country whose independence from Britain was imminent. What he might not have known was that of the many young Kenyans he sent to America, one of them would plant the seed on American soil that would produce America’s 44th president.
The mystery between Tom Mboya and Senator Barack Obama is intriguing. It would appear that Barack Obama’s political enigma is a sandwich between Tom Mboya of Kenya and JF Kennedy of the United States; the two political giants who made it possible for Obama Sr to meet his mother in the first place.
Unfortunately, all these people who played a part in Obama’s life even before he was born are now long dead; his father in a road accident while Kennedy and Mboya were gunned down by political assassins in their home countries six years apart. Had Mboya lived, he would be 75 years old, just three years older than Obama Sr. while JF Kennedy would be 91.
As we sit back and watch drama being played out on our TV screens for the next few days, our hearts like the rest of the world are with Barack Obama.
While the world has endorsed him for president, the people who have the power to put him the White House have yet to do so.
This mandate belongs to the Americans alone. If the rest of the world had its way, Obama would by now have been sworn in as America’s 44th president.
With these few lines; we wish you well JaKogelo!
jerryokungu@gmail.com
NOVEMBER 4 will go down in history as the defining moment in the life for one African-American called Barack Obama. It will be remembered as the day all of America put him on the ballot box to compete with fellow American and Senator John McCain for the most powerful political office in the world.
As we sit back and wait for the polls to roll, many coincidents keep coming up in the minds of many Kenyans who may remember the hands of fate and destiny in the life of Barack Obama.
As the world sits and waits, the sheer ecstasy, excitement, anxiety and joy all come together in a confusing way. There is fear of loss and even of death yet there is hope and high expectation.
At 47, Barack Obama is competing with 72-year-old John McCain for the Oval Office. His own father, Barack Hussein Obama Sr. was born in 1936. He too would be 72 years today. In essence, Obama is running against his father’s agemate.
In the final days of his campaign, Obama suspended his campaign to visit his ailing American grandmother in Hawaii.
He was sure he would never see her alive again after that visit. As sure as he predicted, the 86-year-old lady passed away just one day before Americans went to the polls to elect the first Black American president.
The irony and hand of fate in the life of Barack Obama is mind-boggling if not perplexing.
At 47, he had lost all his American relatives, mother and grandparents not to mention his father Barack Obama Sr. who was the first to die; the most important people in his life he would have loved to see him scale the heights of American politics. Yet, in God’s own mercy and grace, he now has an adoring family of wife Michelle and two young beautiful daughters that have stood by him through and through.
Beyond his immediate American family, he is supported by numerous step-sisters and brothers in Africa, Asia and Europe; thanks to the multiple marriages of his father and mother’s second marriage in Indonesia.
Back here in Kenya, there is a direct link between what is today the world’s phenomenon and what happened in Kenya in the 1950s and ‘60s.
These were the years the late Tom Mboya; Kenya’s most brilliant and gifted politician airlifted Kenyan students to go and study in the United States of America. Mboya was influential enough to convince the incoming American president, JF Kennedy to support the programme.
This was the programme that benefited Barack Obama Sr. at the tender age of 23. His admission to a university in Hawaii made it possible for him to meet a young American lady who later became the Senator’s mother in 1961.
When Mboya set out to send Kenyan young men and women to the United States, merit was the first consideration. It did not matter that one was a Luo, Luhya, Kamba, Kisii or Kikuyu.
To Mboya, they were simply young Kenyans who needed to be given an opportunity to learn and come back home to serve their young country whose independence from Britain was imminent. What he might not have known was that of the many young Kenyans he sent to America, one of them would plant the seed on American soil that would produce America’s 44th president.
The mystery between Tom Mboya and Senator Barack Obama is intriguing. It would appear that Barack Obama’s political enigma is a sandwich between Tom Mboya of Kenya and JF Kennedy of the United States; the two political giants who made it possible for Obama Sr to meet his mother in the first place.
Unfortunately, all these people who played a part in Obama’s life even before he was born are now long dead; his father in a road accident while Kennedy and Mboya were gunned down by political assassins in their home countries six years apart. Had Mboya lived, he would be 75 years old, just three years older than Obama Sr. while JF Kennedy would be 91.
As we sit back and watch drama being played out on our TV screens for the next few days, our hearts like the rest of the world are with Barack Obama.
While the world has endorsed him for president, the people who have the power to put him the White House have yet to do so.
This mandate belongs to the Americans alone. If the rest of the world had its way, Obama would by now have been sworn in as America’s 44th president.
With these few lines; we wish you well JaKogelo!
jerryokungu@gmail.com