Date: Sat, 26 Sep 2009 17:03:08 -0400
Subject: Boston Globe story
From: hmanly@ . . .
African kin seek Obama¹s help
But president offers no special aid or access
By Farah Stockman, Globe Staff | September 13, 2009
KOGELO, Kenya – After Barack Obama was elected to the US Senate in 2004, a delegation from the remote African village where his father was raised journeyed to Washington, seeking financial help. But Obama offered them advice, not money.
Now that Obama has moved to the White House, expectations of financial benefit have grown even greater in this tiny hamlet where water is still delivered to thatched huts on the backs of donkeys.
³There are still those who are waiting for him to send millions,¹¹ said Nicholas Rajula, a Kogelo businessman.
Dreams alone seem to be sustaining those counting on an economic boom in this rural corner of western Kenya, near Lake Victoria, where the American president¹s father – also named Barack Obama – grew up and where many of his relatives remain.
In Kogelo, the village where Barack Sr. was raised, there is no restaurant or post office to speak of. Two hours from the nearest city, it is not on most maps.
Still, the price of land here has skyrocketed because of rampant speculation about an Obama family museum that the Kenyan Ministry of Tour ism has promised to build. And there have been some modest, but tangible, signs of progress that seem tied to the village¹s new notoriety. Within a week of Obama¹s election victory last year, the government began to pave the main road to town. It also brought in an electricity and water lines to Obama¹s step-grandmother¹s compound.
Some relatives have also set up foundations, trying to raise money for development projects using the Obama name. And strangers are suddenly a common sight in the market, attracted by safari companies that advertise heritage tours about the first African-American US president. A tourist hotel is planned.
But what is missing is a direct infusion of cash from Obama or the US government, say local residents and members of the extended Obama family, some of whom say they have relayed funding requests through e-mails and letters to Washington. That expectation might come as a surprise in the United States, where such gifts are not an obligation and Obama is not considered a particularly wealthy man. But in Kenya, where politicians are often judged by how much financial help they funnel to family and tribe, the lack of cash donations from the president has caused some consternation.
Rajula, the Kogelo businessman who funded the delegation¹s trip to Washington in 2005, said Obama encouraged the group – which included his own uncle – to form self-help organizations and apply for funding through official channels, such as USAID.
³There is no money that comes from his pocket,¹¹ Rajula said.
A White House official said: ³The president¹s policy of pointing aid requests to official channels is consistent with his message of good governance¹¹ in Africa.
USAID press officer Harry Edwards said the agency gives no special consideration to Obama¹s family members or organizations hailing from his family¹s home area.
Still, relatives in Kenya believe that Obama¹s presidency will bring development, one way or another, so much so that two villages are competing to claim his ancestral roots: Kogelo, the place his father grew up and is buried, and Kobama, a village about 100 miles away where the president¹s great-grandfather settled and where the majority of his estimated three hundred relatives remain. In Kobama, which literally means ³land of Obama,¹¹ family members have fixed up his great-grandfather¹s grave, erected a signpost outlining his lineage, and gladly receive a steady stream of curious visitors. Now, they too, are angling to put up a museum near the mud house where President Obama slept when he visited as a young man.
Charles Oluoch, a second cousin of the president who chairs a new family foundation seeking development funds, said Obama¹s Harvard-educated father helped the boys of Kobama with jobs and school fees. ³Now we expect the president to take over,¹¹ he said.
But he added that he understands Obama has higher priorities.
³This man is USA material and he has to fulfill all his campaign promises,¹¹ he said.
³He should feed his family first – the USA people.¹¹
Obama was raised by his Kansas-born mother, and only met his Kenyan father once. But he tracked down a sprawling family in Kenya after his father¹s 1982 death, while researching his autobiography, Dreams from my Father.
In the book, Obama grappled with the idea of Western guilt, questioning how much he could help the huge extended family he was meeting for the first time.
³Now I had responsibilities,¹¹ Obama wrote in 1995.
³But what did that mean exactly? A part of me wished I could live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: a corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the Western world. But of course I wasn¹t any of those things.¹¹
Obama returned to Kogelo a few years later, to introduce his fiancee, Michelle, and in 2005, to give a speech as senator.
But his Kenyan family members pose a unique challenge for the US president, culturally and politically. At least six presidents had an immigrant parent (both of Andrew Jackson¹s Scotch-Irish parents were immigrants), but no president in modern US history has had so many blood relations living without running water or electricity overseas, said Rick Shenkman, history professor at George Mason University.
³He was the rags to riches candidate,¹¹ he said.
³But when your relatives are still in rags, that means it is complicated.¹¹
Some of Obama¹s relatives, including his half-sister, with whom he is close, live middle-class lives in Kenya and abroad. But others are struggling.
³We lack clean water, electricity,¹¹ Oluoch said.
³We would like to have things like scholarships. We are trying to contact people who can help us.¹¹
In recent months, Obama¹s relatives have formed at least three family foundations to promote development in these rural homesteads. Leaders of two of the foundations said they intended to send funding proposals directly to the president. The Kobama Foundation, chaired by Oluoch, meets once a month to raise money to build a tourist site near Obama¹s great-grand-father¹s grave. The group also wants funding for an irrigation project.
Other relatives have started the Obama Karachuonyo Foundation, which is trying to raise $2 million to promote education, farming assistance and tourism in the area. A third family foundation, the Barack H. Obama Foundation, set up by Obama¹s half-brother to memorialize their father, has also been soliciting international donations for community development projects.
Kogelo¹s secondary school, a series of dusty classrooms built on land that Obama¹s grandfather donated decades ago, closed several times for lack of funding. It was renamed the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School in 2005, with Obama¹s permission, in the hope that his fame would attract donations. For years, little came of it.
Obama visited it as senator, but never promised to raise funds for it, school officials said.
But since Obama has become president, private donations from strangers have flooded in: solar panels from Greenpeace, laptops from the city of Obama in Japan, and school sponsorships from American travelers who have made their way to the village.
³They just came because of President Barack,¹¹ said Yuanita Obiero, the headmistress.
³They were not there before.¹¹
Obiero, who was invited to attend the inauguration in Washington, D.C., with the official delegation from Kogelo, was given $35,000 raised during an inaugural ball. She used the money to begin building new classrooms, but still needs more funding to complete them. USAID has so far turned her down.
So now Obiero, like many in this tiny town, is unsure what the future holds.
³People have high expectations that there will be a lot of changes, but the things which can happen, we can¹t tell,¹¹ she said.
³We just accept what comes.¹¹
Some of her teachers complain that not enough real change has come. But others point to small hints of development. For instance, with good roads and electricity, it is possible to get a newspaper and a cold soda. And petty thievery has gone down since the Kenyan government set up a police post outside the home of the woman the president calls ³Granny.¹¹
On a recent afternoon, Sarah Obama, 87, sat in a semicircle of chairs in the yard, as cows and chickens meandered nearby. Each day, she greets about 100 visitors. Most are locals, but a few have traveled from distant parts of the globe.
The deluge of visitors have prompted her to build a modern flush toilet for ³important guests¹¹ and to set up a curio shop at her front gate, where her business partner, Flora Akinyi, sells hand-made beads and baskets to the visitors. Akinyi says her share of the money helps her put her three children through school.
But Rajula, the businessman, said he has learned it is unrealistic to expect a sudden infusion of money from America. During the 2005 trip to Washington, Rajula told Obama about the large number of orphans in Kogelo, so Obama encouraged him to set up an orphanage. But when Rajula sent fund-raising appeals through an Obama aide, he was told to approach funding agencies through ordinary channels.
Rajula said he understood Obama¹s reluctance to get directly involved in projects that had no track record. Senator Obama continued to exchange e-mails with him, Rajula said, but now all his e-mails to Obama bounce back.
Now Rajula has began investing in another plan: a tourist hotel in Kogelo.
³Americans are different than us,¹¹ he said. ³Us, we believe in handouts. But Americans don¹t help individuals. Still, we stand to gain a lot from the presidency. Those of us who are clever, we will gain.¹
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From: nairobi kenya
Subject: FW: Boston Globe story
Date: Saturday, September 26, 2009, 5:22 PM
This is very disgusting knowing very well that the president has just started and has more important issues to deal with in United States of America and the world. How dare somebody with BOSTON GLOBE are scandalizing my own mother’s name Sarah ONyango yet she does not even speak English. My mother cannot say such a thing before asking me her daughter Auntie Zeituni or her son Obama-Onyango her own children. Those are people who want to saw where they did not plant any crop and just want to fail the president. What do these people want to do with the president yet the Americans have not yet got their INSURANCE?
PLEASE PRAY FOR MY NEPHEW THE PRESIDENT. These people are nuts!
HURRY HURRY HAS NO BLESSINGS, Boston Globe and Rajula should know that in the name of Almighty God.
Peace, love, unity and patient be with you, Amen.
Auntie.
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from: Judy Miriga hide details 1:37 pm (11 hours ago)
date Sep 27, 2009 1:37 PM
subject Re: FW: Boston Globe story
Folks,
This letter by Farah Stockman, Globe Staff is malicious, from a sneaky twisted mind with intent to malign and is based on character assassination. Farah Stockman with her Globe is biased and is out to scandalize President Obama with his extended family on the side of his father who hail from Kenya in Africa. People like Farah Stockman is mentality starved and are still living in the past. They believe Africa is a jungle and those who live in Africa are backwards, primitive and are leaving a jungle lifestyle. Now that President Obama’s father hailed from Africa, and is coming from Kenya, she is intrigued, she thinks she found a big story to tell, a reason meant to scandal and smear President Obama, balkanizing with primitivity and backwardness with jungle ideologies. We all see Ms. Farah Stockman with his team Mission from the Globe as not sincere and not positive. They are engineering for trouble.
When Ms. Stockman, begun her journey to go to Kenya in Africa, she ought to have checked and read Africa history well and she would have known in advance what to expect from Kenya. She should have known reasons why Africa is under-developed which is not a surprise to anyone in the world. It is an open book. But let me just get some cobweb out of her head. The reason and cause of Africa’s under-development is as a result of manipulative segregation, divide-and-rule colonialist-rule mentality, fogged with prolonged vested interconnected special interests and coupled with Puppet-of-the-west Leadership of bad governance (in Kenya) based on prolonged chronic extreme corruption with impunity.
The colonialist found out how valuable Africa was in Natural Minerals including Uranium, Gold and Diamond as well as brains, just to mention a few. Africa over the years has been given a raw deal in its Natural Resources in the World Market and from its colonialists masters who still receive stipend for their invasion in Colonizing Africa. Everything that caused it to be a third world was engineered in a manipulative manner, that which caused Africa to remain that way in a long time in history. That is the same picture Ms. Farah and its masters are trying to paint. Their conscious is not clean.
Those are some of the reasons why in her visit to Kogello she was not able to find running water in the homestead with post offices far a part. She should know that President Obama’s father was an American Education project. He stood out an excellent student but the system messed him up and derailed him from achieving what he struggled and strived to accomplish. There are so many other America’s projects in Kenya way back before President Obama was born which include Kennedy project, Kenya National Youth and Starehe Boys to include Coast Academy in Mombasa, just to mention a few.
Ms. Farah Stockman and the Globe should not be too “happy go lucky” to dwell in digging private and personal family lifestyle of President Obama father’s roots and Community, specifically dwelling on the weaker side of the Community with intention to scandalize that which depicts failure anything to do with Africa. They are busy looking for skeleton in African wardrobe to hit on President Obama, his family with the Community. This amounts to criminology and violation of Human Rights of the highest order.
Africa has a right to claim to have been put in this situation by masters of the West. They have a right to claim damages under International Human Rights Order. It is painful because we were all put in this situation by design not in our choice. For Farah and the Globe to keep journeying to Kogello in Kenya and Kendu Bay in Karachuonyo is a total insult. We have not claimed for special damages for what we have been put to endure, and so we should be left alone with the likes of Farah Stockman so we can stand up and improve our poverty situation within our means. We will not shy away from statements made of the likes of Farah, but we will continue to lobby with those who care for Humanity and someday, we will level up and compete with the rest of the World in the Global Market.
President Obama’s father was not a failure, he was ambitious with a mind full of hope and success. He set off on a journey to USA to achieve excellence in education. He then went back to Kenya to fulfill his mission and change things for progress and prosperity. He was never given a chance to fulfill his mission hope. He was curtailed, sidelined, manipulated and frustrated by the system of the Government. All those in like mind from Tom Mboya who gained the ability to change Kenya and the rest of Africa to a progressive Continent, had their lives shortened, they were eliminated for planning for development success of Africa. These are some of the reason why Kogello and other parts of Kenya and the rest of Africa are backwards seen as a deadwood jungle.
In Africa, we have all what it takes that the West cannot do without. The Natural Resources in Africa is what the Western Industrialized success story was based upon. Ms. Farah and the Globe must know that without making Africa an Ally, friends in Trade Partnership, other Nations competing to claim super power from America will have control of Africa and America will be no more. So this is not a matter of President Obama being in the leadership of America, but a concern to retain America’s power in the World region. In like mind of those of Sarah and the Globe Management with their Personnel with its Mafia cohorts and cartels, they should be grateful that President Obama is weaning Africa for America in Trade Partnership, and despite the jungleness they see in Kenya (Kogello) and the rest of Africa, there is wisdom for Africa/America relationship to be stronger, a cause to retain its statute of Global Super Power, this is because, Africa is rich in all that the Industrialized World would need in order to succeed and stay on top of the World.
Yes, everything about President Obama with his extended family background is unique it is acknowledged by everyone. He cannot do anything about it, God put him there to stem from his father. You cannot question why God had to allow that to happen. He is the Black Africa to become the President of America. But one thing is clear, that he did not become the President of America through the back door, he was voted in by the America majority who wanted change, who realized things are not working if they are left to stay the way they are. The people of America found him suitable amongst many candidates and elected him to be their President. The whole world celebrated the victory of Barack Obama – a tradition where you allow yourself to celebrate with what you have, whether it is a branch of stick or leaves of a banana stalk – you dance or jump or shout – it is all celebration and I dont see why someone has to get upset how others do their celebration. The whole world recognized the ability and value embodied in President Barack Obama, that he will make the world a better place, a place where mankind will leave in peace and happiness away from deep hate and witch-hunting. A world where people in a Global Market will provide Supply Vs. Demand without manipulation or discrimination, a world where humanity will not clench their fists at each other all the times but have an open stretched hands to reach out for brotherly dialogues and agreements without enduring in hate. A world where LOVE exceeds all. What a beautiful World that will be.
America is a Country formulated and constituted by Nationals from all over the world with exception from Red Indians who were the origins of America. White, Black, Yellow, Red, Brown and Green can all be found in America. This includes African Blacks. America is rich in Cultural Diversity. America is a Great Nation of Nationals and we are all proud of America. So Farah Stockman and those in like mind together with their sponsors including the Globe Administration and their staff, should go slow and surrender their wanton hateful mission. This is hurting not only Africans but even the whites, the yellow, the red and the Green. We all want to live at peace with each other and enjoy the reward of this world.
President Obama with the help of his beautiful wife Michelle (who are both Black) are rulers from the White House. Its about time special interest people who do not believe in anything black to get over it and begin to identify President Obama as America’s President, give him all the respect and support he needs, so together, we can all move forward with development ideas which will save this great Nation, so to place this beautiful and wonderful America on top of the mountain where it will shed light to the World. America leads and others follows.
God Bless you all and peace be with you all.
Thanks,
Judy Miriga
Diaspora Spokesperson
Executive Director
Confederation Council Foundation for Africa Inc.,
USA
http://socioeconomicforum50.blogspot.com
