The theatre surrounding President Obama’s arrival in Nairobi
illustrated why the man is one of the more gifted politicians of our
time.
He didn’t walk out of Air Force One after it
plunged down from the sky shortly after 8 pm, catching waiting
photographers by surprise.
He bounded down the stairs at pace, like an excited toddler returning to the comforts of home after a long day at school.
He
lingered in his greetings with the little girl on hand to receive him,
Joan Wamaitha, and went on to pose for a photo with her.
When
he was introduced to the line of waiting officials, he didn’t just
shake their hands and move on but instead spent a few seconds to chat
with each.
Then there was the moment that
differentiated this from his other trips around the world, the hug with
his sister Auma Obama which stole the headlines.
It
used to be said that Bill Clinton was a political genius because his
magnetism was such that he could make everyone in a crowded room feel as
though he was looking at and speaking only to them.
Obama clearly has some of that gold dust, too.
REMARKABLE TALE
The
moment of his arrival in Kenya, historic though it is, will pass and be
forgotten soon enough. One way to make this trip endure in the minds of
young Kenyans, beyond trade deals and financing for young
entrepreneurs, is to help them learn from the Obama story and the
remarkable tale of the rise of the family in one generation, from
K’Ogelo to State House.
Obama’s first book, Dreams From My Father, is one of the best books written about Kenya.
It was published before Obama joined politics, meaning it is
marked by a honesty and depth not normally associated with books by
politicians.
Including it as a set book in high school
would offer students a powerful chance to see Kenya through the eyes of a
man who came here to find his roots, clearly loves the country, but
also has strong feelings about the shortcomings that hold the country
back from achieving greatness.
ETHNICITY
Obama’s
tone is not that of those who seek to lecture Africans like little
children. In fact, he laments the “utter lack of self-consciousness” of
the typical tourist happy to pass judgement on locals, feeling they were
expressing “a bedrock confidence in their own parochialism, a
confidence reserved for those born into imperial cultures”.
But
he also writes powerfully about the problem of ethnicity and how it
holds the continent back. His discussion of the subject with his aunts
in 1987 shows how little has changed since.
“Most
Kenyans still worked with older maps of identity, more ancient
loyalties. Even (my aunts) Jane or Zeituni could say things that
surprised me … Hearing my aunts traffic in stereotypes I would try to
explain the error of their ways. ‘It’s thinking like that that holds us
back,’ I would say. ‘We are all part of one tribe. The black tribe. The
human tribe.”
Most countries use the public school
system to inculcate a culture of patriotism and love for their country
which then serves as the springboard to the pursuit of national goals.
Young
Chinese, Japanese, South Koreans grow up learning in school that theirs
is the greatest country on earth and that they should treasure and
nurture it. The Americans do the same with their endless displays of
flags and daily recitation of the pledge of allegiance to their country
in schools.
In Kenya, there is no attempt to use the
school system in that way. The Obama family story, narrated beautifully
in his book, is one that should be known to more Kenyans and which would
only enrich the curriculum.
The school system alone
can’t heal the divisions in society but it has a role to play to arrest
the disturbing trend which sees high school students fighting along
ethnic lines as recently reported and university student election
campaigns being fought along strictly ethnic lines.
Of
course, it is the politicians who deepen ethnic divisions more than
anyone else. But let students read the Obama book and explore deeply the
question of what it means to be a citizen not imprisoned to identity
and in time there might be an electorate that can vote for leaders who
seek to improve the lot of their people above all else.
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