An Article About Kisumu, Kenya on November 5

{ November 6th, 2008 }

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I’ve spent a lot of time in Kisumu.  For more than two years, Kenyans in Kisumu have been asking me about Barack Obama and if I think that he can be president.  Early in his senate term Obama made a visit to Kisumu.  Kenyans donned Obama for President t-shirts and bought them up in record time.  Shortly thereafter, I made a visit to Kisumu, but by then, t-shirts were hard to come by, and even my colleagues couldn’t find any more.

Yesterday I got an email from one of my CARE Kenya colleagues in Kisumu congratulating me on the election.  I also chatted briefly a few Atlantan friends living in Kisumu.  Today they are enjoying a public holiday celebrating Obama’s win.  But even before the public celebration, people had taken to the streets.  Brooks sent the photo below (by Brooks Keene and Shadi Saboori, friends in Kisumu, Kenya).

^{By Brooks Keene and Shadi Saboori, friends from Atlanta living in Kisumu}

You can see more of the celebration at Brooks’ blog: Keene Thoughts

I am also pasting below and article about the celebrations in Kisumu.  It’s not only an exciting day for America, but also for Kenya.

KISUMU, Kenya | By Jeffrey Gettleman Call it redemption.

This town, in the epicenter of Kenya’s Obamaland — the same area where Barack Obama’s father was from and where some of his cousins, half-brothers and a very gregarious 80-something step-grandmother still live — exploded into cheers when the news broke that Mr. Obama had won the presidency.

Thousands of people sang, danced, blew whistles, honked horns, hugged, kissed and thumped on drums — all down the same streets where not so long ago huge flames of protest had raged.
“Who needs a passport?” people yelled. “We’re going to America!”

It was sweetness on many levels. A black man in the White House. A half-Kenyan at the helm of the most powerful country on the planet. And a fair election, which Kenyans have learned is nothing to take for granted.

People here stayed up all night, swatting mosquitoes as they watched the election results trickle in on TV sets with fuzzy pictures. The last time this many Kenyans were riveted by an election — their own, in December 2007 — riots erupted after the opposition candidate lost and Kenya’s incumbent president won. Widespread allegations of vote rigging sent tens of thousands of young men into the streets, to loot, burn and kill. Much of Kisumu, usually a relaxed town along the steamy, hippo-infested shores of Lake Victoria, was ravaged.

But on Wednesday, many of the same young men who had been doing the burning, the looting and worse, were all smiles, part of the happy wave of emotion that coursed through Kisumu. Passersby and mini-bus drivers and bicycle taxi men got swept into the streets, where Obama posters, Obama pins and even Obama wall clocks were selling faster than juicy papayas.

“This has restored my faith in democracy,” said Duncan Adel, a computer technician who had been part of the election protests last year.

About an hour away, down a bumpy dirt road, Mr. Obama’s extended Kenyan family held a 1,000-person bash in their ancestral village of Kogelo.

“We’re going to the White House!” they sang.

[Most people in Kisumu are Luo, the ethnic group of the top opposition leader and coincidentally the same ethnic group of Mr. Obama’s father. There is an old joke in Kisumu that a Luo will become president of the United States before becoming president of Kenya. It has indeed come true.]

By mid-morning, the Kenyan government declared Thursday a national holiday. It meant a day off. And surely more partying. View the article here.

Written by Sarah in Africa, Articles, Life, News, Photos ~ Trackback