Kenya     Obama village    length: 6.50

Almost ten hours journey westward from Nairobi, the tarmac roads turns into a dirt road, red african soil. Far out in the countryside, isolated, lies the village of Nyang'oma Kogelo.

Sarah Hussain Obama  (speaking Luo)

-Welcome, have a seat!

Sarah Hussain Obama, Barack's grandmother, greets us welcome. There is no doubt that this is the house where Barack Obamas father grew up.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-This is the senators father and his brother in America. The father of Obama went there for further studyinga.

Barack Obamas father got a scholöarship to a university on Hawaii, USA. There he married Obama's mother, a white woman. In the house, Barack Obama's grandmother Sarah, his cousin Rashed and an orphaned boy live, but the orphaned boy disappeared when the visitors came. Rashed shows a picture of Barack Obama when he visited his grandmother the first time in 1987 in search of his African roots.

Rashed Bakari

-How old was he at this time?

Sarah Hussain Obama

-I don't know but he was still studying at the university.

When Barack Obama was inaugurated to the Senate in 2005, his grandmother visited him in the USA.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-It was too cold there..

Two years after Barack was born, his parents divorced. His father moved from Hawaii and later back to Kenya so Barack never really got to know his father. His father was passed away in a car accident 1982 in Nairobi and is buried in the back yard of his parents house. Besides is the grave of Barack Obamas grandfather.

But Barack's father had many women so USA's eventual democratic president elect and maybe later on it's first black president, has several half-siblings. Several of his relatives have emigrated from kenya.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-In England...

Even the neighbours are more or less related to the senator Barack Obama and all hope for his victory in the elections.

Atieno Odiambo, cousin to Barack Obama

-We will be happy and we will cheer and congratulate him as well for the lead  and I know most Kenyans will be so uplifted because he is originally from Kenya.

Another neighbour is Fauziah Odiambo who's husband is the half-brother of Barack Obama. But her husband is now in the USA, working. They are muslims, like Barack's father was. The senator's visits here have made great impressions on the people.

Fauziah Odiambo  (showing her son)

-The name of the son is Barack Obama Abongo, Abong is the father.

(people singing in church)

Sunday morning and a service is held in the protestant church in Nyang'oma Kogelo. Like his mother, Barack Obama is Christian and has paid several visits to the church here during his visits. Not fra from the church lies the school, by the villagers named after it's famous son, the senator, but still waiting for necessary funds for renovation.

Grandmother Sarah and the cousin Rashid live on the produce of the farm. Mainly corn which is dried and the grinded to flour. Corn porride is the main food in Kenya but they also grow other things.

Rashed Bakari

-We are going to plant sweet potatoes here.

There is a well with good quality on the farm and neighbouring kids often come over to get water. At the neighbouring fields they keep cattle together with their neighbours. Eric was one of the several people here who greeted senator Obama at his last visit here almost two years ago.

Eric Otieno, cowboy

-Yes, I saw him with my own eyes and people came in large numbers.

The news media hype around American presidential elections has also reached sleepy little Nyang'oma Kogelo. But it is not worse than a few journalists a day. So grandmother Sarah and one of her neighbours can sit and gossip peacefully.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-Let the children go to school that's important I never went to school.

Ann Atieno (other lady)

-Going to school destroys children..

Sarah Hussain Obama

-If going to school destroys children why is it so that Obama went to school and he is now  trying to be president ?

Grandmother Sarah does not seem worried for the media commotion which eventual will become around her as a grandmother of the President of the USA. She is already used to it, she claims.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-I am used to all this because I was myself on tv, so that is nothing I'm thinking about that much.

All tv-crew visits have made her already like a star, she jokes.

In Nyang'oma Kogelo poverty and unemployment is huge. Traditional agriculture make people survive but hardly anything else. This part of Kenya is also heavily affected by AIDA so development projects are needed here.

Sarah Hussain Obama

-If they bring development they should open offices so that when children comes out of school they get jobs.

The people of Western Kenya strongly supports the poitical opposition whos leader Raila Odinga is hugely popular. So an eventual contest about the presidential post of Kenya between Odinga and senator Obama from USA would be a close fight here...

-So who would you vote for, Raila Odinga or Obama...?  (laughs)