KODI BARTH: Why Barack Obama is his father’s son

Four years later, he now sat between the graves of his grandfather and his father, under the mango tree behind his grandmother’s house.

“For a long time I sat between the two graves and wept,” he writes. “When my tears were finally spent … I felt the circle finally close. I realised that who I was, what I cared about, was no longer just a matter of intellect or obligation…

“I saw that my life in America — the black life, the white life, the sense of abandonment I’d felt as a boy, the frustration and hope in Chicago — all of it was connected with this piece of earth an ocean away ...

“The pain I felt was my father’s pain. My questions were my brother’s questions. Their struggle, my birthright.”

Sen Obama is his father’s son. It is said that Obama Sr had a driving intellect and ambition; two traits that Auma worries may drive his brother too far.

But as the Boston Globe wrote recently, if someone had said to Obama Sr: “You know, your son might be president,” he would have said: ‘Well, of course. He’s my son.’”

The writer is a lecturer of journalism at the United States International University, Nairobi. kodi@kodibarth.com