A corner of his father’s people’s land shall forever be his own

This week Kenya plays host to the most significant “foreign’’ visitor to ever grace the country’s shores. President Barack Obama is in the country of his father’s birth. The short tour to the land that provided the backdrop of his seminal book, Dreams From My Father, shall be his first as US president — and potentially his last as leader of the free world.

Upon his historic election in 2008, many expected Obama to extend his celebrations of that momentous victory into Kenya by favouring the country with his first foreign visit, or at least his first sojourn on the continent.

However, to do so would have been to lend a barn of fodder to those within the ranks of his opponents, eager to make the case that he was not American enough, or just simply, not American at all.

What is to be said of his visit now, then? The timing is perfect. Obama is coming off the most important month of his presidency. His polls are at their highest in the past two years.

The list of his vaunted recent successes includes the Supreme Court’s affirmatory ruling in favour of his signature health programme, Obamacare, and same-sex marriage, Congress’ assent to his trade initiative and his conclusion of the Iran nuclear deal.

LEGACY

As he sweeps into the homestretch, Obama’s legacy is beginning to take shape. A definitive identity to his presidency is emerging. Many believe the substance of his tenure has begun to touch the periphery of the transformational leadership column where the likes of Ronald Reagan, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and the great Abraham Lincoln reside.

Of timing, further, with respect to the two nations, US-Kenya relations have been at their best since the Kenyatta regime took office in 2013. The thawing in the frosty ties can be traced to the fact that the case against President Uhuru Kenyatta before the International Criminal Court has collapsed, and the one against his deputy, William Ruto, appears to be on quicksand.

Obama’s Kenyan stay will be ushered in by the fetching Global Entrepreneurship Summit.

The importance of the convention — the first Global Entrepreneurship Summit to be held on the continent — cannot be gainsaid. But the subtext, especially from the perspective of Kenyans, is unassailable.

No. Obama’s visit is not most compelling because he is the first black US president. That is, of course, profound and memorable.

However, Kenya has played host to many presidents with insignia of firsts draped across their diplomatic lapels. It is also not merely estimable because of a connection to Kenya that may now be viewed as being only academic — for after all, is not everyone essentially from the African continent?

Obama has Irish heritage, and although he had the warmest of welcomes when he visited the Emerald Isle a few years ago, Kenyans customarily view his standing differently, in a very nuanced way that is difficult to explain and discern.

HERITAGE

In essence, the arresting cultural root connection is palpably viewed as being so deep as to subsume furnished modern constructs. Thus, cretinous birthers might take offence and try to find ammunition in the statement: Barack Obama is a son of Kenya.

Yet, verily I tell you, he was not born in the land of his father. It is just that, culturally in Kenya, and more particularly among his father’s Luo people, the notion of where one is from, has little, if anything, to do with where one is born — a western immigration law modernism — and more to do with the underlying legacy of one’s heritage.

Hence, for example, upon the demise of a forlorn and worldly abandoned fellow Luo — however obscure that person’s life and achievements, and regardless of how tenuous his links to the community may have been, the community would sooner find a charter to the moon to bring the prodigal back home to rest in peace with his forefathers and ancestors.

Indeed, in spite of the opinion or beliefs to the contrary of the person in question or even of the prevailing members of the community, such is the depth of the root of the bond at play that the precept cannot be broken willy-nilly; even by those who forsake the community. It is a kindred ancestral edict that transcends the individual and the people compelled to bring home their stranded own.

In essence, Obama might be the most powerful man in the world, and there is much he can summon by a shrug of his shoulders; but the warmth of the embrace of the country of his father will never be his to call.

So is Obama really American? Absolutely, in all senses of the word. Yet, if the US and every region of the world were to reject him, paraphrasing the poet Rupert Brooke in The Soldier, “there is a corner” of his father’s people’s land that shall forever be his.

Mr Ollunga is a member of the New York Bar Association. This article was first published by The Fair Observer