Obama and Kenya. Matthew Carotenuto
mainly on the presidential race between Republican incumbent George W. Bush and his Democratic challenger, John Kerry, we had paid little attention to a more minor contest in the midwestern state of Illinois that had already begun to overshadow the presidential race for many Kenyan audiences.
Unaware of the singular moment that would unfold that morning, we left the congested confines of Nairobi’s central business district during the predawn hours to make our way to the ambassador’s residence in the leafy suburb of Muthaiga. Heading out of the city center during the ritual tussle of Nairobi’s hectic morning commute, we escaped the brunt of the daily bumper-to-bumper line of packed buses, overflowing matatu (van taxis), and commercial traffic that Kenyans simply refer to as “the jam.” Turning off the main highway not too far from downtown, we entered a tranquil suburban relic of the colonial past. Now a mixed bastion home to international aid workers, diplomatic personnel, and Kenya’s political elite, the tony neighborhood of Muthaiga has roots dating back to the early twentieth century, complete with the golf outings and colonial cocktail parties that made up the days of Britain’s privileged white settler class.2 Like many of the homes and businesses, the US ambassadorial residence still reflects the imposing architecture and manicured style of the British colonial past and is hardly visible behind the razor wire–topped walls and guarded gates that dot one of Nairobi’s most exclusive neighborhoods.
Arriving just before six in the morning, we waited in the long security line along with an array of impeccably dressed guests to be welcomed to the traditional American election party, already off to a lively start despite the hour and the fact that US media outlets more than seven thousand miles away had yet to finalize the tally of votes cast the day before. Clearing the armed security and entering the residence, we were struck by the chatter expressing the broad Kenyan interest in the US elections as well as the lavish spread of food and the numerous satellite televisions scattered across the living room, veranda, and pristine gardens of the residence compound that displayed real-time CNN election results.
Mixing in this unfamiliar world, we tentatively scanned the slew of guests and noticed faces familiar to us from the pages of the Kenyan press, including influential members of the international diplomatic corps and a sampling of Kenya’s political elites. Spotting figures ranging from then official government spokesperson Alfred Mutua to then minister for the environment Kalonzo Musyoka, we spent the next few hours sipping tea and trying to make awkward small talk with a sea of parliamentarians, permanent secretaries, and other government officials who operate high above the daily lives of the everyday Kenyans, the wananchi as they are known in Kiswahili, and certainly outside the sphere of the average US graduate student.
In our awe of the overall gathering that day, one group of Kenyan politicians stood out from the rest and instantly captured our attention. Entering amid an entourage of supporters, the Luo leader Raila Odinga was clearly a visible star among this elite group of “Big Men.” Hailing from Siaya, the Western Kenyan county that was also the birthplace of Barack Obama Sr., Odinga has been a fixture in Kenyan politics at the national level since the 1980s. Son of Kenya’s first vice president, Oginga Odinga, and scion of one of Kenya’s most prominent political dynasties, by 2004 Raila, as he is popularly called, was known in local circles as the edgy political dissident and exile from the 1980s who had risen to represent Nairobi’s Langata Constituency in Parliament in the 1990s and was easily the most recognizable politician from Kenya’s relatively small but politically important Luo community. That day, however, Raila was not flying the metaphorical flag of Kenya’s political opposition, but he was instead sporting a wide American flag tie set off by a large Obama pin stuck prominently to the lapel of his pricey suit. His entourage was similarly, though less flamboyantly, kitted out in visible support for the United States broadly and Obama particularly.
While it was not unusual for guests to demonstrate their support for the American electoral process during a gathering at the US ambassador’s home, we were immediately struck by how Raila exhibited fervent enthusiasm for a relatively unknown senatorial candidate from Illinois, Barack Obama. In the months leading up to the November election, Matt Carotenuto had fielded an increasing number of questions from Kenyans about this “Obama fellow” during his fieldwork near Raila’s home areas in Western Kenya. Word had gotten around that the Democratic candidate campaigning to represent Illinois in the US Senate was in fact the son of the same Barack Obama Sr. who was born in the 1930s not far from Raila’s hometown close to Lake Victoria in the Western Kenyan county of Siaya. Some nine years older than Raila, Obama Sr., a onetime government employee and midlevel technocrat, had died tragically in an automobile accident in Nairobi in 1982.3 Though successful in his own right, Obama Sr. was certainly not of the same political pedigree or elevated achievement as Raila, yet, in Western Kenya, a strange sense of dynasty had nonetheless begun to emerge around Barack Obama Jr., the US senatorial candidate whose ties to Kenya generally and to the history of the Luo community particularly had been seized upon by Luo people in the months leading up to the American elections. However, it was not until the lopsided victory of Obama Jr. over his Republican challenger in Illinois was declared that we began to witness the significance of this US electoral victory to international relations and to “Big Man” politics in Kenya.
Called long before the presidential race, the senatorial victory of Barack Obama Jr. drew the most dramatic response from the Kenyan guests of any election results announced that morning. A sporting cheer and rounds of overwhelming applause led by Raila’s group erupted when CNN declared Obama the winner.4 However, instead of simply joining politely in the applause celebrating the election of a junior senator with paternal ties to Kenya, Ambassador Bellamy made his way straight for the Odinga contingent and began shaking Raila’s hand boisterously as if the Kenyan politician’s own brother had been elected. In congratulating Raila, first among the cream of the Kenyan political elite present at the party, and doing so in such a public space, Ambassador Bellamy, who drew some subtle stares from various other Kenyans at the gathering, seemed to imply that Obama’s victory was not something to be celebrated by the wananchi across Kenya but something belonging more narrowly to a particular region and ethnicity; a particular victory for Western Kenya and for the Luo.
Congratulating Raila first was a bold diplomatic move to make that morning during an event billed as nonpartisan—both American and Kenyan political temperatures were running high in 2004—and inspired a number of important initial questions about the significance of the Obama-Kenya connection in both local and global political circles. Was Bellamy’s hearty handshake in response to a Democratic victory merely a nod to the Democratic leanings of the party guests? The traditional, friendly straw poll conducted by the embassy that morning had revealed that attendees overwhelmingly favored Democratic nominee John Kerry’s candidacy for president. Or was the ambassador perhaps simply trying to cultivate a personal relationship with one of Kenya’s most important political figures regardless of how alienating this may have been to those in the audience who resided at the opposite end of the political spectrum from Raila?
These questions carry weight in large part because in the interpenetrated worlds of international affairs and global commerce, Kenya is an important strategic ally and trading partner of the United States and of many other Western nations. The country borders the “hot zones” of the Horn of Africa and northern Uganda and South Sudan, while its principal port at Mombasa serves as the economic gateway to many of the markets of Eastern Africa, spanning Uganda and Rwanda to Ethiopia and South Sudan. After the US embassy in Nairobi was bombed by Al-Qaeda in 1998, killing 213 Kenyans and American diplomatic staff, Kenya became one of the American government’s chief allies in the growing “war on terrorism.” The United States expanded its embassy, already the largest American embassy in Africa and the second-largest American embassy in the world, into a huge fortresslike compound not far from the ambassador’s residence.5 Nonetheless, even taking into consideration the importance of the US diplomatic relationship with Kenya, the ambassador’s acknowledgment of Raila’s “special relationship” with Obama spoke to more than US-Kenya ties forged over terrorism and trade. Rather, as social historians of twentieth-century Kenya, we recognized that Bellamy’s gesture, and the awkward smiles of the other Kenyan guests that followed it, was a testament to the widely acknowledged and broadly accepted purchase of ethnic politics and regionalism in contemporary Kenya, formations with deep roots in the colonial