How Barck Obama's ascension to White House transformed once sleepy K’Ogelo

The K’ogelo White House inside Siaya Resort. [PHOTOS: JOE OMBUOR/STANDARD]

As dust settles on President Barack Obama’s just concluded momentous visit to our shores, his memorable “I am the son of an African,” proclamation remains alive and indelible beyond the African Hall in Addis Ababa where his baritone voice rang for all to hear as he proudly flaunted his African identity in that landmark address to the African Union.

What Obama did not tell his doting, cheering audience (he might not have been aware) was that what would pass for a ‘simba’, the traditional hut that is the first house for a Luo son stood new and magnificent outside his grandmother’s house in K’Ogelo, presumably to accommodate him had he decided to visit his ancestral home this time round or so the rumour mills had it.

As the world now knows, the 44th President of the United States skipped K’Ogelo on his historic trip to his fatherland, but that had little effect if any on the impact of his presidency on the once sleepy village where his father was born. K’Ogelo woke up with the advent of his presidency. The village has since been on the move.

Besides the ‘simba’-like structure that sprung up in the wake of his recent visit, Obama’s sojourn at the White House in Washington DC has triggered lofty transformations in his ancestral backyard within Siaya County. Not far from Mama Sarah’s sprawling homestead sits the K’Ogelo White House, a two-storey tile-roofed edifice inside K’Ogelo resort compound.

Like the 215-year-old iconic building half a world away that is the official residence and workplace of the US presidents since 1,800AD, the sample K’Ogelo White House boasts sparkling white walls and lush, well-kept grounds to boot.

The resort just outside Nyang’oma market is served by a tarmac stretch that juts from the main Ng’iya –Ndori Road, a succulent fruit of the Obama presidency, to meander in a ring form past Senator Barack Obama Primary and Secondary schools to Mama Sarah’s homestead, to exit on the main road where a unique signboard bearing three names reads: Onyango Hussein Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, Abongo’ Malik Obama Road. A short distance on the main road towards Ng’iya is the Barack Obama Recreation restaurant owned by Malik Obama, a half-brother to the president. Conspicuous at the restaurant where alcoholic drinks are outlawed, thanks to Malik’s Muslim faith, are Kenyan and American flags fluttering side by side.

Raisi Bar and Restaurant where many guests stayed in the run up to the Obama visit is within Nyang’oma market, a shopping centre that save for a torn tongue of tarmac, has changed little with K’Ogelo’s transformation. Juliana County Hotel across the River Yala is a relatively hospitable joint nudging Abom market.

A week before the world’s most powerful man jetted in for the historic visit, a ground-breaking ceremony for the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation project designed to bring an ultra-modern centre of academic excellence to K’Ogelo, took place.

The foundation’s chairman Argwings Kodhek Otieno, said the multi-million-shilling centre, designed by Burkinabe architect Diebedo Francis Kere, that has attracted funding from across the world, will cater for all facets of human development. 

Also unveiled was a Sh6 billion solar power project to be undertaken by Xagoafrica. Xagoafrica Managing Director Paul W Webb, said the project, to cover 250 acres of land with solar panels, was conceived courtesy of Power Africa initiated by President Obama to provide clean, renewable energy to African homes.

Real change

“Power generated at the project will be enough to supply one million homesteads with electricity in addition to satisfying the needs of Mama Sarah Obama Foundation Project,” disclosed Webb.

The transformation of K’Ogelo following President Obama’s accession to power in 2009, started with the arrival of electricity at his grandmother’s home the day his victory was announced.

Tarmacking of the 17-kilometre Siaya-Ndori Road, once a nightmarish showcase of dust and ruts plied by ramshackle bone-shaker matatus such as the one the President and his sister Auma used on his maiden trip to K’Ogelo, started soon afterwards and was completed a year later.

With the road and electricity came investors in hotels and resorts out to cash in on the tourists anxious to discover the roots of the first African-American to be elected president of the US. Mama Sarah’s prominence presupposed the beefing up of security at her rural home and its neighbourhood with a police post next to the homestead.

Today, not only is Mama Sarah’s homestead guarded round the clock, but security of K’Ogelo area once notorious for thuggery, has been buoyed to safe levels and business is booming at Nyang’oma market nearby where President Obama, in his younger days, was photographed accompanying his grandmother to sell vegetables. A lone petrol pump sits at the spot where they sat.

About a kilometre outside Nyang’oma on the way to Ndori is the Mama Sarah Obama Education Centre. Further down is a sports complex under construction, ostensibly the only public utility of its kind in Siaya County. The new Abom Bridge on River Yala, four kilometres from Nyang’oma market, provides a huge relief to motorists who previously had to stop and wait in case another vehicle was approaching the narrow old bridge from the opposite direction.

Just outside Mama Sarah’s homestead is an agricultural demonstration farm where people come to learn modern farming techniques.