Siaya prepares for Obama visit even though K'ogelo out of program

As the nation awaits the visit of US President Barack Obama, Siaya County, his father’s birthplace, has not been left out of preparations to welcome ‘its favourite son’. Obama’s visit, they say, is a second blessing coming after Oscar winning actress Lupita Nyong’o visited to her father’s birthplace earlier this month for the first time since she won the coveted award. The region is already laying down the red carpet for Obama despite a statement from the US embassy that he will not make the trip to his father’s ancestral home where his grandmother Sarah Obama lives. The US ambassador to Kenya, Mr Robert F. Godec, said on a KTN talk show that Obama would not be visiting K’ogelo Village in Siaya County.

But this has not stopped the people of K’ogelo from sprucing up buildings and generally cleaning up for what they believe will be a surprise Sunday visit.

Obama’s Kenya sojourn from Friday to Sunday will be his fourth to the country. His first was in 1986, when he came on a self-proclaimed journey to experience life in his biological father’s ancestral home which he documented in his 1995 memoir, Dreams from My Father. In 1992, he made another trip with his then fiancée, now wife, Michelle. He visited again as a US senator in 2006.

It is not clear why local leaders have continued to prepare for an Obama visit to K’ogelo despite an affirmation by Godec that he would not be visiting.

Even the area’s leaders are caught up in these preparations. Siaya Governor Cornel Rasanga has appointed a committee to work on the preparations for the visit and among the event they have organised is the K’ogelo cultural festival

“Also part of the arrangements is the Obama Sevens Rugby tournament, the first one in the region,” said Rasanga.

Obama’s Kenya visit has attracted some impractical suggestions and unrealistic expectations from local people. Some say he should build a state of the art paediatric hospital in Siaya.

These expectations are understandable, says the governor. “Siaya County leads in child mortality rates in the country and a hospital will help reduce those rates,” Rasanga explains. If he could have his way, Rasanga would like to see a US-funded university in Siaya.

He says this would be a fitting legacy for Obama whose own father benefited from the so-called Tom Mboya airlift to the United States where hundreds of Kenyans got scholarships to study in universities overseas.

“We do not want the airlift where only few people benefit. We need a university of built by Obama in his home town of Siaya to benefit bright brains like him,” said Rasanga.

Expectations by local people grow each day as the arrival date nears. Hotels are cashing in on these expectations — booking have risen by 70 per cent in recent days. However, most of these bookings are speculative, says Western Kenya Hospitality Leaders chairman Robinson Anyal. “The Acacia Hotel was to host a conference of 150 people but this has been postponed since the organisers do not want their conference to clash with the Obama homecoming,” said Anyal.

There has been much humour characterising this visit. Comedians Lawrence “Jakakamega” Oyange and Milton Obote hope to hold a street carnival on July 22. The two have printed Obama T-shirts that fetch between Sh1,500 and Sh1,800. They say, in jest, that Obama should perform some Luo cultural rites. “We demand that the US president builds a home, Simba, in his rural home and marries a second wife like a real Luo man,” said Oyange, all this as part of hype to attract local people to his comedy shows.