How Kenya will Leave its Mark on the Choice of President

As we look forward to the vice presidential debate on Thursday, I'd like to indulge myself as a Kenyan and suggest that whichever candidate wins the election, the American people will have Kenya to thank for giving them their next president. Whoa! Hear me out before you reach for the rotten eggs and tomatoes. I'll explain. First, there's Barack Obama. I'll leave out his middle name because it generates unnecessary heat from a section of society who choose not to think for themselves but subscribe unquestioningly to the gospel of the Limbaughs and Hennetys and right (but not necessarily right) leaning bloggers. Then there's . . . No, not McCain. He's secondary to the McCain ticket. Serah Palin - wife of the first dude.

To recap briefly, Obama was born to a Kenyan father and an American mother. His parents separated when he was two and later divorced. After earning his Phd, the senior Obama returned to Kenya. I"ll not dwell on the stuff that is well known but I'll give some tidbits of information. Barack's father hails from the Luo tribe who inhabit the shores of Lake Victoria (source of the Nile) in the western region of Kenya. It is hard to describe any tribe in Kenya without seemingly stereotyping them. I will suggest that the following are general observations of particular tendencies of the tribe and I encourage the reader to take them with a grain of salt. The Luo, then, can be very flamboyant especially when successful, with a penchant for the finer things in life - fancy cars, flashy clothes, ornate furniture etc. One thing that cannot be easily disputed is their intellectual prowess. In fact, through my three years in college as a Physics major, all the local professors in the department save for one, were Luo. The senior Obama no doubt fit the mold at least as far as the academics go.

Barack himself, does show the tendencies of a Luo. He definitely inherited his father's (and mother's) intellect graduating from the Harvard Law school magna cum laude in 1991. It is also no surprise to one who knows Kenyans, that he should be philosophical, academic, and verbose in attempting to answer a question. An educated Luo will wax academic at any given opportunity. He is also a sharp dresser and always appropriately attired to suit the occasion. I am not sure that Obama influences Michelle's choice of wardrobe and stylist. I suspect she can handle that department without his help. True or not, she has been accused of styling herself after Jacqueline Kennedy. If she were a Kenyan, and a Luo at that, Kenyans would take it as fact and applaud her.

"What about Serah Palin then?" you ask. Oh! You have not been watching the liberal media then. You might have caught it if you don't get your fix from Fox. Here's the deal. When Serah Palin was still mayor of little Wasilla, she set her eyes on the governorship. But to clinch it, she needed help from a Higher Power. So she went to one Pastor Thomas Muthee who prayed and laid hands on her. Mayor Palin became Governor Palin. She herself, gives partial credit to Muthee's prayers for installing her in the governor's mansion. Then along came the floundering campaign of a certain senator from Arizona, who could not connect with the evangelical elements of his brand, and without them, the coveted prize was at stake. Ahah! Who better to graft onto the ticket than another self-styled "maverick." When he confounded the nation, and indeed the world, with his pick of Palin, McCain resuscitated his campaign and energized his base. "The Palin Effect," as it has been dubbed, quickly brought in conservative evangelicals who had been hesitant to throw their weight behind McCain. As a vocal, unapologetic evangelical, she provided them the rational for supporting him in spite of their misgivings. With her entry, she swept away the gains Obama had steadily made in the weeks following the conflagration that razed Hillary's campaign. The strange thing is that the Rev. Muthee (for correct pronunciation of his name, think of telling a cow to "go and moo there") is a member of the Kikuyu tribe - the most populous and probably the most enterprising as well. The Kikuyu are not generally regarded as superstitious. If anything, the Luo would be the more superstitious, believing in spirits and witchcraft and I daresay, practicing it. How a Kikuyu pastor would pray against witchraft over an evangelical American, of all people, is a mind-boggling turn of events. But his prayers, in part, gave us governor Palin and the McCain campaign a new lease on life.

This is where it gets interesting. Ever since independence, the Kikuyu and Luo have been in dispute over who should rule the country. Though they may not admit to it, many Kikuyus hold the view that they spilled the most blood in the struggle for independence and lost the most land (the Central Province, which they inhabit, is one of the most fertile in the country) to colonialists, and therefore they have a right to leadership. The Luo, on the other hand, felt cheated when one of their own, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga who served as Vice President (1963-1969) while Jomo Kenyatta (a Kikuyu) was President was unceremoniously cast aside and frustrated for years in the political arena. There's a sense that they had not achieved what they, as a tribe had a right to achieve. This conflict came to a head in last years general election where incidentally, Raila Odinga, son of the late Oginga Odinga, ran against Mwai Kibaki (you guessed it - a Kikuyu) and lost narrowly even though at one point the polls indicated he was ahead. In as strange sequence of events, the incumbent was hurriedly sworn in as President leading to violence across the nation that left about 1,000 people dead and thousands more displaced. And here we are almost a year later in the United States, with Barack Obama, son of Kenyan father, in tight race for the presidency against McCain whose run has received a huge steroid jolt from a little known governor who owes her rise that lofty perch in part to the intercession of a Kenyan preacher. What a bitter irony it would be if the latter should be the one to scuttle the chances of a son of Kenyan soil (and the Luo tribe) becoming president of the greatest nation in the free world!