Obama Mania

EDIT: The picture below is of a woven banner that appeared in the IU House dining room not long after we arrived. Our Swahili tutor said it says "Congratulations President Obama Kenyans wish you good luck" in Swahili.



Hi All,

We haven’t had much internet access since last Friday… which has been frustrating only because the internet access was pretty consistent initially! Anyway, my quick thoughts for you for today is about how big President Obama is here.

We had heard from Allison’s colleagues that last November, the day after President Obama won the US Presidential election, a national holiday was declared in Kenya to celebrate.

Since we’ve been here, we’ve seen lots of Obama stickers, banners, etc. In fact, last week Kenya declared the village where Obama’s father is from as a protected national heritage site, presumably for tourism-related reasons.

But just this morning… I went to an early lecture at the hospital about HIV and related opportunistic infections, and spent the next 3 or 4 hrs at the Sally Test Center in the hospital which looks after a few orphaned/abandoned kids as well as being the play center of sorts for kids in the pediatric ward who are well enough to get out of bed and play. While playing with a few Tonka-style dump trucks with three boys, I lined them up and used my Swahili lesson from yesterday as pointed to them in order and counted to four… their eyes lit up and they grabbed every toy truck they could find so we could count to eleven together in Swahili. Good thing there weren’t 20 of them as I forgot the word for 20! Anyway, we went back to playing with trucks, and a little later I heard one of the boys behind me saying “American” over and over until it registered with me he was talking to me… after I turned around, he said (I’m guessing the only other English word he knew) “Obama” over and over, with some word that was kinda like either magnificent or marvelous. Absolutely cracked me up. Perhaps it isn’t as ugly being an American overseas these days!

And the rest of my morning at the Center was remembering how to play familar board games with a couple of the staff members. They have several games, but so many are missing directions. So I played Sorry, Uno Spin, Bingo, and Chinese Checkers. All while Allison was going through rounds… It was a pretty fun morning!