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By:
Harrison Maina | |||||||||
| Posted:
Jul,31-2015 15:58:13
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It was a historic moment immortalised by the click and roll of cameras under the glare of electronic flashes as United States President Barack Obama stepped on Kenyan soil shortly after 8pm last night.
Kenyans, their unity and indefatigable sense of nationhood resident in the buoyant spirit of their leader Uhuru Kenyatta, burst into excitement as the President stretched out his hands and warmly embraced Obama in the true spirit of brotherhood.
The backdrop was the sprawling savannah, dotted by Boeing jets dwarfed by the sheer size of Air Force One. The US President disembarked from his official carrier at 8:15pm, which had touched down at exactly 8.00pm. He would leave in the famous Beast at 8:22pm.
History, in those seven minutes was frozen in time. And when memory will fail the witnesses, the media archives will remind the coming generations of when Kenya's son came home with the instruments of office as the leader of the world's only superpower firmly in his hands.
On television, through hundreds of channels --both local and international--millions of Kenyans at home and abroad monitored every spring of the feet as the tall and inspiring leader flew down the stairs of his stately craft to the waiting hands of his protocol chiefs, but even more the creme-de-creme of the Kenyan political leadership.
President Obama's sister Auma Obama will perhaps be the only Kenyan to enjoy a ride in the Beast belonging to a sitting American President driving on Kenyan soil.
Neither long hours of waiting, monitoring his journey from the moment it started in the US with Obama's energetic jog up the stairs leading into Air Force One, nor the disruptive closure of roads and Kenyan Airspace, could dampen the collective spirit of a people united in receiving a son of the soil. On the tarmac, a handful of Secret Service men were putting reflective tape onto the runway. Distances had to be exact--up to the millimetre. Fire engines stood still to the right of Air Force One. Ahead of it was an unfurled flag of the presidential standard. Once POTUS (the President of the United States) touched down, it was released to run free in the Embakasi wind. The arrival was the moment when Kenya would add another chapter to the history book, layered with several firsts; this time the outstanding tale being that Obama is not only a son of a Kenyan father to whose grave 27 years ago, he flew to pay tribute, but he is also the first black President of the United States. Two other times he had come, one as a forlorn son tracing the roots of his father deep into the village of K'Ogelo in Siaya County. The second time he came he was a US Senator but even that almost passed unnoticed for some. Matatu ride In the first instance, he rode in matatus, had a sip of chang'aa in some impoverished neighbourhood in K'Ogelo, and the smoky car his step-sister used to pick him at the same airport where Air Force One landed him yesterday, stalled at Uhuru Highway, and the two of them --a light-skinned lanky youth and shiny black step-sister --pushed the ramshackle along Uhuru Highway.
Later, he would write of how they were ignored by waiters at a popular city hotel who were obviously too eager to serve the white clientele strolling in. Last night as he strolled into Kenya through the same airport he once couldn't get his luggage on the conveyor belt since it had been misplaced, those memories must have played in his mind, reminding him again about the hilarious tidbits that spring out of his everlasting write-up, 'Dreams from My Father'. Yesterday, the Kenyan airspace was closed for him and for the three days of his visit, he has a road to himself and his team wherever direction he is driven in the capital of Nairobi. And as he speaks at his official engagements, no doubt every Kenyan eye will be riveted on him, focus on his lips and capture every word he utters about the "home of my father and grandfathers". The Kenyan side of him will not only be discernible from the one or two Swahili or Dholuo words he may choose to roll off the tongue, but also the fact that in his diary have been slotted private sessions with his grandmother, Mama Sarah Obama, whom he hosted at his inauguration, and other members of the extended family. The burden of office and the stringent security thrown around him may not have allowed him to travel to K'Ogelo whose paths he once walked to the market with a sack of potatoes on his back, but the emotional reunion will once again stir memories of his fatherland.
Over the seven years of his presidency, the weight of the American nation has somehow sagged his shoulders. Somehow prematurely greyed his hair. But on this historic visit, perhaps another kind of weight has been, for a change, lifted off his shoulders. Perhaps tonight as he breathes in the cool Nairobi air he will look skyward and say something to a long lost father looking down proudly on a son he barely knew, who went out and conquered the world. | |||||||||
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