Obama in Africa

Some people in Botswana do seem engaged by the presidential primaries in the U.S. Mr. and Mrs. Wanzala in Maun were over the moon when I gave them an Obama bumper sticker. I took a photo to mark the occasion. Mrs. Wanzala is from Alego, the neighboring village to Obama's father's village in Kenya. She, too, is from the Luo tribe, the granddaughter of a king for that region. She looks like a queen, especially in the photos from the 1960s, with her hair in an updo like Queen Nerfiti's. Cathy Wanzala is glued to any news about Obama. She's proud that a man with African roots is doing so well.

And she feels connected to him -- Cathy and Joe lived in Nairobi and shared a roof in a kind of long house with Obama's father and his family headed by a white woman Ruth as the matriarch. (That was after Obama Sr. and his wife from Kansas divorced. Barack Obama saw his father only when he was 10-years-old when his father returned to America for a visit.) A wall and a fence separated the two families in Nairobi, but the Wanzalas saw them frequently, of course, and Joe used to go to the pub and have drinks with Obama Sr. "He was a man with a large voice that filled the room," Joe says. He also liked to drink -- a lot. He'd order "a double brandy," and when the waiter would ask with what, he'd say, "A double."

So one double brandy would come with another double brandy. Joe recalls him as a brilliant and generous man, one who used to be country's chief economist but got in trouble when he criticized the government, of which he was a high official. He fell from a very high post to impoverished circumstances for a long time; he was on a list not to be hired. Eventually, he made his way back to a better lifestyle, but the hardship had really taken its toll and he was drinking much too much. (If you haven't read Obama's book, "Dreams from my Father," you should. It explains the amazing story of Barack Obama's Kenya roots. I wish I had a copy to give the Wanzalas. They'd love it.