NYANG’OMA KOGELO, Kenya — Even for Barack Obama, who is often greeted by fervent throngs in his home country, the adulation the former president receives in his father’s native Kenya is in a league of its own.
On Sunday and Monday, Obama was in Kenya for his first visit since leaving office. He began by meeting with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta and opposition leader Raila Odinga, who have recently made peace with each other after a contentious election that led to violence earlier this year.
But it was at his second stop, in Nyang’oma Kogelo, the small hilltop village — right on the equator — where his father grew up, that Obama’s complicated relationship with his roots was on display.
“It’s a joy to be here with family,” he told an invitation-only crowd attending the launch of a vocational center that will be run by his half sister Auma Obama’s nonprofit. “And to be here with so many who claim to be my family.”
Despite not being born here, Barack Obama is as close as Kenya has to a favorite son. He is far more popular than the country’s politicians. And as a global symbol, he is seen by many Kenyans as proof that greatness is attainable for them, too.
“He is our son,” said Gilbert Ogutu, who is a professor and elder in the Luo ethnic group to which Obama’s father belonged but is not related to Obama. “His blood is our blood.”
The patrilineal Luos expect Obama to follow tradition and spend more time among his father’s people — his people. The love expressed for him by many in Nyang’oma Kogelo is familial — unalloyed and full of expectation.
But it also seems somewhat unrequited. In a short speech full of platitudes, Obama called himself a “citizen of the world” and decried Kenya’s tribalism. It echoed a speech he gave at a stadium in the capital, Nairobi, in 2015, which some Kenyans saw as patronizing. On Monday, he also told the story of his first visit to Kenya, when he was 27, replete with punchlines about bucket showers and crowded buses.
“I had to catch a chicken to eat,” he recalled, although he added that the experience gave him “a sense of satisfaction that no five-star hotel could ever provide.”
Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan author and political analyst, said Kenyans have “a grasping kind of love for Obama.”
“He doesn’t seem to return it at all,” she said. “What he’s doing here is basking in it.”
Through the event, Obama did many of the things he has come to be known for on past trips abroad. He briefly danced along to the music, jumbled two local languages together in a greeting and wrapped up his visit by shooting some hoops at the vocational center’s new basketball court.
His family members and those who claim to be his family members wish he would do more.
“We want him to come and sit by our fire to chat. We want him to eat his grandmother’s fish stew. We want his daughters to bathe in our rivers. We want him to build a homestead here,” Ogutu said. “But that won’t happen. We have to be realistic, too.”
