Reflections: A Global Kogelo?

Akabi ntaho kajaga (contextually translated: “A bore will never give you peace!”), as a ‘Mulera’ may likely have told you! So, I am back and I am ‘badder’ (again as a Black-American may tell you), so help you God! And talking about Black-American, ‘Akabi’ Ingina surely had to resurface and foam at the mouth talking himself hoarse, seeing as to how Son-of-a-Luo has done the world proud. From North to South and East to West, the election of Barack Hussein Obama as 44th US president has come as a fresh elixir of life to a world that was in a free fall to its doom. Gripped in a stranglehold that was sure to completely choke life out of its system, the world was in its death throes, a victim of socio-economic, ethnic, racial, religious and all forms of prejudices. The election of Obama was to the world what a sneeze is to a dying man. He is the product of practically all communities on the face of this earth: Black, White; African, Asian, European; Christian, Muslim; poor, rich. A more uniting and energetic human amalgam, I never saw. And so the guns of Mid-East are falling silent; the nuclear fires of Iran and North Korea are becoming dying embers; and the verbal salvos of South America are turning into melodious calls of unity and entente cordiale. Obama’s swearing-in was celebrated by the world at large, as indeed it should. You might have noticed that even the impeccably clean streets of our Kigali, which are usually sleepy between 2 and 3 p.m. when everybody is in their place of work, were in a state of agitation. Like everybody who was not on the scene, the people were in a rush to go and witness the historic event on television. Celebrate or not, however, no other place on earth could have equalled the frenzy of excitement that engrossed the remote village of Kogelo in Kenya. I’ve been told that, already, the victory of Barack Obama at elections had galvanised the typically immovable government machinery of Kenya into constructing roads for the village and supplying it with electricity and a Ksh 5 million water project! For the inauguration, huge TV screens were installed in the hitherto unknown Nyangoma Kogelo Primary School. Buses, matatus (minibus taxis) and motorcycle as well as bicycle taxis fluttered American flags in the Lake Victoria breeze as they did roaring business ferrying excited passengers to the primary school. Makeshift hotels and eateries made a killing selling ‘rooms’, mandazi, chapatti, ugali, matumbo (tripe) and fish. You may not have noticed but, back in the US, in the VIP ranks at inauguration were Obama’s step-brother Malik and step-sister Kezia. I am told that when the people of Kogelo spotted them, they literally brought the sky down. From the point when Obama greeted his grandmother, Sarah Obama, through to the point when he uttered the words “small village where my father was born” and end of the inauguration, the whole of Kenya reverberated with thunderous jubilation whose echoes can still be heard today! And, true to the amalgamating power of ‘Baraka’ Hussein Obama, inauguration on the giant screens of Kogelo was not witnessed by Kenyans alone. There was Ms Jackie Adams, a 30-year old American communication consultant, who had already hooked John Okello, a native accountant of Kogelo, and they were hoping for a ‘wonder-baby’ in less than fifteen months. Ms Faith McKinley, a 26-year old British journalist, was content with having flings with local ‘Obamas Srs.’ and hoping to return home with a ‘wonder-womb’ of her own! The world, it seems, wants ‘Obamixtures’. Let’s hope that Obama will be the seed of world unity, the initiator of a true global village! Contact: ingina2@yahoo.co.uk