His paternal grandfather was a Luo elder, a farmer and a medicine man. His father grew up tending goats. On November 4th, he overcame overwhelming odds to rise to the most powerful political office in the world.
This is the stuff of fiction, and even there, it might risk coming off at somewhat outlandish, a tad overdone. I know I for one quirked an incredulous eyebrow at the wishful thinking inherent in the character of President Palmer on 24. And wondered just how far in the future the TV programme was set. Sometimes, it was easier to believe that Jack Bauer was a god than to believe that, in my time, the United States of America would elect an African American as President.
* * * * *
President-elect Barack Obama.
I watch him sometimes, and it seems to me nigh impossible that this could be the same man who drove around Nairobi in Auma’s mechanically challenged baby-blue Volkswagen Beetle and visited his Aunt who lived in Kariokor. Because these are such typical Nairobi things to do. And he describes them so casually, so matter of factly. Then, the next thing you know, he’s President-elect of the United States of America. And it sort of takes your breathe away. As well it should.
It sends a very particular resounding message from the American people, reverberating not just through the United States of America, but right across the world: If you determine it, you can be whoever you want to be. At such a time as this, you’ve got to pay homage to the American Dream, because the American Dream is ultimately the winner of this election, perched squarely on the shoulders of an unlikely candidate with an unfamiliar name and an unusual story.
But, while I am as devoted a fan of Barack Obama as there can be, I am not of a mind with Thomas Carlyle, a strong proponent of the Great Man theory who once said that: "The history of the world is but the biography of great men."
To see it that way would be to grossly misrepresent the events as I saw them unfold in the United States of America these past few months. Instead, I stand amazed at the volunteer army of millions of ordinary Americans who worked tirelessly, gave generously and fought this battle valiantly.
They believed in it, and so they went to work and made it happen. There can be nothing more profound than that.
I salute them.
I salute also Barack Obama for his steadfastness in framing himself in context and his realisation that his story is part of a wider narrative that far transcends him in importance. That’s what I read in his retelling of the anecdote about the 106-year old African-American woman from Atlanta, Anne Nixon Cooper, who once upon a time lived when neither blacks nor women could vote, and lived to cast a vote for the first African American President.
As the President-elect said, with muted eloquence: “our stories are singular, but, our destinies are shared.”
This is one page in our shared history we are destined to return to, time and again, to marvel together at what men and women can achieve, when they set their minds to it.
* * * * *
To end on a decidedly apolitical note: Barack and Michelle Obama have such chemistry. It sizzles. That he loves a strong and feisty woman and has in turn earned her devotion and respect is yet another reason to admire the man.It's my window, but I don't own the view.
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What An African Woman Thinks
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History, And Those Who Make It Posted: November 5th, 2008, 1:29pm EST