Chasing Barak

As you may recall from one of the early posts on this blog, I described how I was influenced by reading the Illinois Senator Barak Obama's autobiography about his journey back to his father's homeland in Kenya, and how he and Anita share the experience of growing up half Kenyan, half American.

Imagine our surpise when we arrived in Kenya last week to learn that Sen. Obama had arrived in Nairobi the day before us - to embark on a week-long official government trip, coupled with a visit to his father's village. In one week's time we'll also be visiting my father-in-law's ancestral village in south-east Kenya. The Senator's every move became a national obsession as he met with Kenya's leaders, traveled to the town of Kisimu (also one day before we passed through the same town on our way to Kakamega) for an AIDS test, visited his grandmother at his family's village nearby, and then returned to Nairobi (as we have now done) for a few more appearances to promote free-speech and publicly address other social topics.

We never caught up with him during our respective tours of Kenya, but we feel a connection with Sen. Obama in more ways than one.