Baraka Karama @PeopleDailyKe
With just a few weeks remaining for the United States to elect its 45th president, residents of a Kenyan village are apprehensive of their future. Nyangoma Kogelo, the ancestral home of the incumbent President Barack Obama, is filled with uncertainty.
Some residents alluded that if it were possible, the villagers would seek to convince US legislators to change the American constitution to allow their son run for a third term.
In many corners of the village, residents murmur in low tones in their local dialect saying “yawa Obama wuodwa wuoke etelo (Our son Obama is leaving the presidency).
For the past eight years, the once sleepy village received both local and global recognition and this brought immense development never witnessed before since Kenya attained independence. Their worry for now is that the attention they used to receive could end with Obama’s exit from White House.
“Wazungu bende biro biro kae kendo yawa? (will the white people visit our village again?” says Erick Otieno, a boda boda operator. At Nyangoma market, Mzee Justo Ngonga,78, puts on the light inside his shop which he closes as late as 8pm thanks to the electricity that came with the Obama presidency.
But even as Obama exits office, several multi-million-shilling projects have already been launched in the village. Auma Obama, the presidents’ half-sister, has helped raise funds for the construction of university on a 50-acre land in the village.
She, however, clarifies that the ongoing projects are not funded by his brother, but the family has used his goodwill to raise funds from friends. Mama Sarah Obama, the president’s grandmother, has also launched the Mama Sarah Obama Foundation to assist orphans and vulnerable children in the village.
According to her son, Said Obama, the foundation is seeking to construct an early childhood development centre and assist widows in the village.
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