Page 7 - Aruba Bank 24 JULY 2015

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UP FRONTThursday 23 July 2015
Obama and Kenya: 1st trip to father’s homeland as president
A man walks away after leaning his bicycle against a mural of President Barack Obama, created family members still live.
Obama’s two days of
by the Kenyan graffiti artist Bankslave, at the GoDown Arts Centre in Nairobi, Kenya Wednesday, events will be confined to
Nairobi, the capital where
July 22, 2015. In his first trip to Kenya since he was a U.S. senator in 2006, Obama is scheduled he will meet with Kenyan
President Uhuru Kenyatta,
to arrive in Kenya on Friday, the first stop on his two-nation African tour in which he will also visit attend the Global Entre-
preneurship Summit, and
Ethiopia. speak to civil society lead-
ers. On Sunday, he will go
(AP Photo/Ben Curtis) to Ethiopia.
Despite the limits on
JULIE PACE did not yet understand,” ther’s homeland. Obama’s movement and
interactions with the Ke-
AP White House Correspon- Obama wrote in his mem- “I’ll be honest with you, nyan people, his visit is
highly anticipated in the
dent oir, “Dreams From My Fa- visiting Kenya as a private East African nation. Even
as a U.S. senator, he was
WASHINGTON (AP) — When ther,” about the airport en- citizen is probably more greeted by cheering
crowds when he made his
Barack Obama visited Ke- counter. meaningful to me than vis- last visit to Kenya, in 2006. one-quarter of all Ameri-
Ahead of Obama’s arrival
nya for the first time nearly This week, Obama will iting as president because I Friday, some Kenyans have
adopted a rousing seg-
30 years ago, he was as- make his first visit to Kenya can actually get outside of ment of an Obama speech
as their cellphone ringtone.
tonished that an airport as U.S. president, a trip that a hotel room or a confer- U.S. and Kenyan flags lined
the road leading from Nai-
worker recognized his last will bear little resemblance ence center,” he said last robi’s main airport.
Obama’s visit is like “a
name. to the 1988 one, when he week, adding that his trip brother coming back,”
said Nelly Ngugu, customer
It was a striking experience arrived aboard a commer- still would be “symbolically relations manager at a Nai-
robi cafe.
for a young man — and cial flight and his luggage important.” Before Obama’s travel
plans were announced,
future American president got lost. Now, Air Force One Security concerns and there had been some dis-
appointment that the U.S.
— struggling to understand will take Obama to a coun- the logistics of presidential president who has written
and spoken emotionally of
how a country he had try where children, roads travel will keep Obama at his Kenyan roots had not
returned since taking of-
never seen and a Kenyan and schools now bear his a distance from most Ke- fice.
Analysts questioned wheth-
family he barely knew had name, and the world lead- nyans. He will skip a visit to er America’s first black
president was missing an
shaped his identity. er is seen as a local son. Kogelo, the rural village in opportunity to give Africa
more prominence in U.S.
“My name belonged and Yet traveling with the trap- western Kenya where his foreign policy.
so I belonged, drawn into pings of the presidency ap- father was born and bur-
a web of relationships, al- pears likely to diminish the ied, and where his step-
liances, and grudges I fulfillment of a trip to his fa- grandmother and other
Much of Obama’s inter-
national focus in his first
term was on strengthening
ties with Asia and trying to
resetU.S. policy in the Mid-
dle East. His only visit to sub-
Saharan Africa during his
first four years in office was
a short stop in Ghana.
At the time, there was
persistent and inaccu-
rate speculation that he
was born in Kenya, not
the United States. Some
political opponents tried
to use the rumors to under-
cut Obama’s eligibility for
president.
As late as 2011, a CBS/New
York Times poll showed that
cans believed Obama was
not born in theU.S.
Obama’s re-election raised
renewed hopes for a visit to
Kenya, but the political situ-
ation there complicated
those plans.
Kenyatta, the son of the
country’s first president,
was elected president in
2013, but faced charges in
the International Criminal
Court stemming from his al-
leged role in stoking ethnic
violence following Kenya’s
troubled 2007 election.
“The timing was not right
for me as the president of
the United States to be vis-
iting Kenya when those is-
sues are still being worked
on and, hopefully, at some
point resolved,” Obama
said of his decision to pass
over Kenya in favor of
South Africa, Tanzania and
Senegal during a 2013 trip
to Africa.q