This is where he belongs. He just goes there to work [in America], but he should and will come back home to be one of our own.
—A KENYAN WOMAN
Obama’s arrival at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport in Nairobi the next day bespoke the utter madness that was to mark Obama’s six-day Kenyan adventure.
The difference between the cultures of South Africa and Kenya was immediately evident. Nairobi is a city of more than three million people, but the first thing one notices after arriving at the airport from South Africa is the lack of white people. And the whites who were there, like me, were immediately approached aggressively by any number of smiling Kenyans and offered assistance, by carrying a bag or giving directions or supplying a taxi. This assistance was for a fee, of course.
Another noticeable difference in Nairobi was the ubiquitous presence of uniformed police officers, many of them toting assault-style rifles. The atmosphere was far less Western-oriented, more fragile and clearly more dangerous than in Cape Town. Nairobi might be Kenya’s capital and the center of culture, business and politics in all of East Africa, but it had been pushed into becoming a modern urban mecca far too fast. In the early 1960s, the city’s infrastructure had exploded into place after Kenyans won independence from colonialist Britain. This had resulted in some neighborhoods appearing completely modern, and even middle-class or better, by Western standards. But not far away were sprawling slums without potable water, indoor plumbing or electricity. Roads curved for no apparent reason, and traffic lights seemed to barely contain the autos speeding along the streets. Paved sidewalks were nonexistent, with pedestrians walking along uneven red-dirt paths in close proximity to moving traffic.
Kenya was a functioning democracy, but it still operated heavily on a tribal caste system. Political parties were divided along the various ethnic tribal lines. Bitter rivalries existed among these tribes, and the resultant political warfare had severely hindered economic and civic growth. Obama’s father hailed from the Luo tribe, which made up about 13 percent of the country’s population and had a strong farming background, mostly in the western region.
Only a few minutes after my arrival at the airport, I noticed that certain crimes were either overlooked or, perhaps, encouraged. Once I claimed my luggage, I went to confirm my flight reservations to ensure that arrangements for my departure six days later were in order. As I waited in line, two white European men in their fifties talked with a tall, lithe Kenyan woman who appeared to be in her early twenties. The men squeezed the attractive young woman’s behind, ran their hands up and down her thighs and then offered her a small wad of money, which she stuffed into a pocket in her tight white jeans. The men looked as if they were measuring cattle, but she didn’t seem the least bit offended and, ultimately, walked away arm in arm with each of them. To be sure, such a transaction might occur in airports in any number of cities around the globe. But what was most revealing: This one went down just several feet from a cluster of uniformed police officers in berets, dark uniforms and with assault weapons in their hands.
The senator had traveled from South Africa on a U.S. government jet, and by good fortune or bad luck, some of us in the media were at the airport when he landed. Obama’s staff had hoped to keep his entrance a secret, but of course Kenyan politicians had tipped favored reporters to his evening arrival time. Most of the American reporting gaggle would have missed it too if it had not been for an unsettling occurrence. Axelrod’s camera crew was held up at the baggage entrance trying to get its video equipment through security. Kenya’s reputation for rampant corruption was well known, and back in the States, the leader of the documentary crew, Bob Hercules, had sent money ahead to a Kenyan “fixer” to ensure that their equipment would make it through the customs agents. Nevertheless, Hercules soon found that the payment—a bribe, if you will—had not secured safe passage. (Another media crew from Chicago also paid a bribe to get its equipment through. Together, the bribes equaled about eighteen hundred dollars in U.S. currency.) As Hercules and his crew haggled with airport officials to get their equipment released, the environment outside the terminal suddenly changed. An eerie silence washed over the evening dusk and about a hundred people started gathering in small groups along the roadway and in the medians. They were strangely quiet, expressed little emotion and were all looking toward a building in the front of the airport where a couple of dozen security personnel had gathered. In a hushed voice, a man explained, “Obama is here.” Ah yes, the young prince was returning to his father’s homeland.
A moment later, Gibbs popped out of the building, quickly surveyed the scene and disappeared back inside. So I headed toward the building, where a clutch of media and police had amassed, and soon grew aware that being white might actually be a plus—it might get me through the thicket of bodies that had been cordoned off by police. What else could a white man with a notepad and camera be other than a Western-based news reporter? Sure enough, police allowed me and a magazine reporter past the first media barricade.
With Gibbs’s help, we wended our way through the mob of people inside the building before Gibbs put a hand on my upper back and pushed me into a small back room where Obama was enduring a quick photo “spray” with select Kenyan media. The media hit had been thrown together on the spot, and it showed. There was no focus to it. Obama had only agreed to sit down for the shot when the foreign minister told him that he wanted to “take care of my guys in the press,” Gibbs later explained. “Barack didn’t want to say no, so we sat down and did it. It wasn’t our idea.”
The photo spray lasted all of two or three minutes. Some people carried cameras and some did not. It was difficult to distinguish the journalists from the onlookers, the plainclothes authorities from the civilians. People without the proper clout were physically escorted out of the room. Those with journalistic clout, including myself and a couple of other American journalists in the Obama entourage, were permitted to stay. Dressed in one of his navy blue suits and a light blue shirt, Obama was sitting on a chair with the Kenyan deputy foreign minister. Cameras whirled all around. Obama smiled and tried to look relaxed, but I could see by his rigid jaw that his Hawaiian calm was eluding him. When Gibbs abruptly announced that the spray was ending, Obama tried to ease the tense and chaotic atmosphere by telling the assorted gathering, “You’ll be tired of me by the end of the week.”
Outside, another hundred or so people had gathered along the streets leading up to the various terminal buildings. They stood under palm trees and along curbs and one man hoisted a little girl onto his shoulders. I stepped across the small street from the building and watched as Obama made his first public appearance as a U.S. senator in his father’s homeland. To my surprise, when he came through the doors, the crowd reacted with near silence. They simply stood and watched in quiet reverence. Obama, with a government official at his side, stepped quickly toward an awaiting white Ford Explorer parked at the curb just a few steps from the building. Gibbs had instructed him not to stop and take questions, or even acknowledge the cameras and gathering crowd. But Obama walked up to the vehicle and could not help but look out to the people. Discarding Gibbs’s advice, he seemed to realize that it might appear impolite to altogether ignore the crowd around him. Besides, as a skillful politician, it is deeply ingrained in Obama’s psyche to acknowledge an audience amassed for his benefit. Finally, one photographer yelled at him, “Wave!”
So Obama raised a crooked arm and waved stiffly, like a wiper across a car’s windshield, or like the infamous Richard Nixon’s bon voyage wave as he stepped onto the plane after resigning the presidency. Obama then flashed a forced smile and ducked into the SUV. The vehicle burned rubber as it sped away, with a twelve-car convoy piloted by embassy officials and police in tow. The scene more befitted a visiting head of state than a junior member of a foreign country’s legislature. I breathed a heavy sigh and felt the adrenaline rush begin to subside. This was clearly not going to be the same laid-back atmosphere as in South Africa, where our subject could roam the streets in relative anonymity and events seemed more orchestrated than organic.
Obama moved swiftly to the hotel in the speeding caravan, but the rest of rush-hour traffic was stymied, thanks to Kenya’s widely acclaimed guest. The bus carrying my grouping of the media gaggle took an hour to reach the Nairobi Serena Hotel, even though it was just a few miles away. Roads were closed all through downtown to allow Obama’s motorcade easy access, and this severely jammed up traffic. At the hotel that evening, the first order of business for Obama: interviews for the Chicago TV media. Each of Chicago’s major network-affiliated stations had sent a reporting and camera crew to cover the Kenya visit. International press, including writers for Time and Newsweek magazines, had also arrived. David Axelrod’s old media chum Mike Flannery from Chicago’s Channel 2, a CBS affiliate, headed Obama’s interview list. The relationship between Flannery and Obama extended back to at least the Senate campaign, when Flannery’s coverage of Blair Hull’s marriage files and drug use contributed to the burial of Hull’s candidacy. “How’s it going so far, Robert?” Flannery asked Gibbs upon spotting him in the hotel lobby. “Oh,” replied a harried Gibbs, “I’m like a one-legged man in an ass-kicking contest.”
Gibbs, endeavoring to bring a sense of order to the chaos, held a 9:15 P.M. briefing for reporters in a casual meeting room on the hotel’s ground floor. The vibrant aroma of after-dinner coffee, one of Kenya’s primary crops, emanated from the restaurant area of the hotel. Reporters filled a long table, some couches and a handful of chairs. Gibbs finally had preprinted daily schedules for us. There were a number of new faces in the press corps, including international wire services and, most notably, the Chicago crews. Gibbs warned that a frenetic atmosphere would be the norm. “I’m not sure if you folks were at the airport,” he said. “But we’re going to find that even when things are not advertised, some Kenyans will gather.” Some Kenyans—that would prove the understatement of the week. “What we learned today—expect the unexpected,” Gibbs said in concluding the briefing. “Now the fun begins.”
OBAMA’S FIRST OFFICIAL KENYAN FUNCTION OPENED THE NEXT morning, and it highlighted the deified nature of his presence to many Kenyans. Michelle and their two daughters had arrived the evening before, and the family appeared at the Nairobi State House for a morning ceremony welcoming the senator. The event was held outside the State House under a tent. Dozens of embassy employees, both black and white, wore orange-and-yellow T-shirts with OBAMA IN THE HOUSE emblazoned on the front. Songs had been composed for Obama’s visit, and a group of clapping and finger-snapping Kenyans harmonized over these lyrics: “When you see Obama has come to Kenya, this day is blessed.” As Obama opened his speech, he was interrupted by a friendly, but misplaced voice. Eight-year-old Malia shouted to her father, “Daddy, Daddy, look at me!”
No one could have been more pleased to see Obama, yet felt less blessed, than Christopher Wills, an Associated Press reporter based in Illinois. Wills had covered Obama when he was still in the state legislature and the burgeoning Obama phenomenon was still relatively confined to progressives and blacks in the United States. Thus, the AP honchos in New York and London made no objection to Wills being the lead reporter on the trip to Africa. Wills promised his editors in Illinois that he would write a couple of newsy feature stories from Kenya. By the time Wills arrived in Nairobi, however, the dynamics had shifted greatly within the AP. The wire service’s London bureau had finally recognized the significant media buzz that Obama’s journey was drawing worldwide. As a consequence, the AP’s Nairobi bureau chief was nagging Wills by cell phone to supply half-hour updates on Obama’s every move, giving Wills a severe case of the jitters. This unexpected turn of events came after Wills had undergone an agonizing experience with the Kenyan embassy in the United States to attain the proper travel credentials. Obama is always mindful to cultivate friendly relationships with the reporters who cover him, and he is happy when there are a good number of them around. He is happiest, though, when they are kept at a safe distance. So when Obama spotted Wills amid the media gaggle, he made sure to acknowledge him. Or perhaps, less cynically speaking, Obama simply spotted a familiar face and it comforted him. With Obama, as with many of the best politicians, it is never perfectly clear whether he is being politic or merely human. In either case, in contrast to the regal nature of the proceedings around him, Obama yelled out from his crowd of Kenyan government dignitaries, “Chris Wills! You made it! You got your visa!” A slightly bewildered Wills didn’t seem to know how to react to the unexpected shout-out. He responded: “Uh, yes, Senator. Thank you.”
Obama met that morning at the State House with senior government officials, including Kenyan president Mwai Kibaki. After triumphing in the December 2002 elections, Kibaki’s National Rainbow Coalition (nicknamed Narc) took control of the government in 2003, ending nearly four decades of rule by Kanu, the Kenyan African National Union. Kanu was widely viewed as corrupt and had been accused of land-grabbing and raiding public coffers for private enrichment. Kibaki won the office on a pledge to rid the country’s institutions of corruption and revitalize its economy. But more than three years later, corruption persisted, the economy was largely stagnant, and Kenyans who had been optimistic at Narc’s electoral success were again pessimistic about the direction of their country and its institutional leadership. “People have just kind of given up on the government,” a veteran Kenyan journalist, Dennis Onyango, told me. “They feel we’ll never get what we want.” Obama, in his meeting with Kibaki, discussed with the president the importance of clean government. The American senator maintained that investment from overseas would never arrive if Kenya’s government and business communities remain soaked in graft. He cited the airport bribes paid by Chicago media crews as evidence that corruption remained pervasive, that it was a corrosive element in everyday society and that it negatively impacted Kenya’s international image. Kibaki replied that he was working to stamp out corruption and promised to look into the airport bribes.
Obama’s next stop was a meeting with government officials and business leaders at a restaurant secured in a plaza behind huge wrought-iron gates. Judging by the secluded design of the restaurant, which made it easy to protect with a couple of guards at the closed gates, I assumed that it was the site of many high-level lunches among top Kenyan politicians.
It was here that we would first witness the intensity of emotion that Kenyans felt toward Obama, the emotion we had read about beforehand in various media accounts. Those news stories had not been overblown. Outside the restaurant, workers of many pursuits, all hungry for a glimpse of their American hero, had left their jobs to crowd atop balconies, huddle in doorways and press against the iron fences. Obama met privately for lunch with local officials and, as we waited, reporters fanned out to interview the Kenyans amassing outside the gates. The interviews bore out the state of idolatry surrounding Obama among the Kenyans.
To some, he was a native son who had risen to great power in the world’s most influential nation, and because of this he gave them hope that they or their children could persevere and succeed in their own daily lives. To others, he was an all-powerful political figure who could put Kenya on the worldwide radar. To still others, he was nearly a deity, an ethereal figure who would bring riches and all good things to Kenya from the promised land of America. This last group believed that Obama truly belonged in Kenya, not America.
A forty-year-old woman named Catherine Oganda maintained that Obama ultimately would choose to leave America and live in Kenya: “This is where he belongs. He just goes there to work [in America], but he should and will come back home to be one of our own.” I asked why she believed that, and she continued: “Because the father is a Kenyan. You know, your father is your bloodline; it’s not your mother—it is your father. So you belong where your father comes from, in your fatherland. Kenya is in his blood.” A fifty-year-old man named John Nyambalo had a slightly different take, but one that was no less divorced from reality. He saw Obama as a living representation that the United States had overcome racial intolerance. “If the Americans can select a senator like Obama,” he said, “that means that Americans embrace the whole world and they are true democrats. There is no racism there.”
After lunch, our caravan headed to the memorial that had been erected at the former site of the U.S. Embassy, which had been car-bombed in 1998, killing nearly two hundred and fifty souls. The deadly bombing, later linked to the Islamic fundamentalist terror movement that struck the United States on September 11, 2001, had helped to create a bond between the United States and Kenya. Both countries suffered from the attack. Dozens of people stood at the entrance of the memorial site waiting for Obama, with Michelle and their two young daughters among them. Obama shook the hands of a long row of current embassy staff on his way up toward the site, with Michelle nearly last in line. The last few introduced themselves to Obama, and then Michelle smiled and held out her hand and offered the same, as if she were just another member of the greeting party. “I’m your wife, welcome,” she said with a warm smile. “Hello, Wife,” Obama said with a playful grin.
Gleaming in a brilliant sun, the memorial itself stood at the far end of a plaza just beyond a small fountain. It was rather unassuming, giving the appearance of an elongated headstone on a burial plot—a concrete block in the shape of a half-moon rising from the plaza’s bricked surface. Its facade was a sheet of brown marble with the names of the deceased etched in it, as well as the following epitaph: “May the innocent victims of this tragic event rest in the knowledge that it has strengthened our resolve to work for a world in which man is able to live alongside his brother in peace.” A couple dozen photographers and TV reporters were assembled at the far end of the plaza, readied for the shot of Obama at the memorial. Through the trees that guarded the memorial site, located in the heart of Nairobi, I could see a large crowd assembling in the streets—more Kenyans with hopes of catching just a passing glimpse of Obama. Also witnessing the scene were workers in a seven-story office building that overlooked the park. They leaned out of big steel-framed windows and peered down on the proceedings with rapt attention. With his right arm wrapped around Malia’s waist and Sasha standing at his left elbow, Obama sat down at a white-clothed table and signed an official guest book before heading over to the memorial with his family in tow. He carried a wreath and laid it gently at the foot of the tombstone. Then he turned to a small group of officials huddled to his right as photo and video crews knelt and stood not far to his left, their cameras clicking away.
Scanning the epitaph, Obama bowed his head and offered his own words of consolation and remembrance: “The tragedy that happened here is a reminder that, ultimately, all of us suffer from conflict and, ultimately, all of us suffer from terrorism. But we have to redouble our resolve, as the memorial says, to find ways to live in peace and to find ways to resolve our conflicts in a way that does not result in the kind of tragedy that occurred here. We will not forget what’s happened here. We want to make sure that all of us are vigilant in terms of preventing it from ever happening again.”
After the brief ceremony, Obama was taken inside a nearby building to chat with embassy and other government officials. Malia and Sasha, dressed in bright pink tops and white skirts, were set loose to play in the memorial area that doubled as a small corner park. I hadn’t bothered a tired-looking Michelle when she first arrived at the hotel the day before, so this seemed like a good opportunity to reconnect. She was strolling around, shaking hands and eyeing her daughters as they ran about happily. But our chat was cut short. Immediately after we exchanged greetings, a roar erupted from beyond the trees. Its sheer volume startled Michelle. She leaned her upper torso far backward and a stunned look crossed her face. “Oh my goodness! What was that?!” she exclaimed. “That,” I said, “is for your husband. He must have come out.” The wondrous look slightly receding from her face, she replied innocently, “Oh, my! For Barack?” Clearly, Michelle was in no way prepared for this overheated response to her celebrity husband.
We both headed for the narrow exit to the memorial and Michelle was gobbled up into a pack of security personnel. The crowd in the streets, consisting mostly of men, had reached a state of euphoria. They were cheering in full throat, standing atop cars, dancing, whistling and screaming and waving their arms wildly. Police had established a perimeter at the edge of the street. Yet even though the crowd seemed wild and uncontrollable, no one had stepped a single foot past the Kenyan officers, as if an invisible wall held them in check. The people were chanting in unison: “Obama, come to us! Obama, come to us!” I looked for the senator and spotted him to the right along the perimeter with several security officers packed around him for protection. He was feverishly shaking hands with members of the fawning crowd in a surreal press-the-flesh moment. With each step he took toward the street, closer to the frenzied mass of people, the chanting rose a notch in volume. “Obama, come to us! Obama, come to us!”
I watched the senator from a safe zone inside the perimeter about ten paces behind him. Incredibly, the scene was growing ever more chaotic as Obama worked his way closer to the belly of the throng. A horse carrying a police officer, spooked by the noise and instability of the crowd, bucked his front legs into the air and nearly kicked me in the head before the officer reined him in. “Be careful! Don’t get yourself trampled!” warned a perpetually tense Jennifer Barnes, the embassy’s media liaison. As I wandered closer to the edge of the perimeter, within a few feet of the first row of people, a woman from the crowd suddenly lunged toward me and grabbed my left bicep. Before I could pull away, an officer swung his black billy club and cracked the woman square on her forearm. Her arm fell limply to her side and the officer pushed her back into the sea of people with his club, swiping his club casually, like a chef pushing a pile of crushed onions across a cutting board. I decided that I better keep a safer distance from the crowd. The scene was so full of heightened emotion that even the most innocent acts became hyperreality. Bill Lambrecht, a reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, handed a woman a piece of paper from the embassy that contained background information on Obama’s visit. Lambrecht figured she could have it as a souvenir. Five men immediately jumped the woman and successfully ripped the paper from her hands. Lambrecht shook his head in discouragement upon seeing what his nice gesture had wrought.
Just then, as I turned backward and took a few steps, I saw Obama heading in my direction. It became apparent that I was about to be sandwiched between two surging walls of humanity—the crowd before me and the crowd behind Obama. Unfortunately, I had no security detail guarding me from harm. To escape the fate of trampling, I galloped sideways to an opening. Standing in this safe spot was Bob Hercules, the documentary director sent by Axelrod. “This is intense,” Hercules said. “It’s like the messiah has returned.”
I spied Gibbs, who was surveying the proceedings from an opening a few feet behind Obama. His arms were folded and he wore a satisfied half smile on his face. Gibbs should have been smiling, I thought. This is exactly the kind of messianic outpouring of idol worship, exactly the kind of crazy mob scene that he had envisioned a year and a half earlier when he first mentioned the Africa trip to me over eggs Benedict in downtown Chicago. The legend of Obama was growing by leaps and bounds. Indeed, The Plan was going exactly according to script.
AFTER A COUPLE OF MINUTES OF THIS CHAOS, GIBBS GRABBED Obama’s sleeve and advised him to head back to an awaiting SUV. This move delighted security personnel guarding Obama, who were struggling to shield him from the crowd and had reservations about the press-the-flesh session from the outset. As they escorted Obama back toward the parked caravan of vehicles, Gibbs noticed a young man holding aloft a black-framed, eye-catching portrait of Obama. It was painted in brown, black, gold and white and it featured a profile of Obama with an ethereal glow engulfing him. Beneath him were the words Waruaki Dal, or “Welcome Home.” Obama had already made his way back into the safety of his SUV. But seeing this young man, Gibbs realized there was more to milk from the madness of this media event. Gibbs grabbed the arm of the young man and tried to lead him back to Obama’s SUV. Instead, Gibbs ran into a team of security personnel reluctant to let the man pass. An intense discussion between Obama’s media maestro and the security officers ensued. Security eventually relented to Gibbs’s persistent demands—but only after patting down the young man aggressively. Gibbs extracted Obama from the SUV and introduced him to Gregory Ochieng, a man in his twenties who hailed from a rural village near the farm of Obama’s paternal relatives. About a half-dozen TV cameras rolled as Obama graciously accepted Ochieng’s painting and thanked him profusely for the gesture. The meeting resembled a young fan meeting an athlete or a musician whom he idolizes. Within hours, that encounter, along with the surreal scene that preceded it, was beamed across the globe and appeared in newscasts worldwide.
Ochieng, a member of the Luo tribe, told several of us in the media that he felt a deep connection to Obama because Obama’s father had been a Luo. “He is my tribesman,” Ochieng explained. “I feel happy that a Kenyan is representing us in the U.S. as a senator. So when I heard he was coming here, I thought of doing something that was unique.” Asked by reporters if the encounter lived up to his expectations, he said with a broad smile, “It is better.” Gibbs’s instincts were note perfect. Again he had struck PR gold.
If the overwhelming outpouring from thousands of Kenyans was not enough to signify that Obama’s trip was something wholly unique, the next event would solidify it. Media members literally filled a ballroom at the downtown Nairobi Grand Regency Hotel for Obama’s news conference. Every journalist in Africa seemed to be in attendance. Wearing a gold-lined lapel pin with the flags of Kenya and the United States molded together at the center and then spread like wings on a bird, Obama stood behind a brown wooden lectern with more than one hundred representatives of the media before him. He emanated a slightly regal air that, in this setting, felt far more presidential than senatorial.
Obama opened the news conference by recognizing that this visit was remarkably different from his previous trips to Kenya as a private citizen. This time, he sought to be a “bridge between the two nations.” “Part of my role,” he said, “is to communicate how much the American people appreciate the Kenyan people and how much they value the partnership that the United States has with Kenya. Part of it, I think, is also to listen and find out what is on the minds of the Kenyan people. . . . Part of my goal is also to maybe highlight some of the values and ideals of the United States that I think might be helpful to the Kenyan people as they pursue their development.”
Toward that last point, Obama delivered a message of morality, as he is wont to do. He suggested that the very cultures of some African nations needed to change. He said he perceived a movement backward, toward a political system riven by tribalism and a reluctance to acknowledge internal problems to the outside world:
I think that there’s a tendency—which is understandable, given the history of colonialism—to not want to speak out against fellow Africans and to be protective of even some of the mismanagement, the corruption that takes place. And I think we’ve moved beyond that; I think the time is now, where we have to understand that nobody in Africa wants to be bullied, nobody in Africa wants to see the products of their labor expropriated by a government that is not representing them properly. Nobody wants to be tortured to death because of speaking their mind. Nobody wants to have to pay a bribe in order to get a business or get a job or just go about their daily business. And it’s incumbent upon us, when we see those things happening, to speak up. . . . I think ultimately, that kind of honesty will improve governments everywhere.
Arriving back at the Serena Hotel, Gibbs hastily called a news conference in a small courtyard area for the traveling press, mainly so that TV reporters would have informal interview footage of Obama discussing the day’s events. As Gibbs scoured the hotel to make sure everyone was aware of the Q&A, Obama made small talk with the reporters, who were anxiously waiting to query him about the wild scenes of the day. After a bit of talk about baseball and music, Obama began to grow impatient, as Gibbs still had not appeared. “Where is Gibbs?” Obama said to no one in particular. “Where is the animal trainer? Where is the whip and chair?” This remark did not go over well with several reporters, who frowned at the suggestion that they were, at the very least, uncouth and, at worst, so hopelessly uncivilized that they needed to be tamed. A magazine writer sensed this elitism in Obama and included it in her piece about the Africa trip in Elle magazine a few months later. The writer, Laurie Abraham, conceded that she had been charmed by Obama’s writings and media appearances. But mostly, she had been drawn to the brash, idealistic, soul-searching Obama whom she encountered in his Dreams memoir. After following him closely for several days in Africa, she had shelved this sense of Obama in favor of a more pragmatic vision of an elected official entering middle age and making compromises for political benefit. She found a more calculating man—a politician, surprise!—and an occasionally aloof one at that. “When he is not working a crowd, he can seem so sublimely cool and confident that his manner veers toward haughtiness,” Abraham wrote.
Others in the traveling entourage experienced this less appealing element of Obama’s persona as well. One videographer told me that he grew weary of being treated like something of a nuisance on the excursion: “I feel demeaned when Obama says stuff like that. We’re over here working our asses off. We’re not leeches. We were invited here, even pitched on this trip. I think we’ve been very respectful of his space.” Indeed, the American press had been far less aggressive in physically pursuing Obama than Kenyan reporters, who had no qualms about throwing an elbow to push another photographer out of the way or pushing up to the front of the line. Obama’s privately haughty manner and wary posture toward reporters seems rooted in two things: an internal conceit that formed in his character after being treated as a special human being as far back as childhood, and an understandable antagonism toward those individuals who, since he gained celebrity status, have impinged on what little privacy still exists for him.
Throughout the interview with the American press, Obama tried to downplay the effect he would have on Kenyan society. “Kenya is not my country. It’s the country of my father,” Obama said. “I feel a connection, but ultimately, it’s not going to be me, it’s going to be them who are climbing a path to improving their new lives.”