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The Planet Krypton. duh.
The Planet Krypton. duh.
Kenya readies for Obama tourist boom
By Parselelo Kantai in Nairobi
Published: October 24 2008 19:33 | Last updated: October 24 2008 19:33
Hollywood has its star tours, Boston the Freedom Trail. Now Kenya is busy planning a new addition to the world’s tourist treks – the Obama experience.
Ten days away from the US presidential election, tour operators in the east African nation are positioning themselves for an Obama boom.
Kogelo, the remote village home of Barack Obama’s grandmother, Sarah, is nowhere near Kenya’s safari circuit. But the three hotels in the nearby city of Kisumu are booked solid for the week of the US elections, as visitors make a pilgrimage to the region where Mr Obama’s father was born and buried.
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A sub-economy has sprung up around Mr Obama’s candidature with trinket and T-shirt traders, hawkers and kiosk operators hoping to do brisk business. Roadside hotels and barber shops, boutiques and hair salons have been renamed after Obama to attract business. An East African Breweries beer, Senator, has taken on new significance.
“People now say ‘I want an Obama’ when asking for Senator,” says a Kisumu barman.
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Noah Ger, who runs a tour firm specialising in western Kenya tours, said interest was picking up for Kogelo day trips.
Foreign correspondents are mining Kogelo and the slums of Nairobi and Kisumu for an Obama story – a new half-brother was “discovered” in Huruma, a poor Nairobi neighbourhood.
For residents of Kisumu, which supported prime minister Raila Odinga in the bitterly disputed presidential election in 2007, Obama-mania is closely connected with local politics. Mr Odinga is a member of Kenya’s ethnic Luo tribe – as was Mr Obama’s father. It has become a common refrain among Kenyans that the US will have an ethnic Luo president before Kenya does.
“It’s almost as if we’re falling back on Obama as our only hope,” says Steve Sande, a Kisumu-based artist and activist.
“People are less interested in Obama becoming US president than they are in the fact that a son of this place has made it.”
“There’s always been this idea that our people have been neglected economically by the central government,” says Mr Sande. If Obama wins, he says, the government will be forced to do things it has been unwilling to do for a generation. “They will have to upgrade the airport, for instance. Obama, when he returns to Kenya as the American president, will have to land in style.”
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
He wasn't born... he just came to be...
born in Rome at 6:00 a.m. on June 6, 1966
It's a well known fact that Obama was born of a Virgin in a manger.
Obama was the chicken not the egg, !
Though if asked gun to head to point out Hawaii, Ducks would... fail.
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