Kenyans for Hillary? Even U.S. Election Seen Through Tribal Eyes

NAIROBI, Kenya, Feb. 4, 2008 — -- On the eve of Super Tuesday, the whole world watches to see who will emerge as the Democratic front-runner, and possibly the next president of the United States. Here in Kenya, people are especially excited, given Barack Obama's family roots.

His father, Barack Obama Sr., was a prominent Kenyan academic who studied in the United States, pursued a doctorate degree from Harvard, and came back to Kenya, to work in government and academia. When I first arrived in Kenya four months ago, most Kenyans I'd come in contact with hoped that the junior senator from Illinois would be America's next president.

"He's one of us," they would tell me. "He's a Kenyan."

But in the last month, something has changed. Since the ethnic violence that has gripped the nation after the disputed presidential election in December, not everyone I speak to supports Obama. I now hear surprising comments such as, "A black man will never be president." I meet Kenyans who say they support Hillary, but can't articulate why.

"I don't think Kenyans have supported Obama so much," Evans K. Kamba, a businessman from Nairobi, told me. "I think it's only one tribe that supports him here, but not other tribes."

"Kenyans, we are a tribal people," he added.

When I asked specifically why he didn't support Obama, he looked down and sheepishly said, "I don't want to tell the media why."

Kamba is a Kikuyu, and even though he didn't vocalize it, the rabid tribalism that has spawned the ethnic violence that's killed nearly 1,000 people, and left hundreds of thousands more displaced in Kenya, has crept its way into the debate over American politics.

Obama's father was a Luo, the tribe of opposition leader Raila Odinga. But the animosity exhibited today between the Kikuyu and Luo, two of Kenya's biggest tribes, is as old as Kenya's independence, over 40 years ago. When the country gained independence from the British, Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, and Kenya's first president, named Oginga Odinga (Raila Odinga's father) as his vice president. But differences in how the country should be led resulted in a split that became so nasty, at one point, Kenyatta had Odinga arrested and detained.