Hawaii invites visitors to experience Obama's Oahu
HONOLULU -- Three miles and a world away from the bikinis and high-rises of Waikiki, Mitch Berger slows his minibus to a crawl in the residential neighborhood of Kaimuki, a onetime ostrich farm for Hawaiian royalty. Pointing toward a nondescript blue duplex, he announces that President Obama's Kenyan father had lived in a house at the same location while attending the nearby University of Hawaii at Manoa in 1960.
"He was 25, and (Obama's mother, fellow student Stanley Ann Dunham) had just turned 18," says Berger, a Honolulu guide who includes the neighborhood on his new Obama-themed tours. "It wouldn't be too far off to think that the 44th president was conceived right here."
Customer Ben Nworie, a Nigeria-born college professor and pastor living in Los Angeles, stops taking notes for his congregation back home and delivers a one-word reaction: "Wow."
Kaimuki may not carry the cachet of Diamond Head or the North Shore, home to surfing's Banzai Pipeline and locations for the TV series Lost. But thanks to the Honolulu-born chief executive, it's one of many Oahu locations getting a higher profile this winter.
From the $8 million retreat he rented on Kailua Beach over the Christmas holidays to the bone-crunching shore break where he perfected his body-surfing techniques as a teenager, Obama's current and former island haunts are part of a presidential sightseeing trail that stretches from Indonesia to Africa. And though most Hawaii residents are taking a laid-back approach to their native son's growing fame, the state's struggling visitor industry hopes the Tourist in Chief's obvious affection for slippas and shakas (Hawaiian slang for flip-flop sandals and a thumb-and-pinky salute) inspires more vacationers to follow his lead.
"Being a 'local boy,' he knows the island well," says John Monahan of the Hawaii Visitors and Convention Bureau, which highlights Obama-related Oahu locations on its website (gohawaii.com/obama). "Everyone needs to rest and relax, and luckily for him, his home is one of the greatest places in the world to rejuvenate."
