Bewitched Obama should visit Kenya, apologise and consult a witchdoctor

Kenyans have been suffering in silence, and without bitterness. Imagine you are a mother in a polygamous family.

You have a baby, you educate this baby, he goes on to become a big man in the land — and then, when he comes home visiting, he visits all his other mothers, the step-mothers, but never comes to see you.

When you ask for a little something for sugar, he tells you to sort out your house first, apparently referring to the few rats and lizards that dart into and out of your kitchen. Would you be blamed for cursing that silly boy? That is exactly how Kenyans feel about Barack Obama.

He becomes “Kenyan” only when he needs to paint a picture of himself as having risen from nothing to the most powerful office in the known physical universe. In this, he becomes like the widow’s son who only mentions his mother when he needs the help of strangers.

Imploded spectacularly

Obama has taken to visiting all manner of step-mums just to spite his real mother — Kenya. He flew to Egypt and gave a long speech. Two years later, Egypt imploded spectacularly, as dictator Hosni Mubarak was forcefully evicted by irate Egyptians. Egypt has been a mess ever since.

Obama then hightailed it to Ghana, where he held up the Ghanaians as a model of democracy and good economic management. Shortly after he left, Ghanaian president John Atta Mills died in office. But Obama has not learnt this crucial African lesson — that spiting your own mother always brings curses.

He proceeded to spit in our face again with a visit to South Africa — shortly after which Nelson Mandela died. Unperturbed, Obama flew to Tanzania and Senegal, from where we are still awaiting news of any sort.

Obama has apparently been fearful of coming to Kenya for one reason: his much-repeated desire to not be seen to be favouring Kenya in any way.

Contempt for motherland

But for how long can a man run away from his own mother? When you are from a country where witchcraft is practiced, how can you get away contempt for your own motherland?

The old people tell us that this brings little other than a curse or bad luck, and Obama has had plenty of this, so much so that he has loaned it to every place he has gone to.

But the worst has been reserved for him personally, for he has become more and more unpopular the longer he avoided visiting Kenya.

Lost control of senate

Matters are so bad that, in the recent American mid-term elections, Obama lost control of both the Senate and the House of Representatives. He is so unpopular that candidates for election begged him to stay away from their campaign rallies, lest his bad luck rubbed off onto them.

Kenyans might have cursed or bewitched Obama, who knows! Which is why it is now time for him to come home, visit a powerful witchdoctor to cleanse him. He must surely know that the people of his motherland crave his presence, diminished by lame-duck status though it may be.

And while all of Kenya will turn out in massive numbers to welcome him to Nairobi, this will be nothing compared to the welcome he will receive in Kisumu.

There, when his feet — ok, the soles of his shoes — touch the ground at the airport, people will not just faint, they will die of sheer excitement and political catharsis.

Dancing and feasting

Because this will be the first time a sitting president with Kisumu blood in his veins will have landed in Kisumu.

Going by the celebrations we saw when Gor Mahia won the Kenyan Premier League, the celebrations will not be limited to just dancing and feasting, but will include many activities of a far more personal nature, even on top of matatus.

And who knows, maybe that visit might just be exactly what the ancestors want to see, and they might then reverse the curse that has turned Obama into perhaps the most unpopular president in American history, bar none. Come home, Cousin Barry! What is it!