How my visit to Kibera and Karen won me American Senate seat

By Chris Wamalwa in Delaware, US

A close 'friend of Kenya' has won a US Senate seat in hotly contested mid-term elections.

The Monday elections were held in many states. Mr Chris Coons, a Democrat, easily beat Republican Christine O’Donnell for the Delaware Senate seat.

US Vice-President Joe Biden formerly held the seat for decades.

Coons, whose connections with Kenya nearly cost him victory when his opponents questioned his commitment to the US, said his Kenyan experience helped shape his political views.

"In many ways, Kenya made me who I am. What I saw in the slums of Mathare and Kibera on one hand and Karen and Westlands on the other made me appreciate the consequences of an unequal world," he told The Standard.

He spent a semester at the University of Nairobi and remained in touch with high-ranking Kenyan officials.

The Harvard graduate speaks fluent Swahili and refers to Kenya as a close friend. He supports the Kenya Delaware Association (Deka) and was its chief guest during an annual fund raising last month.

And Kenyans living in the US are excited about Coons’ victory.

Kenyan Ambassador Elkanah Odembo congratulated him and said his victory would make a great difference to have somebody with not only intimate knowledge about Kenya and its people, but also fond memories and attachment in the Senate.

"As we embark on reconstructing Kenya in many aspects following the passage of a new Constitution, we will need friends of Kenya like Senator-elect Chris Coons to help advance our agenda," Mr Odembo said.

Deka president Erastus Mong’are said Coons would be key in lobbying because he has seen the devastation wrought by HIV and Aids, malaria and TB in Kenya. "For Coons, Kenya is not just another African country. It is his other home and he is fond of our country. He is like President Obama and more like one of us," Mr Mong’are said.

College article

Twenty-five years ago, Coons made his first trip to Kenya on an exchange programme during his undergraduate studies at Amherst College. When he returned to college, he chronicled his transformation from a conservative-minded college student who had worked for the Republican Party candidates including Ronald Reagan in 1980, into a cynical young adult, willing to question the American notion of free enterprise. In a college paper article, Coons wrote the source of his conversion from Republican to Democrat was his trip to Kenya.

In the heat of the campaigns last month, the article had Tea Party members and some Republicans convinced they had found a ‘smoking gun’.

They used the article to claim that Coons had confessed the Kenyan trip converted him into a "bearded Marxist".

But he responded saying the experience opened his eyes to grinding poverty in Africa and was shocked by the dismissive attitude the wealthy had for the poor.

"I became friends with a very wealthy businessman and his family and heard them reiterate the same beliefs held by many Americans: the poor are poor because they are lazy, slovenly, uneducated," he wrote.

He further explained: "I realise Kenya and America are different, but experiences like these warned me that my own favourite beliefs in the miracles of free enterprise and the boundless opportunities to be had in America were largely untrue."