Lasting memories of maiden trip to father's homeland

President of the United States of America Barack Obama having a chat with his host President Uhuru Muigai Kenyatta before he left the country for Ethiopia , The US president was on a three day official visit to Kenya where he opened the 6th Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi. [PHOTO/MAXWELL AGWANDA/STANDARD]

US President Barack Obama's recollection about the events of his homecoming almost three decades ago is a common tale among Kenyan returning to the country after being away for sometime.

When coming back home, there's a thrill you get at the airport when your friends and relatives meet at the airport; there's the anguish when you realise that your luggage is missing and the agony of adapting to your 'new' surrounding.

Even though this time round he arrived in a special luxury jet, and was picked from the airport in a state-of-the-art bullet-proof limousine, the US President still clearly treasures the memories of his first visit to Kenya.

"I am proud to be the first US president to visit Kenya, and of course I am the first Kenyan-American to be the President of the United States, that goes without saying," Obama told the audience at the Safaricom Indoor Arena, inside the Moi International Sports Centre Kasarani, where he addressed a huge crowd.

He went on: "When I arrived at the (Jomo) Kenyatta airport the airline had lost my bags. That does not happen on Air Force One, they always have my luggage on Air Force One."

With a wide nostalgic smile on his face, he recalled how his sister Auma Obama picked him up from the airport in "in an old Volkswagen Beetle" which in his entire stay in Kenya 'broke down four or five times.'

power outages

"I slept on a couch in her apartment. Instead of eating at fancy banquets with the President, we were drinking tea and eating ugali and sukuma wiki... there wasn't a lot of luxury; sometimes the lights would go out," said Obama, obviously referring to the power outages that are all too common in the city.

As he recounted the trip, the amiable US president kept smiling broadly and chuckling.

He may be the President of the world's only superpower, but Obama holds elders in high esteem. At the dinner at State House, in Nairobi, he said he came to Kenya because he could not ignore some kind of order that his grandmother, Mama Sarah Obama, had issued.

"When she says you should do something, generally you have to do it," he said.

Then he gave an anecdote: "I've told this story before. The first time when I visited Kogelo, Auma and I and my brothers were there. Mama Sarah speaks Swahili and Luo, and I speak neither and so Auma was serving as a translator,"

He recalled at some point, Mama Sarah turned to Auma and said something to her and the two started laughing. It turned out she was wondering how it was possible he was a student at Harvard yet he could not communicate with her.

And he knows about tribalism, about corruption, about inequality and about women's exclusion.