Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Jambo Bwana: Kenya’s Barack Obama

  • Essay
  • Published:
Qualitative Sociology Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Taking Barack Obama as a metonym for “the Kenyan abroad,” this article provides a speculative history of this figure, arguing that the Kenyan abroad who was once viewed by Kenyans as an exile is now viewed as diasporic. Obama’s trip to Kenya as a diasporic tourist in Dream from My Father is a point of departure from which to map how the diasporic subject functions in the Kenyan imagination. At the heart of this change from exile to diasporic is the remittance economy. This shift in terms signifies a change in which politics is subordinated to economics. This article examines how this change, and the figure of Obama himself, produces different configurations of Kenyan-ness as understood and practiced by the government, Kenyans abroad, and Kenyans in Kenya.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. The Luo are an ethnic group located in East Africa.

  2. David Chioni Moore (1993) examines how Roots has been received, arguing that it has a “sacred” status that causes readers to explain away its misrepresentations of Africa. For a critique of the intimate politics of Roots, see Macharia (2009).

  3. Since Edgar Rice Burroughs published the first Tarzan novel in 1912, Tarzan has dominated the U.S. popular imagination about Africa, and this is attested to, in part, by its subsequent adaptation into comics and films and, arguably, into such popular shows as Survivor.

  4. Parker MacDonald Shipton (2007) usefully extends this line of thinking by focusing on how debt and credit are understood to be intimacy-forming and sustaining practices.

  5. A recent article claims Kenya has 739 blogs and that it ranks third in Africa in the number of blogs, behind South Africa and Nigeria (2010). While this number seems fairly low, Kenya’s domestic internet user population is approximately 3.5 million. M’s blog was described as the “most popular in Kenya” in a newspaper article, “The Diaries of Mad Kenyan Bloggers” (2006).

  6. In recent years, human rights activists have been executed by police, falsely imprisoned and tortured, and forced into exile. While some of this information is available through official government records and reports, most of it is available through blogs and human rights websites. See especially Mars Group Kenya (http://www.marsgroupkenya.org/new/) and the Kenya Human Rights Commission (http://www.khrc.or.ke/).

  7. This optimism was not widely shared. In an interview, Ngugi wa Thiong’o warned that a regime change did not signify a deep structural change, arguing it was possible to have “Moi-ism without Moi” (2006).

  8. SME stands for small and medium enterprises.

References

  • Appiah, K.A. 1998. Cosmopolitan Patriots. In Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling Beyond the Nation, ed. P. Cheah and B. Robbins, 91–114. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Carotenuto, M., and K. Luongo. 2009. Dala or Diaspora: Obama and the Luo Community of Kenya. Afr Aff 108: 197–219.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Cohen, D., and E.S. Odhiambo. 1989. Siaya. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Costa, R. (2010). Gingrich: Obama’s ‘Kenyan, Anti-Colonial’ Worldview. National Review, September 11. Online. Accessed September 18, 2010.

  • Cullen, C. (1999). What is Africa to Me? In Color. North Stratford, NH: Ayer Publishing. Diaries of Mad Kenyan Bloggers. (2006). Daily Nation, March 14. LexisNexis. Accessed September 10, 2006.

  • Edwards, B.H. 2003. The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Edwards, B.H. 2004. The Uses of ‘Diaspora. In African Diasporas in the New and Old Worlds: Consciousness and Imagination, ed. G. Fabre and K. Benesch, 3–38. Amsterdam: Rodolphi.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fabian, J. 1983. Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object. New York: Columbia University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Fanon, F. 1952. Black Skins, White Masks. Trans. New York: Grove.

    Google Scholar 

  • Haley, A. 1976. Roots. New York: Dell.

    Google Scholar 

  • Hartman, S. 2007. Lose Your Mother: A Journey Along the Atlantic Slave Route. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ikonya, P. 2008. The Kenyan Boy who Became President of America. Nairobi: Media Horizons Network.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kaiza, D. (2008). Benediction in Oyugis. Kwani? 5. Nairobi: Kwani Trust, 80–137.

  • M. (2006). Having cake and eating it. Thinkers Room. Online. Accessed May 5, 2010. http://www.thinkersroom.com/blog/2006/01/having-cake-and-eating-it-2/

  • Macharia, K. 2009. “Slicing the Hunger”: Queering Diaspora in Melvin Dixon’s Change of Territory. Callaloo 32(4): 1262–1273.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Mboya, T. 1963. Freedom and After. Boston: Little, Brown & Company.

    Google Scholar 

  • Mphahlele, E. 1982. Africa in Exile. Daedulus 111(2): 29–48.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nyong’o, T. 2009. Barack Hussein Obama, or, The Name of the Father. Scholar and Feminist Online. New York: Barnard Center for Research on Women.

    Google Scholar 

  • Obama, B. 2007. Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. New York: Crown.

    Google Scholar 

  • Obama Monument to Cost Shs112 Million. (2009). The Daily Nation, October 31. Online. Accessed May 4, 2010.

  • Okoth, K. (2003). What role for Diaspora in Development? Migration Information Source. Online. Accessed May 4, 2010.

  • Patel, S. (2005). Hakuna Matata. Used with author’s permission.

  • Schmitz, H. P. (1999). Transnational Activism and Political Change in Kenya and Uganda. In Human Rights: International Norms and Domestic Change. Thomas Risse et al., ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 39–77.

  • Shachtman, T. (2009). Airlift to America: How Barack Obama, Sr., John F. Kennedy, Tom Mboya, and 800 East African Students Changed Their World and Ours. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

  • Shipton, P.M. 2007. The Nature of Entrustment: Intimacy, Exchange, and the Sacred in Africa. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sunday, Frankline. (2010). Kenya Has Third Highest Number of Blogs. Business Daily, July 29. LexisNexis. Accessed September 10, 2010.

  • Thiong’o, N. 1986. Decolonizing the Mind. Nairobi: Heinemann.

    Google Scholar 

  • Thiong’o, N. (2006). Ngugi wa Thiong’o Interviewed on His New Novel, Wizard of the Crow. Socialist Worker Online. Accessed May 9, 2010.

  • UKENYA. 1987. Manifesto of UKENYA Movement for Unity and Political Democracy in Kenya. Review of African Political Economy 39: 75–81.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgements

I am grateful to Melissa Girard, Wambui Mwangi, and Christina Walter for their help with this article.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    Keguro Macharia

Authors
  1. Keguro Macharia
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Keguro Macharia.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Macharia, K. Jambo Bwana: Kenya’s Barack Obama. Qual Sociol 35, 213–227 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-012-9219-3

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11133-012-9219-3

Keywords

Search

Navigation