Reason To Believe

November 6, 2008

Just after Kenyans went to the polls in December 2007, the country erupted in violence after widespread claims that the election had been stolen from Raila Odinga and his party (ODM) by the incumbent president and party, Mwai Kibaki of PNU. The violence was severe and fell out across ethnic divisions.

This time, the country erupted in jubilation.

Along with about a thousand other people, I was invited to watch live coverage of the US presidential election returns at the American Ambassador's residence. Best I could tell, the crowd included mostly embassy folks, scholars, business people, and students. They held a straw vote for Kenyans and, when they announced the results, I was surprised to hear that of the 500 Kenyans who voted, only 479 cast votes for Obama.

I spent some time chatting with three students from Kenyatta University who were studying international affairs. A fashion forward young woman from Western Kenya told me that she wanted to study law in the states, but that she was afraid because Americans are racist. I was in the middle of trying to convince her, and perhaps myself, that this is not categorically true when CNN announced Obama as the predicted winner. The outburst was explosive and we all did our best to keep our toes out from underneath our jumping neighbors' landing feet.

But stomped-on toes are a small price to pay for a shared sense of collective redemption.

After McCain's gracious concessions, local television stations favored a video clip of a crowd running through the Kibera slum in celebration. They danced in the streets, carrying Obama banners. One man carried a rainbow "PEACE" flag and I doubt he knows that same-sex marriage bans passed in three states.

Kibera is the same slum that rose to international fame during the violence in January. If you remember marauding bandits, bloody faces, and burning streets from the news back then, you are remembering some images of Kibera. Now replace those memories with the street song and dance of people who believe that this election represents the promise of possibility for Kenya, for Africa, and for the world.

The cynical among us mutter about assassination scares, the inevitable set-up of inflated expectations, and the un-fixable Bush mess that Obama's administration will inherit. The cynical note that many Kenyans may expect Obama to honor ethnic loyalties that are invisible to most Americans. These hypothetical obstacles, disappointments, and quagmires may certainly become real. But--in the most literal sense--they will be no more real than last night's celebrations. I had had too little sleep and too much adrenaline to join in, but was lulled into deep and happy sleep by the sounds of fireworks, deep beats, and the laughter of people who knew they didn't have to work in the morning.