It is an extraordinary sight to walk into a basic two-room house under a mango tree in rural east Africa and discover what is essentially a shrine to Barack Obama.
The small brick house with no running water, a tin roof and roving chickens, goats and cows is owned by Sarah Obama, Barack's 86-year-old step-grandmother. Inside, the walls are decorated with a 2008 Obama election sticker, an old "Barack Obama for Senate" poster on which he has written "Mama Sarah Habai [how are you?]", a 2005 calendar that says "The Kenyan Wonder Boy in the US", and more than a dozen family photos.
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At that historic homecoming in August 2006 Obama was greeted as a hero with thousands lining the dirt streets of Kogelo. He visited the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School built on land donated by his paternal grandfather. After addressing the pupils, a third of whom are orphans, and dancing with them as they sang songs in his honour, he was shown a school with four dilapidated classrooms that lacked even basic resources such as water, sanitation and electricity.
Before assembled townspeople, political dignitaries, and press people, Obama made the specific promise to come to the aid of the school that bears his name.
"Hopefully I can provide some assistance in the future to this school and all that it can be. I know you are working very hard and struggling to bring up this school, but I have said I will assist the school and I will do so," he told Yuanita Obiero, the school's principal.
Last week, that same principal Obiero was quoted as saying, "Senator Obama has not honored the promises he gave me when we met in 2006 and in his earlier letter to the school. He has not given us even one shilling. But we still have hope."
Hope! Yes, there is always Hope! She Hopes for some Change!
The letter she is referring to in that quote was written by Obama back in 2005, the day after he was sworn in as a Senator from the state of Illinois. That letter, framed on the wall of the principals' office reads, in part:
I am honored that you have decided to rename the Kogelo School in my name.
The land that the school is built on was donated by my grandparents and I am proud to carry on the tradition of supporting the school.
Thus far, that support has been largely symbolic.
Encourage by that letter, Obiero and the school board of directors put forth a request for money to upgrade and modernize the school. They hoped to be able to bring electricity and running water to the school.
"When the US Ambassador William Bellamy came to visit the school for the official renaming ceremony in February 2006, we gave him two copies of the proposal, one for the Embassy and one to give to Senator Obama. But we have not heard anything from either of them since," she told Cohen.
That trip in 2006 produced additional empty promises from the Democrat Presidential candidate. Mary Manasse runs a store in the village of Kogelo, but when she met and was photographed with Obama in 2006, she was caring for orphans in the local orphanage.
"Back then I was looking after 40 orphans at the orphan center," she told Cohen. "We faced a desperate shortage of money and Obama told us that he especially liked special, dedicated projects like ours and wanted to help. We thought he would give funds to help our project but we got nothing. A few months later we were forced to shut down the orphan center because of lack of funds. Just a million Kenyan shillings [£6,000] would have kept us going another year. I feel disappointed that he did not come through."
But all Hope is not lost on the villagers of Kogelo. Audaciously, they still cling to the Hope that once elected President, things will change in their little village. Villager Gladys Anyango told Cohen, "Oh, but there will be a big party here when Obama wins. We still have hope that he will bring electricity and build schools so the children have a good education. Maybe when he's President of America, he'll remember his roots and look after his community in Kenya."
A word of advice for Gladys. Don't hold your breath!
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