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http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2009/09/13/afri
can_kin_seek_obamas_help/?page=full

KOGELO, Kenya - After Barack Obama was elected to the US Senate 
in 2004, a delegation from the remote African village where his 
father was raised journeyed to Washington, seeking financial 
help. But Obama offered them advice, not money.

Now that Obama has moved to the White House, expectations of 
financial benefit have grown even greater in this tiny hamlet 
where water is still delivered to thatched huts on the backs of 
donkeys.

�There are still those who are waiting for him to send 
millions,�� said Nicholas Rajula, a Kogelo businessman.

Dreams alone seem to be sustaining those counting on an economic 
boom in this rural corner of western Kenya, near Lake Victoria, 
where the American president�s father - also named Barack Obama -
 grew up and where many of his relatives remain.

In Kogelo, the village where Barack Sr. was raised, there is no 
restaurant or post office to speak of. Two hours from the 
nearest city, it is not on most maps.

Still, the price of land here has skyrocketed because of rampant 
speculation about an Obama family museum that the Kenyan 
Ministry of Tour ism has promised to build. And there have been 
some modest, but tangible, signs of progress that seem tied to 
the village�s new notoriety. Within a week of Obama�s election 
victory last year, the government began to pave the main road to 
town. It also brought in an electricity and water lines to 
Obama�s step-grandmother�s compound.

Some relatives have also set up foundations, trying to raise 
money for development projects using the Obama name. And 
strangers are suddenly a common sight in the market, attracted 
by safari companies that advertise heritage tours about the 
first African-American US president. A tourist hotel is planned.

But what is missing is a direct infusion of cash from Obama or 
the US government, say local residents and members of the 
extended Obama family, some of whom say they have relayed 
funding requests through e-mails and letters to Washington. That 
expectation might come as a surprise in the United States, where 
such gifts are not an obligation and Obama is not considered a 
particularly wealthy man. But in Kenya, where politicians are 
often judged by how much financial help they funnel to family 
and tribe, the lack of cash donations from the president has 
caused some consternation.

Rajula, the Kogelo businessman who funded the delegation�s trip 
to Washington in 2005, said Obama encouraged the group - which 
included his own uncle - to form self-help organizations and 
apply for funding through official channels, such as USAID.

�There is no money that comes from his pocket,�� Rajula said.

A White House official said: �The president�s policy of pointing 
aid requests to official channels is consistent with his message 
of good governance�� in Africa.

USAID press officer Harry Edwards said the agency gives no 
special consideration to Obama�s family members or organizations 
hailing from his family�s home area.

Still, relatives in Kenya believe that Obama�s presidency will 
bring development, one way or another, so much so that two 
villages are competing to claim his ancestral roots: Kogelo, the 
place his father grew up and is buried, and Kobama, a village 
about 100 miles away where the president�s great-grandfather 
settled and where the majority of his estimated three hundred 
relatives remain. In Kobama, which literally means �land of 
Obama,�� family members have fixed up his great-grandfather�s 
grave, erected a signpost outlining his lineage, and gladly 
receive a steady stream of curious visitors. Now, they too, are 
angling to put up a museum near the mud house where President 
Obama slept when he visited as a young man.

Charles Oluoch, a second cousin of the president who chairs a 
new family foundation seeking development funds, said Obama�s 
Harvard-educated father helped the boys of Kobama with jobs and 
school fees. �Now we expect the president to take over,�� he 
said.

But he added that he understands Obama has higher priorities.

�This man is USA material and he has to fulfill all his campaign 
promises,�� he said.

�He should feed his family first - the USA people.��

Obama was raised by his Kansas-born mother, and only met his 
Kenyan father once. But he tracked down a sprawling family in 
Kenya after his father�s 1982 death, while researching his 
autobiography, Dreams from my Father.

In the book, Obama grappled with the idea of Western guilt, 
questioning how much he could help the huge extended family he 
was meeting for the first time.

�Now I had responsibilities,�� Obama wrote in 1995.

�But what did that mean exactly? A part of me wished I could 
live up to the image that my new relatives imagined for me: a 
corporate lawyer, an American businessman, my hand poised on the 
spigot, ready to rain down like manna the largesse of the 
Western world. But of course I wasn�t any of those things.��

Obama returned to Kogelo a few years later, to introduce his 
fiancee, Michelle, and in 2005, to give a speech as senator.

But his Kenyan family members pose a unique challenge for the US 
president, culturally and politically. At least six presidents 
had an immigrant parent (both of Andrew Jackson�s Scotch-Irish 
parents were immigrants), but no president in modern US history 
has had so many blood relations living without running water or 
electricity overseas, said Rick Shenkman, history professor at 
George Mason University.

�He was the rags to riches candidate,�� he said.

�But when your relatives are still in rags, that means it is 
complicated.��

Some of Obama�s relatives, including his half-sister, with whom 
he is close, live middle-class lives in Kenya and abroad. But 
others are struggling.

�We lack clean water, electricity,�� Oluoch said.

�We would like to have things like scholarships. We are trying 
to contact people who can help us.��

In recent months, Obama�s relatives have formed at least three 
family foundations to promote development in these rural 
homesteads. Leaders of two of the foundations said they intended 
to send funding proposals directly to the president. The Kobama 
Foundation, chaired by Oluoch, meets once a month to raise money 
to build a tourist site near Obama�s great-grand-father�s grave. 
The group also wants funding for an irrigation project.

Other relatives have started the Obama Karachuonyo Foundation, 
which is trying to raise $2 million to promote education, 
farming assistance and tourism in the area. A third family 
foundation, the Barack H. Obama Foundation, set up by Obama�s 
half-brother to memorialize their father, has also been 
soliciting international donations for community development 
projects.

Kogelo�s secondary school, a series of dusty classrooms built on 
land that Obama�s grandfather donated decades ago, closed 
several times for lack of funding. It was renamed the Senator 
Obama Kogelo Secondary School in 2005, with Obama�s permission, 
in the hope that his fame would attract donations. For years, 
little came of it.

Obama visited it as senator, but never promised to raise funds 
for it, school officials said.

But since Obama has become president, private donations from 
strangers have flooded in: solar panels from Greenpeace, laptops 
from the city of Obama in Japan, and school sponsorships from 
American travelers who have made their way to the village.

�They just came because of President Barack,�� said Yuanita 
Obiero, the headmistress.

�They were not there before.��

Obiero, who was invited to attend the inauguration in 
Washington, D.C., with the official delegation from Kogelo, was 
given $35,000 raised during an inaugural ball. She used the 
money to begin building new classrooms, but still needs more 
funding to complete them. USAID has so far turned her down.

So now Obiero, like many in this tiny town, is unsure what the 
future holds.

�People have high expectations that there will be a lot of 
changes, but the things which can happen, we can�t tell,�� she 
said.

�We just accept what comes.��

Some of her teachers complain that not enough real change has 
come. But others point to small hints of development. For 
instance, with good roads and electricity, it is possible to get 
a newspaper and a cold soda. And petty thievery has gone down 
since the Kenyan government set up a police post outside the 
home of the woman the president calls �Granny.��

On a recent afternoon, Sarah Obama, 87, sat in a semicircle of 
chairs in the yard, as cows and chickens meandered nearby. Each 
day, she greets about 100 visitors. Most are locals, but a few 
have traveled from distant parts of the globe.

The deluge of visitors have prompted her to build a modern flush 
toilet for �important guests�� and to set up a curio shop at her 
front gate, where her business partner, Flora Akinyi, sells hand-
made beads and baskets to the visitors. Akinyi says her share of 
the money helps her put her three children through school.

But Rajula, the businessman, said he has learned it is 
unrealistic to expect a sudden infusion of money from America. 
During the 2005 trip to Washington, Rajula told Obama about the 
large number of orphans in Kogelo, so Obama encouraged him to 
set up an orphanage. But when Rajula sent fund-raising appeals 
through an Obama aide, he was told to approach funding agencies 
through ordinary channels.

Rajula said he understood Obama�s reluctance to get directly 
involved in projects that had no track record. Senator Obama 
continued to exchange e-mails with him, Rajula said, but now all 
his e-mails to Obama bounce back.

Now Rajula has began investing in another plan: a tourist hotel 
in Kogelo.

�Americans are different than us,�� he said. �Us, we believe in 
handouts. But Americans don�t help individuals. Still, we stand 
to gain a lot from the presidency. Those of us who are clever, 
we will gain.��