I first heard of Oginga Odinga on hearing the 1963 SNCC Freedom Singers song "To See Oginga Odinga". Here's the background: soon after 21 SNCC demonstrators were arrested in Atlanta Dec. 17, 1963, the Kenyan Minister of Home Affairs, Oginda Odinga, arrived there. A SNCC delegation visted him, he welcomed them warmly, and they went to the Toddle House for a cup of coffee. They were refused service: "we don't serve coloured people here."

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We went down to the Peachtree Manor
To see Oginga Odinga
The police say, “what’s the matter?”
To see Oginga Odinga
The police he look mighty hard
At Oginga Odinga
He got scared ‘cause he was an ex Mau-Mau
To see Oginga Odinga.

Oginga Odinga, Oginga Odinga,
Oginga Odinga of Kenya – who?
Oginga Odinga, Oginga Odinga,
Oginga Odinga of Kenya.
Uh-hu-hu-hu-ru – ha! haaa!
Uh-hu-hu-hu-ru - ha! haaa!
Freedom now! .. ow .. oww haaa!
Freedom now! .. ow .. oww haaa!

Oginga Odinga say “look-a here,
What’s going on down in Selma?
If you white folks don’t straighten up,
I’m gone call Jomo Kenyatta”
The white folks down in Mississippi
Will knock you on your rump
And if you holler Freedom
You’ll wind up in the swamp.

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SNCC had picked the right man to call on: When Kenya became an independent Republic in 1964, he was its first Vice-President. As Vice-President he did not agree with Jomo Kenyatta's government, and he resigned his post and quit KANU in 1966 to form the Kenya People's Union (KPU), the left-wing opposition party. In 1969 Odinga was arrested and detained for two years.

Barack Obama was only two years old when that song was written. He was ten, in school in Indonesia, when his uncle Oginga was released from detention. Did any of this matter to him? I'd like him to tell us. Does "Dreams from my Father" even mention him? "The book concludes with an emotional scene in which Obama visits the graves of his father and paternal grandfather." Apparently that was in 1988, just before he entered Harvard Law School. (His father had also gone to Harvard for his Ph.D. -- did you buy the line that he was a goatherder? -- and became a senior economist with the Kenyan government before dying in a car accident.) But in 1988 his uncle Oginga Odinga was still alive, still trying to re-start an opposition party.

Oginga Odinga's son Raila Odinga, Barack Obama's cousin, was just narrowly defeated for President in the Kenyan election still under dispute. Raila was placed under house arrest for seven months after being suspected of collaborating with the plotters of a failed coup attempt against President Daniel Arap Moi in 1982. He was then charged with treason and was detained without trial for six years. At his website, Raila (by now a millionaire from the family molasses business) lists himself as a social democrat, thus making distance from his father, who was openly socialist. Still, Raila went to school in East Germany (born in 1945, he graduated from Magdeburg University in 1970), and named his first-born son after Fidel Castro. Their youngest child, Winnie, is named after Winnie Mandela.

Unfortunately, the left/right conflict in Kenya has become a tribal one. Many Luo feel that they have been denied power and political rights since independence. Several Kenyans have remarked that the USA would get a Luo President before Kenya.

[ 10 January 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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We are all upbeat and we are looking forward to his win very much," Barack's uncle Said Obama, 41, told Reuters.

"We are praying for him and we hope he goes all the way ... It relieves us from the violence going on this country. At least we have something to make us happy."

Kogelo, which boasts the Senator Obama Primary School, lies 100 km (60 miles) northwest of Kisumu, a town by Lake Victoria that is a stronghold of Kenyan opposition leader Raila Odinga.

Odinga also said he was a cousin of Obama, but Obama's uncle said that the two were not directly related.

"Odinga's mother came from this area, so it is normal for us to talk about cousins. But he is not a blood relative," he said.

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Obama has lots of connections, including a Canadian brother-in-law, husband of Mary, his half-sister by his mother's second husband:

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Soetoro-Ng, 36, is a teacher and professor in Honolulu. She and her husband, Konrad Ng, a Chinese-Canadian, have a 2-year-old daughter, Suhaila.

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Like Raila Odinga, Barack's aunt Auma also studied in Germany:

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Auma Obama was born in Kenya to Barack Obama Sr. and his first wife. She studied in Germany and now lives in Great Britain, where she works as a social worker running a children's' trust.

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[ 10 January 2008: Message edited by: Wilf Day ]

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Originally posted by jrootham:
Wilf, fix the damn sidescroll.

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ETA BTW How big a screen are you using? 60in?

[ 11 January 2008: Message edited by: jrootham ]