Obama visits his Kenyan family
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, August 26, 2006
KISUMU, Kenya – Sen. Barack Obama and his wife took HIV tests before a crowd of thousands Saturday at a clinic in Kenya in an effort to battle the fear and social stigmas that have slowed progress in fighting the spread of AIDS.
Thousands of people gathered around the tiny mobile clinic in Kisumu, western Kenya, to see Barack and Michelle Obama tested for the virus that causes AIDS.
“If you know your status, you can prevent illness,” said Obama, Congress’ sole black senator. “You can avoid passing it to your children and your wives.”
Well-wishers lined pot-holed roads to greet Obama as he began a journey to his ancestral home, Nyangoma-Kogelo, a tiny village in the rural west where his father grew up herding goats and attending tin-roofed schools.
“I just want to say very quickly that I am so proud to come back home,” Obama told the cheering crowds. “It means a lot to me that the people of my father, my grandfather, are here in such huge crowds.”
His father won a scholarship to a university in Hawaii, where he met and married Obama’s mother. The two separated and Obama’s father returned to Kenya, where he worked as a government economist. He died in a car accident in 1982.
This was Obama’s third visit, but his first since being elected a Democratic senator from Illinois in January 2005. His last visit to Kenya was in 1995.
Obama said he was looking forward to seeing his grandmother and uncle, who still live in the village.
He said his relatives “understand that some of this is going to be dominated by spectacle, and they’ll roll with it as I will roll with it.”
He also planned to visit a project he helps fund, which helps grandmothers find money to take care of children orphaned by AIDS.
