Mama Obama's inauguration hat

Aretha Franklin's inauguration hat has really attracted a lot of attention. The hat itself has inspired its own groups on Facebook. But it's only because she's famous and happened to be the other First Lady on stage, the one of Soul, as they identified her on CNN. And I guess demanding R-E-S-P-E-C-T gets you that kind of attention.

But last week in the Daily Nation, one of our papers in Kenya, I saw identified in a photo on the stage behind Obama his grandmother, Sarah Onyango. Obama calls her "Granny" or "Mama Sarah." She had what would probably appear to be something inappropriate - too casual - for that occasion: a simple head scarf fashioned out of an African print cloth. Maybe too casual compared to Aretha's glitzy hat, which appears to have a personality of its own. But her headdress was so typical of African women, and Mama Sarah was dressing her part like Aretha was, yet nobody noticed her and what she was wearing and what it represented. The accompanying article says of her: She "raised Obama's father during his boyhood in the Kenyan village near Kisumu. Until recently, she lived in a hut with neither running water nor electricity, and chickens darted in and out." (Kisumu is quite far from us in Nairobi; we would have to fly to get there.)

Even today as I write this, Jane, our nanny/house help, has on exactly this type of head wrap.


So hats off to Kenyan women like Mama Sarah and the headdresses they wear, not just at their grandson's inaugurations, but every day! They're not famous singers or rich or wealthy people, but they're often just the poor, simple women who raise the children of Africa in tough conditions. They are the child-care providers, the cooks of the ugali and sadza, the tillers of the soil who grow the maize and then grind it. These are the hats that soak up the sweat from heavy toil or walking for miles in the hot African sun to fetch the family's daily supply of water. These are the hats that are often used to wipe the tears as they mourn the husbands and fathers and sons who die of AIDS. We didn't crown a king last week, but surely his grandmother deserves to be treated like a queen. Mama Sarah's hat was an acknowledgment and celebration of our new president's humble but worthy roots in Africa.

Living in an Obama world

Let me begin at the end.

Yesterday’s inauguration of Barack Obama ended with a moving benediction, which began with the third verse of a hymn titled “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” This hymn is also known as the Negro National Anthem. This hymn and I go way back. I played it at my confirmation and have loved it ever since then. So I know it well. I hadn’t thought of this hymn at all in relation to Obama’s inauguration, but when it appeared, as the opening lines to the benediction, I immediately thought how appropriate it was to use at the event, especially as the inauguration happened the day after the country commemorated Martin Luther King’s birthday. The marking of his birthday had obviously spilled over into the inauguration the following day, what many saw as a fulfillment of King’s dream.

I’m pleased that this hymn has been raised in the nation’s consciousness again, and I hope people discover it again or for the first time and see how wonderful it is. It’s worth looking at all the words here and how relevant they were for the inauguration and our time. The words have not grown outdated or trite either, which makes them so enduring and relevant.

Lift every voice and sing,
'Til earth and heaven ring,
Ring with the harmonies of Liberty;
Let our rejoicing rise
High as the listening skies,
Let it resound loud as the rolling sea.
Sing a song full of the faith that the dark past has taught us,
Sing a song full of the hope that the present has brought us;
Facing the rising sun of our new day begun,
Let us march on 'til victory is won.

Stony the road we trod,
Bitter the chast'ning rod,
Felt in the days when hope unborn had died;
Yet with a steady beat,
Have not our weary feet
Come to the place for which our fathers sighed?
We have come over a way that with tears has been watered,
We have come, treading our path through the blood of the slaughtered,
Out from the gloomy past,
'Til now we stand at last
Where the white gleam of our bright star is cast.

God of our weary years,
God of our silent tears,
Thou who has brought us thus far on the way;
Thou who has by Thy might
Led us into the light,
Keep us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest, our hearts drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed beneath Thy hand,
May we forever stand,
True to our God,
True to our native land.

Otherwise, there’s not a whole lot more I can write about from our vantage point here in Kenya on Obama’s inauguration. Obviously Kenya is very proud to be able to claim a piece of his past, and the months leading up to the election and his inauguration have been inspiring and exciting for Kenyans. The country is even going as far as calling him a “son.” The news about Obama has been appearing on the front pages of the country’s newspapers for the past several days, every day with a big photo. There were big celebrations in his father’s village yesterday, which hosted a lot of visitors. We didn’t go out to celebrate the event yesterday or go anywhere to watch the inauguration. We all sat at home in front of the TV over dinner and kept Lexi awake past her bedtime to watch the event and Obama’s speech. Obviously she didn’t know what was going on or the significance of it all, but I want to be able to tell her when she’s older that she witnessed history being made on that day.

I’ve written about things and opinions on Obama here before, and I’ll just repeat, perhaps, something I said earlier. It’s been interesting for us to have connections and similarities to Obama, the unlikely candidate and president, the man who made history. Like him, we lived in Chicago (at least while we live outside the U.S., we say we’re from Chicago), and, strangely, we chose to live in a country where some of his roots are too. This has made it easy and fun to connect with Kenyans. Like I said before, I’m glad I’m not from some small, obscure town in the U.S. like Topeka or Boise, a place that nobody in Africa has heard of. And fortunately we’re in Kenya, and not some place like Lesotho, where people know about Obama very well. So it has been convenient from both our side and theirs to tell Kenyans when they ask where we’re from: “Chicago. You know – Obama’s city.” They immediately understand, and there’s no need to explain. And people seem excited by this. I never met one Kenyan who was supporting McCain during the election.

With the Chicago connection and my sense of history, I’m thrilled that Illinois has finally sent someone to the White House again. It’s been a long time in coming – since Lincoln. And you would think that such a big city like Chicago would have had more influence on the national stage, or that politicians from there would have become big leaders in our federal government. But it hasn’t really happened. But now Chicago has suddenly moved to the center of the U.S.’s political world, and all sorts of Chicago people are suddenly running the government (even our own Hillary has Chicago roots, although I’ve heard hardly any acknowledgement of them).

So, as I wrote for my Facebook status last night before I went to bed, I was “proud to be an Obama Kenyan, Chicagoan, American!”