Geographically, Freetown Sierra Leone is far away from the US campaign trail. But spiritually, it seems I never left America. Obamamania, naturally in the motherland (or in Barack’s Obama’s case the fatherland), is alive and well.
No disrespect to George W Bush who’s also in Africa, but he’s not the American politician most people here are talking about. If Sierra Leoneans or other Africans had a vote, it would be one of those lopsided 80% majorities to this son of a son of Africa.
It started before the plane landed. Alvin, a Sierra Leonean from Atlanta, was wearing a bright red t-shirt with a picture of Obama’s face on it. Obama was all his relatives back home could talk about, he told me. Interest in an American election had never been this high, and he had never known them to follow an election this early. “The brother can do it,” he said.
Still on the plane, Mohammed from New York was more difficult to spot as an Obama supporter. No Barack t-shirt for him. He wore a West African dashiki style shirt under a suit jacket. We struck up a conversation while the plane had stopped in Dakar Senegal, and that’s when I found out he was a New Yorker. I asked him about Barack. He was less sure than Alvin, but what he was mostly concerned about was Obama’s safety. “I almost don’t want him to get it, because I’m sure they’ll assassinate him.”
I’m taking time out from the campaign trail to run a journalism training course in Freetown. Paul, a business writer from Uganda’s leading daily is one of the experts on the course and as close as I’ll get this time to a Kenyan take on things. “The interest in this election is very high in Uganda,” he told me over a Star beer. “Some people I know are even suggesting to their friends that they each contribute online, to Obama’s campaign.”
After Barack Obama had notched his tenth victory in a row in Hawaii, one headline in the US asked if it was time Hillary started to panic. Africans I spoke with see it another way. Is it time that they, and Barack Obama, start to think the unthinkable?
Hlonipa Mokoena, a South African who teaches anthropology at Columbia University in New York, told me that it’s time America got used to something that had been an African reality for more than 40 years – a Black man running things.
“I think it is a big deal for Africans, because it affirms that history of African peoples as a disapora.
“Obamamania is all over the African continent, friends form South Africa are writing to me wanting to know more about Obama.
“I think if he does become the American president, in many ways he’ll become the African president.”
The pollsters say Obama has got the African American vote locked down. Looks like he’s got the African vote too.
