Barack Obama, the incumbent POTUS (that’s now the officially cool way to say ‘President Of The United States’), was in Kenya over the weekend for a wide-ranging state visit that has left quite a mark on Kenya, if not on all of Africa. Hundreds, if not thousands of Kenyans took to the streets to catch a glimpse of the man regarded by many to be the most powerful man in the world. If anyone in Kenya didn’t recognize before just how powerful Obama is – as is anyone else who holds the title of POTUS, for that matter – they were left with little doubt this weekend. Hundreds of Secret Service agents descended on Nairobi in the weeks leading up to the trip, checking hotels, buildings and streets for anything that could pose a threat to America’s first citizen. In the hours before Air Force One landed, Kenyan airspace was a total no-go zone.
A lot could be said about the drama around the trip (some of it a bit ridiculous, like a few people naming their children Air Force One in honor of Obama’s visit) but perhaps the most striking was a statement made by the President himself while in Nairobi. “I’m the first Kenyan-American to be president of the United States. That goes without saying,” Obama said.
Was it just something said to get the crowd of excited Kenyan youths going or did he say it sincerely, in honor of his late Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr? We’ll never know but it’s certainly valuable food for thought when it comes to issues of belonging and acceptance. Obama knows all too well what it means to have his Africanness questioned by Africans and his Americanness questioned by Americans. As a young man, he actually had to contend with very real struggles around identity, having been born to a Kenyan father and an American mother. “Obama has… written and talked about using alcohol, marijuana, and cocaine during his teenage years to ‘push questions of who I was out of my mind.'” Six and a half years into his presidency, though, he seems to have weathered the storm quite successfully but it can’t be easy. Still, as the video below shows, he is proud of his heritage.
From the time we’re born, we start on a journey that involves a huge fight to be accepted and to belong somewhere. Is that sense defined by the place of our birth or is it determined by who our parents are? Or is it an issue of possessions and influence – how much money we have or whose arm we can twist to do us a favor and get us a new passport where the grass is greener? In a world as complex, multicultural, multiracial and cosmopolitan (in some places) as the one we live in, who really belongs where? If I come and make a noise about being the owner of a piece of land, someone will come and tell me that he got there first. Before him, another will say his ancestors were born there. Looking at it that way, who can win?
Life on earth is fairly tricky at times and sometimes, no matter how much we try to fit in, there will always be someone who makes us feel as though we don’t. Someone will show up to remind us that we don’t quite meet all the criteria. Not so with God. His simple promise is that anyone, absolutely anyone, who believes in Him is adopted as His child. There are no hoops to jump through with God, just simple faith in Him. If you’re fed up of fighting to belong, God has a place for you. Click on the banner below to find out more.