Ancestral Homeland Celebrates Obama’s Win

VPM | By Gwen Thompkins

Published November 5, 2008 at 4:35 PM EST

Updated July 11, 2023

STEVE INSKEEP, Host:

Throughout this morning we’ve been hearing responses to Barack Obama’s election from around the world. In a moment we’ll go to Mexico City. First, we will travel to Barack Obama’s ancestral home in western Kenya. NPR’s Gwen Thompkins reports from Kogelo.

(SOUNDBITE OF KOGELO VILLAGERS SINGING)

THOMPKINS: We’re up 10 bulls and counting. The villagers, who are neighbors of the Obama family, have offered 10 bulls for a feast later today, and more offers are coming. Food is the greatest gift here. This is some of the most fertile farmland in all of Kenya where mangos, bananas, corn, and tomatoes grow among red-budded flame trees. Sarah Obama is the 86-year-old paternal grandmother of the president-elect and a farmer herself. She says they will eat so much food tonight they’ll even be chewing the water.

THOMPKINS: (Foreign language spoken)

THOMPKINS: She says that she’s very happy about what has happened. And she’s happy not just for herself, but for the whole world.

THOMPKINS: That’s Mr. Obama’s Kenyan sister, Ouma, as interpreter. The Obama family in particular have been at the center of a two-year media blitz. And as a sign of the strain, or perhaps as a sign of being 86 years old, Sarah Obama took a nap before facing reporters outside her tidy, little, blue-roofed house. She says she plans to attend the inauguration in January, but may die of happiness at the airport. Otherwise, Ouma Obama says they don’t expect life to change much with an Obama in the White House.

THOMPKINS: As a family, we support Barack, but we have no expectations because we are very, very clear that this is something that he is doing in America and that he’s an American person.

THOMPKINS: The Obamas are of the Luo tribe, and this area of the country is home to the Luos. But in Kenya there has never been a Luo president. For years people here have said a Luo has a better chance of becoming president of the United States then the president of Kenya. And apparently they were right. Gwen Thompkins, NPR News, Kenya. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

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Gwen Thompkins

Gwen Thompkins hosts Music Inside Out on WWNO in New Orleans.

Up until recently, she was an NPR foreign correspondent covering East Africa. She was based in Nairobi, Kenya, reporting on the countries, people and happenings from the Horn to the heart of Africa.

Since arriving in Africa in 2006, Thompkins has reported on the toppling of the Islamic Courts Union government in Somalia, ethnic violence in Kenya, insecurity in Darfur and Sudan's first nationwide elections in a generation. She has also written a series on the Nile River, traveling from the shores of Lake Victoria to the Mediterranean Sea. Heading south, she has reported stories from South Africa and Antarctica.

From 1996 to 2006, Thompkins was senior editor of Weekend Edition Saturday. Working with Scott Simon she learned — among other things — that when a horse walks into a bar, the bartender has to say, "So, why the long face?"

While at Weekend Edition, Thompkins also reported from her hometown of New Orleans. In the months following Hurricane Katrina, she and senior producer Sarah Beyer Kelly filed stories on the aftermath of the storm and the rebuilding efforts.

Before coming to NPR, Thompkins worked as a reporter and editor at The Times-Picayune newspaper.

A graduate of Newcomb College at Tulane University, Thompkins majored in history and Soviet studies. While on a Thomas J. Watson Fellowship, she was in Eastern Europe when the Berlin Wall fell. Fortunately, she says, she was not injured.

See stories by Gwen Thompkins