Today, a girlfriend of ours went to the National Theatre to watch Obama, The Musical. She reported that it was pathetic, really pathetic but because we are in that special celebratory mood, it will continue to punish Kenyans for all of 8 days.

The news channels on television have all sent crews to the USA to report on the elections.  You would think we'd have sophisticated Kenyans to report by now, but it's the trite, black race, whiterace, arguments that plague almost all the Kenyan analysis of the US election.  There are trips to Kogelo to interview his grandmother and asinine comparisons of the Illinois Senator to his ‘cousin' our Prime Minister.

Now, lost in all this writing, this media reporting, is any analysis of Obama's political inclinations or his policy positions, what his candidature actually means and why many Americans (and Europeans are so excited about it). Whenever I see a horde of Republicans  calling Obama a foreigner, or a Muslim, or anti-American, or a baby-killer, or a lover of homosexuals, whenever I see someone bashing the ink out of his bible and proclaiming America a chosen nation, a force of good on earth, whenever I see Republican Americans  proclaiming the virtues of torture, or why state wire-tapping is essential, or when I read articles promulgating the virtues of privatization, lamenting the interference of environmentalists and screeching about how lazy and deserving of their lot the poor are, and why welfare only leads to sloth and a punishment of industry, I am reminded of Kenyans, the vast majority of Kenyans.

The desire for a leader who is manly and tough, one who is in touch with the people's spirit, not aloof like Senator Obama, the desire for a leader who takes no nonsense, one who loves Israel and can take battle to Islam (consider our attitude towards Somalia or Northern Sudan); all these are themes that influence our politics here, and all these are important tenets of the Republican worldview we claim to oppose as we back our son Senator Obama.

Earlier today, I was at a pub with two new friends. I mean, I just met them, and they were to borrow a phrase from Obama, nice enough. They were sexist, extremely misogynistic, insensitive, unsophisticated, and still passionately pro-Obama. I was repulsed by the things they said about their wives, their general aggression and their lewd behavior, especially towards the hostesses.

Yesterday, on Citizen News was a report exposing fraudulent beggars (mostly poor women feigning blindness to get public sympathy). The news anchor posed, ‘have you out of pity been tricked into parting with your hard earned money to someone in the street? Think twice before you do it next time, they may not be what they seem to be.'

This is Kenya; and yet, with no sense of the irony, we celebrate Obama. We declare him a victory over racism and oppression. We say that he can only lose the election if Americans confirm their chauvinistic essence.  We forget in our analyses that Obama is only where he is today because millions of white Americans have supported his candidature. We neglect that in supporting Obama in spite of our often violent opposition to what he stands for; it is we who are paying primary allegiance to race. This Obama we so wildly cheer, and who we claim as our own and an exemplar besides, espouses not much of what characterizes the moral perspective on the world we embrace.

In fact, as McCain and cohort like to point out, he is just about as liberal a Senator as there is in the US. In a land as avowedly pro-American as ours, and anti-Arab, as supportive of the great assault on freedom that is the war on terror, it is amazing that there are not more McCain supporters about. In a land where the outstanding majority of people are extremely homophobic and intolerant of women's rights over their bodies, in a country where the majority people are Creationists and worse overall religious fundamentalists (see recent media reports on prostitution and what women wear  to Church), it is shocking that Obama does not have us declaring him the anti-Christ. It is not surprising on the other hand, that Republican Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin's exorcist pastor was Kenyan.

But Obama, even Hussein Obama, is black, and that blackness is a convenient mask behind which we can conceal him. This tribalism we can tolerate, it is even a virtue, he is ours. Rejoice, a king is born, a messiah is given, he will wipe away every tear and cure every illness. A prince of hope, and of change.

I am not going to discount the symbolic power of his victory, especially not to African Americans still suffering the effects of centuries of exclusion and suppression. I cannot begrudge Africans, a people whose relationship with the world is predicated on group relations and an identity linked to skin color the glory that his victory will be. But Barack Obama's promise of change can mean more than just a change of government in the USA.

Even as we eagerly await the eruption of his victory, as those warm feelings overtake us and carry us past his inauguration and into his presidency, if he truly is a leader we are looking up to, may some of Barack Obama's spirit rub off on us. May his avowed cosmopolitanism, his staunch humanism, his rejection of divisive race politics, his commitment to the poor and maligned, his rejection of militarism and his respect for scholarship will be granted us. Perhaps then all this fuss will have been worth more than the speedy profits we are making off selling pins, t-shirts and caps to each other. We hope.