Obama in Kenya: Young people ‘inspired’ by US president

At a state dinner Saturday night, he busted some moves with Kenyan band Sauti Sol, performing the lipala, a popular dance among the nation’s youths.

Obama’s grandfather was a cook for the British army under colonial rule and was forced to carry a humiliating domestic-servant passbook that referred to the grown man as a “boy” and included his number of teeth.

That’s how Auma Obama described her brother’s first visit to Kenya almost three decades ago. Under different circumstances, or delivered by someone else, the speech could have sounded like intrusive moralizing by a foreign president.

“A magical lecture”, declared Kenya’s Standard newspaper. On the final day of his visit in Kenya, Obama laid out his vision for Kenya’s…

But senior aides to the president said they aren’t optimistic that there will be a breakthrough at the meeting set for today or before an August. 17 deadline set by the negotiators.

“The parties have shown themselves to be utterly indifferent to their country and their people, and that is a hard thing to rectify”, the official said. Those are bad traditions: “they need to change”. “I believe in the principle of treating people equally under the law and that they are deserving of equal protection under the law and that the State should not discriminate against the people based on their sexual orientation”, Obama said.

On corruption, Mr Obama said ordinary Kenyans were being “consistently sapped by corruption at a high level and at a low level”, and called for “visible prosecutions”.

“You are poised to play a bigger role in this world”, the president said.

“It was awesome”, Bramwel Rotich, a 24-year-old student, said after the speech.

On his first trip to Nairobi at 27, he was trying to find his luggage at the airport when a woman saw his name and asked if he was related to his father, whom she had known, the president recalled. In Kibera, the city’s largest slum, a few draped American flags from their homes and stores. Having spoken frankly in Kenya on human rights and corruption, Obama is now expected to address Ethiopia’s – and Africa’s – democracy deficit.

“My hope is that a few of the philanthropic work that I do after my presidency is over builds on a few of the things that we’ve been doing now”. “That is not the case”.

US President Barack Obama reiterated his message of optimism for Kenya during an address at a stadium in the capital Nairobi.

Obama had been warned both by Kenyan politicians and mainstream church pastors that he should not “preach” on gay marriage acceptance during his visit. “That, by definition, makes it complicated”. He was joined by his national security adviser, Susan Rice, who was the top U.S. diplomat to Africa at the time of the bombing.

The president left Kenya Sunday afternoon, pausing longer than normal atop the stairs to Air Force One to wave to the crowd, a huge grin on his face.

The US State Department has noted Ethiopia’s “restrictions on freedom of expression”, as well as “politically motivated trials” and the “harassment and intimidation of opposition members and journalists”.