Reviewed by: Dear President Obama: Letters from Kogelo and Beyond by Elizabeth Ochieng Onayemi Dawn M. Whitehead Onayemi, Elizabeth Ochieng. 2015. DEAR PRESIDENT OBAMA: LETTERS FROM KOGELO AND BEYOND. Kisumu, Kenya: Mountain View Publishers. 75 pp. In Dear President Obama: Letters from Kogelo and Beyond, Elizabeth Ochieng Onayemi, a graduate of Kenyatta University and teacher at the International School of Uganda, has used the genre that she terms Afro novella to create letters in which she makes Kenyans share their experiences and dreams for the future with president Barack H. Obama of the United States. This publication offers letters purported to have been written from various parts of Kenya by different male and female writers. The series begins with a fictionalized missive from a young Kenyan, who expresses the pride that the American leader inspires in people from Kogelo Village, his kith and kin. Associated with this letter is a name that bears some historicity: that writer is George Washington Mandela Okumu, named after America’s founding president, George Washington, and post-apartheid South African president Mandela. Okumu describes himself: “I am twelve years old, and I’m a standard five student at Kogelo Primary School. I am a bit older than the other students in my class[,] which is okay because I am a very short boy” (p. 5). Expressing a sentiment that many other Kenyans share, Okumu informs Obama that “the day you became the President of the United States of America was the best day of my life” (p. 7). Also from Kogelo Village is a letter supposed to have been written by Mama Magdalina Oyier. She shows her Christian background by starting thus: “Sara’s Grandson, I greet you in the name of Jesus. … By God’s grace, we are all fine here in Kogelo” (p. 10). This writer shows familiarity by invoking the first name of Obama’s Kenyan grandmother (Sara Obama), adding on the same page: “I am one of your grandmother’s best friends.” The next writer, Oloo Mbuta Masembe, begins by informing Obama of the African way of doing things: “My father used to refer to your father as his brother, so you are my brother” (p. 15). As Africans do, this writer gives Obama an African name: “Nyathiwa, we are proud of you here in Kogelo. When I heard of this communal letter to you, I decided to contribute. Unfortunately, I don’t write well. I am a class four drop [sic] out and a failure to some people but not all” (p. 15). Brenda Emily Awino’s letter was encouraged by her father: “My dad says I absolutely have to write this letter, and I must admit I think it’s kind of cool. It’s a great pleasure to write to you. My name is Brenda Emily Awino and I am part of your extended family” (p. 18). She insinuates that one must remember one’s roots: “My dad says we should remember where we come from, and I do.” And from all indications, Obama does, as he paid a visit to Kenya as a sitting President of the United States, when he ate dinner with thirty selected extended family members. He had a warm relationship with Kenyan president Uhuru Kenyatta, the son of the country’s founding president, Jomo Kenyatta (1891–1978), the famous “Burning Spear,” whose [End Page 113] Kikuyu ethnic group created and led the Mau Mau uprising against British colonial rule. About a dozen more writers appear in Onayemi’s imaginary book. Their surnames show that they are from varied Kenyan ethnic groups: Kamau, Owiti, Shah, Amollo, Abdullahi, Konchellah, and Nyangweso. Onanyemi ends her book with the poem “As I Grew Older,” by Langston Hughes (1902–1967), the famous African American poet, who in 1960 received the Spingarn Medal of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1935 received a Guggenheim Fellowship as a writer. It is a two-page poetic treat, which—like the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech—discusses a dream, in Hughes’s words, which echoes: “I have almost forgotten my dream” (p. 76). Asking to be helped to find the...
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Oct 1, 2016
Thomas More Garrett 
Open Access
