Word: baracks
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...push through reforms after bloody post-election violence in early 2008. Even worse for a cash-strapped Kenya, the U.S. promised to scrutinize the government's requests to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. This is not the close friendship that Kenya had in mind when Barack Obama, a man whose father was born in Kenya, won the U.S. presidency. Kenya declared it a national holiday when Obama's victory was announced, and his visage is ever present here - on gum wrappers, in airline magazines and, briefly, on a beer label...
...some in Kenya's government believe that "Brother Barack," as he is known, has not reciprocated the love that they feel for him. Nor has Obama made good on their hopes that his Kenyan ancestry might lead him to give their country some kind of preferential treatment. Instead, Obama seems determined to use what influence he has in the way a parent might withhold love from an errant child. "I sometimes think Obama's roots in Kenya can actually be a problem," Prime Minister Raila Odinga said in a recent newspaper interview. "Kenya is always being held to different standards...
...belief in Kibaki's circles that Obama was sympathetic to them, and they can't understand why he's delivering all this bad news," Mwalimu Mati, head of an anti-corruption organization called Mars Group, tells TIME. "On the Odinga side, supporters are saying, 'Why on earth is Barack Obama being so hard on us?' " (Read about Kogelo, the hometown of Barack Obama's father...
...however, Washington's potential ban on U.S. entry for 15 Kenyan senior officials is the latest - and most blatant - sign that Kenyan leaders may have misjudged their Brother Barack. Letters written by Assistant Secretary of State Johnny Carson were delivered to 15 senior government leaders who were deemed to be moving too slowly on reforms. (Their names were not released.) Chief among the government's failings has been its inability to prosecute the government officials who are believed to have orchestrated the violence. In the letters, Carson wrote, "I am writing to inform you that your future relationship with...
While there was some public annoyance with Washington's action, the government's attempt to appeal to Kenyan nationalism may have backfired. Regular Kenyans seem to think that Brother Barack was only doing his familial duty. An unofficial television poll after the news of the U.S. letters broke found that 82% of respondents disagreed with the Foreign Ministry's move to summon Ranneberger. And no one is more critical of Kenya's leaders than Kenyans themselves. "The government's attitude has been that this can't be happening unless somebody's inciting Obama and that it's got nothing...