A Reuters television news clip that captures Barack Obama calling Kenya his “home” has added to the mystery surrounding the president’s place of birth.
The clip – archived by the British-based news and content provider ITN – shows Obama with then-Kenyan presidential candidate Raila Odinga at an Aug. 26, 2006, rally against AIDS.
“I’m so proud to come back home and see all you people are here,” Obama says.
WND reported last month Obama’s step-grandmother in Kenya, Sarah Obama, has a 2005 poster calendar on the wall of her home that proclaims “The Kenyan Wonder-Boy in the U.S.: Senator Barack Obama.”
The staged public event was held at the Kenya Medical Research Institute in Kisumu, Kenya, about 37 miles from Sarah Obama’s home and his father’s gravesite in the village of Kogelo.
The event was also filmed and recorded in a documentary, “Senator Obama Goes to Africa,” which shows the enthusiastic reception Obama received on his 2006 tour of Africa, his third visit to Kenya.
The pro-Obama documentary, designed to support his political career, appears to begin coverage of the event after Obama said, “I’m so proud to come back home.”
At the event, Obama and his wife Michelle took an AIDs test to demonstrate to the local people that the test was safe.
As Obama spoke, Odinga, a Luo tribesman like Obama’s father, stood prominently with him. Odinga was contesting President Mwai Kibaki for leadership of the African nation.
Kibaki criticized Odinga, a member of the Orange Democratic Movement, for appearing with Obama in a place where he was seeking votes.
In introducing the AIDS testing event, the documentary noted that in Kenya 1.3 million people, or 6.7 percent of the population, are living with HIV/AIDS. Another 1 million children are orphaned due to AIDS.
“One of the reasons we are here today is because HIV/AIDS have ravaged the community,” Obama told the assembled crowd. “Too many people, too many children have gotten sick. So one of the things we’re going to do here in front of this van today is that my wife and I are going to get tested for HIV/AIDS, because if you know your status, you can prevent illness.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control suggested to Obama that as many as 500,000 Kenyans would take the HIV/AIDS test after they saw him and his wife safely take the test themselves.
More importantly, however, Kenyans viewed the event as Obama injecting himself into the presidential contest on the side of Islamic Luo tribesman Odinga.
Skillfully, Obama and Odinga had transformed a health message delivered by a foreign politician into a low-key stump speech in which Obama was effectively endorsing Odinga’s candidacy, simply by how Odinga was positioned and filmed at the event.
The event was discussed in the 2008 New York Times bestselling book, “The Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality,” on pages 94-96.
