[ By: Charles Onyango-Obbo ]
I think we are in danger of getting carried away by Obama and forgetting to do one of the things that has enabled Africans survive all sorts of hardships — have a good laugh.

Over the last two weeks, we read serious stuff from clever men and women discussing what US President Barack Obama’s visit to Africa (Ghana, that is) means.

Would he make some earth-shaking announcement that would open a whole new chapter in US-Africa relations?

What was the significance of his decision not to visit his fatherland, Kenya?

Then, while he is in Ghana and after, the commentators and pundits continued to dissect. Oh, they said, Obama went to great length to appeal to the African youth and try and inspire them to seize the future and save our long-suffering continent from corrupt and thieving leaders.

I think we are in danger of getting carried away by Obama and forgetting to do one of the things that has enabled Africans survive all sorts of hardships — have a good laugh.

I asked myself what my maternal great grandfather, from the comfort of his grave, was thinking of Obama.

He was a warrior and a dedicated cattle keeper, who took great pride in his herd. Even by the standards of his times, the early 20th Century, my great grandfather was considered to have quite unusual views.

For example, he took intellectual property rights too seriously. As a result, whenever he saw an animal that resembled any of his bulls anywhere in nearby villages, he would consider them to have been fathered by one of his champion bulls.

So, claiming copyright, he would seize it and take it to his kraal.

Clearly he would have been scandalised by Obama. As the world’s most powerful man, and because he has roots in Kogelo, in Kenya’s Nyanza, the US president is also the biggest African chief ever. But there was nothing African about Obama in Ghana.

First, African chiefs never travel empty-handed. People know that you are a chief going by what you left in their mouths. I watched carefully, and Obama was greeting Ghanaians “like that” without leaving anything in any of the outstretched palms.

A modern African chief would travel with suitcases full of money, which he would “pour” wherever he went. Let us look at a case from Uganda.

Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni came to power in 1986, after a five-year war based in an area called Luwero Triangle, about an hour’s drive from Kampala.

In 1985 the Museveni rebels set out on a long trek toward the west, from where they regrouped and begun the big push eastward that eventually handed them victory.

Some years ago, Museveni went on a highly sentimental pilgrimage with some of his comrades in the war to retrace that journey.

Peasants, some of who had given the rebels food and other support back then, turned out and stood on the roadside to greet the pilgrims.

Museveni was aware that he was returning as a chief, not a penniless rebel leader, so he carried sacks of money.

Everywhere he stopped to greet the people, he showered them with envelopes stuffed with money. That is the African way. By those standards, Obama was a failure.

Then, and this was the definitive one, he went back to America without a Ghanaian wife. My great grandfather would have been appalled.

The elders would have either accused his wife Michelle of having “bewitched” him so that he could not look at another beauty, or they would have complained that “Michelle was the one wearing the trousers in the house.”

In the good old days when we had real African chiefs and kings, wherever they travelled, the tribes along their path gave them brides.

This served many purposes. First, it helped keep the peace, because a powerful chief was less likely to attack his in-law tribe.

Secondly, it was an instrument for redistributing wealth. Since land, fishes, forests, name it, belonged to the king, there were two ways of getting to share the wealth.

You either joined the king’s army and rose to be a great general, and he would reward you with land and forests; or you ensured that your daughter got married into the palace.

If the king were happy with her, he would give her clan or tribe goodies. Otherwise, there was no fair system for distributing the kingdom’s wealth.

However, Obama did not escape my great grandfather’s Africa altogether. He (and many Africans for that matter) might not have realised it, but those female traditional dancers who put on a show for him — and entertain the VIPs on big national days — are a rather embarrassing relic of this past.

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