For the past few weeks I've been doing small community development projects and co-instructing a course on international development in the small town of Kayanga, Tanzania - Karagwe District. Smashed between Rwanda, Uganda, and Lake Victoria, this place has seen its share of global disasters. This is an area ignored by travel guides and disconnected from much of the continent. News travels slowly here, and most families have been farming these lands since well before Livingstone rolled through. But thanks to this new internet cafe that I'm sitting in, the sporadic television set, and the two new radio stations in town, Kayanga is connected to the world, and the people here have an important message for you...
Walking down the dusty dirt streets wearing my Obama shirt, people call out "karibu mzungu - Obama, NDIO!. (Welcome white person, Obama, YES!). Of course, I stop to engage these people, always to find that they have been listening to the news and have been following the election for many months. Not surprisingly they always support Obama. To them, it's not about his speeches (which they know are good), his stance on the global economy (which they have confidence in) or his African background (which they are proud of); rather, they love him here because they feel, like never before, that they will matter in the eyes of America if he is elected president.
While Barack Obama's grandfather is not from here (or anywhere near here), the people in this small town think of him as their own. He seems to represent a new way for America, a man connected to this forgotten continent, and the future of 3rd world prosperity. Surprisingly, people know not only his African roots, but also of his commitment to ending the war in Iraq, and increasing diplomacy to the forgotten regions of the world. He's much more than an African to these people; he's a global citizen - perhaps the first American to truly represent or at least pretend to represent the hopes and dreams of the developing world.
I've travelled to 49 countries in my life. I've been to five continents, and spoken with thousands of people in hundreds of villages. I've never seen this level of excitement for anything "Western" before. More than Coca-Cola, cell-phones and 50 Cent combined, the people of this community trust Senator Obama. It's true that no one I've talked to thinks that he'll end the AIDS epidemic or prevent malaria deaths or stop the droughts or pave the roads or bring clean water here. But they do believe that he might consider these things before he spends US taxpayer money on bombs and border fences.
The people here send few messages to the world, but from this tiny little mud brick room, with this old IBM computer, on this frustratingly slow internet, they'd like the world to know that they are with you; they stand with Barack Obama and look forward to changing this planet with you.