NAIROBI, Kenya -- Malik Abon'go Obama yearns for the days when he and his half brother were closer.
Two decades before Barack Obama became U.S. president, Malik Obama fulfilled a pledge to their father to bring his sibling home to their village in western Kenya. Barack Obama visited the house of Barrack Hussein Obama Sr. for the first time and met other relatives, including his step-grandmother, Sarah Obama.
During the 1988 trip, Malik Obama said, he would take his "down-to-earth," then-teetotaling half brother into the bush in search of chang'aa, the illicit alcohol whose name translates as "kill me quick." The two would also play games like one in which Barack Obama would try to step on the older Malik Obama's toes.
These days, they aren't so close. Malik Obama, 57, said he's never been invited to the Obama family home in the U.S. And he's still waiting to be told by Barack Obama that he'll be visiting the land of his father's birth this month. The Kenyan presidency said the visit on Friday won't include a trip to Kogelo, 193 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi.
"From what I hear, he is coming now as the president of the United States," Malik Obama said in a June 29 interview at his home in Kogelo. "He should have at least informed us as his family."
Although the government has denied it, there is speculation in Kogelo that Barack Obama will travel there, but the status of such a trip remains unclear. Ogito Odipo, a 67-year-old flour miller, said he heard on the radio that Barack Obama would visit the village for four hours. Immaculate Achieng, 24 and owner of the one-room Nyang'oma restaurant, said she follows what the president does on television and would like for him to visit.
With more visitors knocking at the door of Sarah Obama, the government has paved the road from the city of Kisumu 43 miles away to her gate, and has connected the village to the electricity grid. Mama Sarah Obama Road, near her home, has a primary and secondary school named after Sen. Barack Obama, while a new hotel was built this year to accommodate visitors.
Sarah Obama, 94, lives across the road from Malik Obama on about 2 acres where her husband, Hussein Onyango Obama, and Barack Hussein Obama Sr. are buried. The homestead has free-range chickens and cattle roaming and is littered with mangoes that have fallen from the trees.
"Obama is coming as guest of the state and to see people of Kenya, not me," she said.
When President Obama made his first trip to Africa as president in 2013, he avoided traveling to Kenya, visiting South Africa, Senegal and neighboring Tanzania instead. Newspapers like the Nairobi-based Business Daily called that decision a snub.
At the time, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was facing trial at the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity linked to postelection violence in 2008. The charges have since been dropped.
Now, Eric Omondi, a popular comedian, has captured the public mood by calling one of his shows "Obama Homecoming." In Nairobi, the local government is cleaning streets, planting palm trees and clearing drainage tunnels in preparation for Barack Obama's arrival.
Malik Obama, who no longer drinks alcohol, reminisces about the days when he and Barack Obama would listen to music by Congolese artists like Franco and Mario, or when he served as best man at Barack Obama's wedding. The visit may be an opportunity to spend a bit more personal time with his half brother, he said.
"I would like for us to just sit down and have a vanilla ice cream or a strawberry fruit cake, just to have a nice dinner, nice steak, Caesar salad, sit down and enjoy each other," Malik Obama said. "I really don't know my nieces, Malia and Sasha, and they don't know my children either."
SundayMonday on 07/19/2015