Oh, for an Obama we can call our own ...

There was a bittersweet sense of defiant jubilation when Barack Obama was finally declared president-elect of the United States.

The elation pouring out of every corner of Kenya (and most of the world) was genuine and heartfelt, and the tears were of joy and awe as we realised we were witnessing a soaring moment of history.

What tempered the emotion was the awareness that we were enjoying this at a certain remove.

Obama is an inspiration, and his victory a deeply affecting one, but he’s not our president — our claims on him ring hollow, and the true beneficiaries of the revolution (and its true authors) are people who live 16,000 kilometres from here.

Yet our expressions of hope and elation signify a yearning for something — for an Obama we can call our own, without the compromise of celebrating a foreign leader.

This yearning expressed itself in different ways. Those of us who think ourselves as more sophisticated debated the Obama presidency in air-conditioned halls and television studios, our gravitas cautioning Africans against unseemly celebration and unwarranted hopes.

Intellectual sobriety was supposed to triumph over atavistic longings. Those who weren’t buying such pomposity went ahead and let it all hang out.

Young people in Kisumu, who could not wait for Americans to cast their ballots, went ahead and conducted an election of their own, in what will remain one of the enduring images of the Obama miracle (and to make it even more surreal, there were people who actually “voted” for John McCain, and those “votes” were duly counted).

The hunger, then, is deep-seated.

We yearn for our own Obama, given the fact that the one we could have had is the one we let slip away.

But dig deeper into this longing — take it apart — and the questions become less simple, in a way that is less easy to answer. When we seem to be seeking our own Obama, what exactly are we looking for?

Is it Obama the embodiment of the “yes, we can” philosophy (a notion as fuzzy or as concrete as you want to make it)? Triumph of bootstraps over adversity? Soaring rhetoric over muddy reality?

Kenyans, like any other people, are willing to be deflowered with sweet words sweetly said.

Which perhaps explained our fondness a few years ago for Michael Wamalwa, a politician as vacuous as any other, but one able, if only for a while, to seduce with a well-turned phrase. The cold light of morning, however, tends to reveal the depth of eloquence (or lack thereof).

Seduction when you’re clear-eyed is much harder to pull off, and only succeeds when you can back it up.