“But this is a streak of ignorance,” he adds. “Here in Africa we don’t think of each other as ‘half’ this or that. In an extended family, someone is your brother even if he is just in your clan. So I…am Obama.”
It is just before the rainy season, and Malik, a politician like his younger brother, is in the final hours of the race to be the governor of the southwestern county of Siaya.
Malik has taken a page from American campaigning in that, during this last, long sprint of the race, he has made it his task to be seen absolutely everywhere—just seen—and he isn’t even whistle-stopping to give speeches. He is covering ground along the dusty stripes that pass for roads here, and shining his famous name one more time upon his people. Malik’s campaign slogan, fittingly, is “Obama Here, Obama There.”
But today is a legal day of rest for all “aspirants,” as Kenyans refer to their candidates. Malik is at the world headquarters of one of his life’s grand endeavors, the Barack H. Obama Foundation—named for his father, he assures me, not his brother. Far from resting, he’s performing his tour de force of a man with things to do, conferring via cell phone with his campaign manager, shuffling notes, seeing to things—all in the hope of working to cure what he sees as “a society of the filthy rich and the dirt poor.”
To my surprise, there are no other Western journalists, no other Western people, anywhere around to observe Barack Obama’s brother. That may be because the last time national elections were held, five years ago, political mistrust and sheer tribal rage led to the deaths—often by hacking—of more than 1,000 and the displacement of hundreds of thousands of luckier people. No one knows if a slaughter will happen again this time. So it’s just me here, one potentially stupid guy. Malik seems utterly baffled to see me.
At 55, Malik is six feet two and hale. He stands with the slight stoop of an older man, a man of burdens. His walking pace is stately but also dutiful-seeming, as though he’s reluctantly climbing onstage to receive an award for something.
“My voice has given up,” he intones, to start. “There is dust all over the place here.”
You might have heard Malik’s name in late May, when the IRS scandal hit and the abnormally happy folks at Fox & Friends took the opportunity to rip into his charity. Indeed, there are some shady-seeming details—namely, that as of 2011 the foundation wasn’t registered in the States as a nonprofit group but for years had been presenting itself as one, and that when it did apply for tax-exempt status, it was approved quickly and retroactively. The heavy implication was that the American Obama had had a role in this, a charge that bordered on the ridiculous.
During a phase of their lives, Malik and Barack Obama were close. Over a span of fourteen years, on and off, Malik worked Stateside, mostly as an accountant, for Lockheed, Fannie Mae, and the American Red Cross. Being in the U.S. allowed Malik to spend some real time with his brother—even if history, geography, and who-knows-what-other would eventually fray that bond. In the day, Malik says, the two were even best men at each other’s weddings.
Ask Malik how often he and his brother talk nowadays and he boasts that it’s about once a year, as though that’s proof of their intimate bond. “Of course we’re close!” Malik says, just a bit too loudly. “I’m the one who brought him here to Kogelo in 1988! I thought it was important for him to come home and see from whence his family came—you know, his roots.”
Malik Obama would like you to understand that he’s a Man Who Knows People, and in his dwindling hours as an aspirant, he goes right ahead and makes an argument for nepotism—or, if not direct nepotism, then the benefits of fortuitous associations. His overt offer to his county’s voters is that, as a man who walks through doors, he might bring some desperately needed funding to Siaya. After all, if your rivals accuse you of trading off your family name, this is the only course. To embrace it as a strength.
