US:Dozens of camera crews have travelled to meet Barack Obama's family, writes Rob Crillyin Kogelo, Kenya
LITTLE HAS changed in the tiny homestead where Barack Obama's father once herded goats. Chickens still peck for grubs, mangoes ripen slowly in the sun and pots bubble over an open cooking fire.
Only a television aerial held 20ft in the air by a spindly wooden pole marks out the home of the woman the Democratic presidential nominee calls Granny Sarah. The news that Obama had finally seen off his opponent in a marathon campaign arrived in the early hours with a telephone call from a relative in South Africa.
"I'm just happy to see everyone here," said Sarah Hussein Onyango (86), as neighbours and relatives began arriving. "It feels as if the hard work has been finished now and the rest will be easy."
At times the small crowd broke into song, adapting a traditional verse of their Luo tribe. "Obama our son, Obama is coming, Open for him the way," they sang. Dozens of camera crews, politicians and diplomats have made the journey to the tiny village of Kogelo in the far west of Kenya to meet Obama's Kenyan family in the past year.
Inside the simple brick house is decorated with photographs of Obama and campaign posters. Outside the recent rains have turned this corner of Kenya a lush green.
There are no paved roads or mains electricity for three miles. Two months ago her family clubbed together for a television and solar panels so that Sarah could watch the meteoric rise of her grandson.
"Barry looks so pale," she said yesterday. "I know the campaign has been long but I wish he could come here for a holiday so I could look after him."
Sarah was the third wife of Obama's grandfather. She brought up his father, also called Barack Obama, as her own before he won a scholarship to the US.
Sarah said attempts to question her grandson's Christian faith - including the photograph of him dressed in a Somali ceremonial outfit - had been upsetting to all the family.
"Whether we are Muslims or Christians doesn't matter," she said. "People are free to believe whatever they want but we belong together as a family."
A few things have changed in the Obama home since their son shot to prominence in the US. The potholed mud road has been smoothed and granny Sarah has a new water pump. The school next door has been tidied up and renamed the Senator Obama Kogelo Secondary School.
In a country where politics is a byword for patronage and corruption, many believe a Kenyan in the White House would bring a huge bonanza for the country as Obama looks after his own.
Nicholas Rajola, a distant cousin who fought and lost a parliamentary seat in Kenya's general election, said he had been working to lower expectations.
Instead, he said Obama's messages of hope and change had special resonance in Kenya, which has suffered months of ethnic violence after flawed elections. Kenya's politicians had a lot to learn from their brother in the US, he added.
"When we visited him there the man insisted we use his seat in his office. That's something a Kenyan politician would never allow."