Beirut: Celebrating Obama's Win

Woke up early and came over Mount Lebanon to Beirut from Damascus in a taxi with a Christian couple who sat with their one year-old daughter speaking a dialect of Aramaic...YES, Biblical Aramaic, as we ground efficently through the border posts. It costs $10 to exit Syria (you have to love whoever thought of that policy) and we were on our way, descending through orchards and bullet-marked buildings to Beirut's smoggy valley.
We stashed our stuff at the hostel in a room with two odd characters who refused to speak to us; one was reading a book called, I Was Dr. Mengel's Assistant. In the lobby a pale-skinned skinhead in dark-glasses pumped our hands with a soldier's grip, and spoke flawless Arabic. Spooky.
On our walk down to Le Chef to eat lunch, a guy called to us from the doorway of a hardware store, "Yo, homeboy, how's it going?!" I thought I was in DC cause the brother sounded Latino. But no. He continued with a welcome that was a reminder of some of the forces that have torn Lebanon apart in the last half-century:
"Welcome to OUR side of town. You guys, watch your step on THEIR side."

Later that afternoon I watched rich students making the rounds at American University of Beirut, girls with heads uncovered, talking and walking with men, wearing Western clothes. It was a far cry from Sultan Qaboos University; I didn't see any seperate corridors for female students.
At AUB, we tried to go swimming in the Mediterranean; it was a perfect November day. The female security officer gave us the rundown:
"The tunnel is closed this year, but you can jump the fence...no problem, you guys are American!"
I felt some type of way about this--a combination of guilt and confusion--was she joking? Being sarcastic? Expressing some type of recognition of the American the-world-is-my-playground attitude?

A few other things stood out about our visit: The friendliness of the people, of course--the "dragonfly bite" (Fisk's words) of hospitality and beauty; the notorious Phalangist militia headquarters down the street from our hostel; the bustle and burning trash of the Palestinian camp; the old Mercedes taxis, and the haunting images of the burned bodies of children at the memorial for the 1982 massacre of Palestinians in Sabra and Shatila by the Lebanese Christian Phalangist militia. For those looking for more information on Lebanon and modern Beirut, I can do no better than to recommend Robert Fisk's work Pity The Nation (At least until my colleague GP unleashes his cold-blooded analysis of Lebanon's agricultural sector on the world.)

Ferouz sang of Beirut:
to Beirut--peace to Beirut with all my heart
and kisses--to the sea and clouds
To the rock of a city that looks like an old sailor's face.
From the soul of her people she makes wine
From their sweat she makes bread and jasmine.
So how did it come to taste of smoke and fire?

The following day, I stood with a group of Americans in the Captain's Cabin bar as they cheered their asses off at 7 o'clock in the morning. We watched bleary-eyed, as Barack Hussein Obama became the next president of the United States. A change had come. Peace to America with all my heart and to Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran, and Congo, and Sudan and every forgotten corner of the globe where they huddled over TVs and radios listening to President Obama's moving acceptance speech.

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Obama rais mteule wa Marekani

BBC News (source)
Imeandikwa na Hassan Mhelela, Washington DC.

Barack Obama, mgombea kupitia chama cha Democrat, amechaguliwa kuwa rais mteule wa Marekani, akiwa ni mweusi wa kwanza katika historia ya taifa hilo kubwa duniani.Kwa mujibu wa matokeo ya awali.

"Imekuwa ni subira ya muda mrefu, lakini leo... mabadiliko yameishukia Marekani," rais huyo mteule aliueleza umati wa watu uliokuwa ukimshangilia katika viwanja vya Grant mjini Chicago.

Mpinzani wake, Bw John McCain alikubali kushindwa kwa kusema: "Ninamhusudu sana Bw Obama". Akatoa wito kwa wafuasi wake kuonyesha nia njema kwa rais mpya.

Kwa hakika matokeo hayo ya uchaguzi yatakuwa na mrindimo mzito kwa siasa za Marekani.

Anakadiriwa kuwa ameshinda kura za kutosha kumhakikishia ushindi wa kumbwaga hasimu wake John McCain wa chama cha Republican.

Wakati wa kuandika taarifa hii Bw Obama amepata kura 338 kati ya 538, za wajumbe wa kumchagua rais - electoral voters.John McCain alikuwa na kura 159.

Bw Obama alifika katika uwanja wa Grant akiwa na mgombea mwenza Joe Biden, kutoa hotuba yenye uzito wa kipekee.

"Endapo kuna yoyote hapa ambaye bado ana mashaka kwamba Marekani si mahali kwenye kutoa fursa kwa kila jambo, ambaye bado anajiuliza endapo ndoto ya wahenga wetu bado inaendelea katika kizazi chetu, ambaye bado anahoji nguvu ya demokrasia yetu, usiku wa leo ndilo jibu kwako," Bw Obama alieleza.

Alieleza kuwa amepigiwa simu muhimu kutoka kwa Bw McCain.Akamsifu mkongwe huyo wa vita vya Vietnam, "kuwa kiongozi jasiri na asiye mbinafsi".

Ushindi mzito


Bw Obama akiwa na familia yake baada ya hotuba ya kuitikia ushindi.
Bw Obama ni rais wa kwanza mweusi wa Marekani
Bw Obama alikwapua majimbo muhimu ya Pennsylvania na Ohio, kabla ya kufikisha idadi ya kura 270 za wajumbe wanaotakiwa kumpa rais ushindi kwa mujibu wa mfumo wa 'electoral college', kisha zikaja taarifa kuwa pia ameshinda California na mengine kadhaa.

Halafu zikafuatia habari kwamba ameshinda Florida, Virginia na Colorado - katika uchaguzi wa mwaka 2004 yote yalimpigia kura mgombea wa chama cha Republican - sasa ameyabadilisha kuwa majimbo ya Democrat.

Hata hivyo inaonyesha hakuna tofauti kubwa kati ya wagombea hao katika kura zilizopigwa na wananchi, wakiwa wameachana kwa asilimia chache.

Licha ya kushinda kiti cha rais, chama cha Democrat kimeongeza uwingi wa viti katika baraza la Congress.
Another blogger announces the news

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Mandela, Obama, and the Post-racial Age

Interesting take from a giant in the field of African Studies. Post racial? I think the Swahili word, 'bado' captures my response succinctly. That is, in English, "Not yet." Because there are enough Americans out there not searching for a postracial age, and indeed quite nervous about the possibility. Interesting idea about 'low-hate retention' cultures, though.

by Prof. Ali A. Mazrui
The Daily Monitor
Nelson Mandela and Barack Obama are potential icons of a post-racial age which is unfolding before our eyes. Mandela has become the most respected Black man by all races in world history.

Obama stands a chance of becoming the most trusted Black man in US history. No African-American has ever come so close to winning the US presidency. But no African-American could have approached so close to winning the US presidency without an unprecedented level of trust from a sizable part of the white electorate.

A major cause of the Mandela-Obama respective successes lies in their embodying a short memory of racial hatred, and their impressive readiness to forgive historical adversaries. They have both illustrated a remarkable capacity to transcend historical racial divides.

Cultures differ in hate retention. Some nurse their grievances for generations. Others are intensely hostile in the midst of a conflict, but as soon thereafter, they display a readiness to forgive, even if not always to forget. The Armenians, Irish and Jews fall in this category.

Armenians were butchered in large numbers by the Ottoman Turks in 1915 – 1916. This story of the Armenian martyrdom of World War I has been transmitted with passion from generation to generation.

Armenians are still demanding justice from Turkey nearly a hundred years after the massacres. Similarly, the Irish have long memories of grievance. Clashes occur in Northern Ireland virtually every year concerning marches that commemorate ‘Orange Conflicts’ in the seventeenth century. Jews also have strong collective memories of the Holocaust and other outbursts of European anti-Semitism.

Mandela came from a culture illustrative of Africa’s short memory of hate. That culture is far from being pacifist. Wars and inter-ethnic conflicts have been part of Africa’s experience before European colonization and decades after independence.

What is different about African cultures is relatively low level of hate retention. Obama’s tolerance may be due to personal multi-culturalism. He had a white American mother, a Black Kenyan father, and an Indonesian step-father.

His cultural ancestry includes Luo culture, Islam and Black American Christianity. Mandela’s life passed through stages. His early days as a nationalist were characterized by a belief in non-violent resistance. In a sense, he carried the torch of South Africa’s Albert Luthuli and Mahatma Gandhi. Sharpeville was a major blow to his belief in passive resistance.

By the time that Mandela was having afternoon tea with the unrepentant widow of the founder of apartheid, Hendrick Verwoerd, he had tough acts to follow in African magnanimity. There were precedents of forgiveness that he followed and improved upon.

Post-colonial Africa had produced other instances of short memory of hate. Kenya’s Jomo Kenyatta, once condemned by a British colonialist as a “leader of darkness and death” was unjustly imprisoned in a remote part of the country.

When he finally emerged from prison on the eve of independence, he proclaimed “suffering without bitterness.” He proceeded to transform Kenya into a staunchly pro-Western country.

In November 1965, colonial Southern Rhodesia’s Ian Smith launched his Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain, unleashing a bitter Zimbabwe civil war. Yet, he lived to sit in a parliament of Black-ruled Zimbabwe and was not subjected to postwar vendetta. Again, Africa’s short memory of hate at work. In the late 1960s, Nigeria waged a highly publicized civil war that cost nearly a million lives. The Federal side won that war but was uniquely magnanimous towards the defeated Biafrans. Yet, another manifestation of Africa’s short memory of hatred.

For his part, when Mandela was finally released from prison in 1990, this most illustrious of all Africa’s liberation fighters embarked on a mission of healing and forgiving. This former hero of mobilization leadership became a paragon of the reconciliation style of leadership. He became the greatest of all African examples of prolonged reconciliation, an exemplar of African short memory of hate.

Obama illustrated his post-racial tolerance by denouncing his firebrand pastor, Jeremiah Wright, and leaving his own radicalized church. Obama is more of an ideological liberal than a moral Gandhian. Indeed, Obama is less of a Gandhian than Martin Luther King, Jr. was. But in their different ways, Mandela, Obama and King have all been part of the search for a post-racial age.

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