Politics

by Mike Flannery
(CBS) CBS 2 Political Editor Mike Flannery is traveling with Sen. Barack Obama on his trip to Africa. Here, he recounts his travels in the senator's homeland.


On Safari: Aug. 30, 2006
Dateline: Masai Mara Game Reserve – No matter how many times you may have seen something like it on the Discovery Channel or in National Geographic, the spectacle of a lion stalking, chasing and then killing and eating a wildebeest on the African savannah is still breataking.

It's also rarely seen. The Kenyan native who was driving me and my camera operator, Marcus Richardson, across the grassy plains here Wednesday in search of big game to photograph said he'd only seen it once in the four years he's been doing this. While we missed the initial attack, we arrived a few moments later, in time to see the lioness sink her teeth into the neck of her prey to assure that it was dead. Then she began feeding, a bloody spectacle of another sort.

Less than a mile away, driver Tom Otieno helped us find another feeding frenzy. Three female lions and three cubs ripping into another freshly killed creature.

"The circle of life," pronounced U.S. Sen. Barack Obama.

Obama's been here twice before, as a private citizen. He actually camped out on the Masai Mara on a previous trip. Most of the reporters accompanying him on this trip had never been to any part of Africa, until now. I found it to be much more complex than I had expected. Cheek by jowl with appalling poverty and deprivation, there is surprising sophistication. While some seem lost in despair, both in big city Nairobi and in rural Nyanza province, others are focused on tomorrow. Next to subsistence farmers near the Masai Mara Game Preserve who look to be only tangentially linked to the money economy, if at all, there is internet access Masai tribesmen who greet visitors with a spear in hand and wearing traditional garb turn out to have cousins and uncles who've traveled to Chicago … and delivered lectures there about the state of their exquisitely beautiful tribal lands.

Making his third trip abroad since he took office in January of last year, Obama's been literally all over this country of his late father's birth. He's jousted with the government of President Mwai Kibaki in Nairobi, over issues that include Kenya's notorious corruption, it's daunting level of street crime, its treatment of the poor, and the plague of HIV/AIDS that kills thousands here every week. He went to remote North East province, to the Camel Market in Wajir, where Muslim fundamentalism is increasingly a concern … this in a country where Al Qaeda bombed the U.S. Embassy in 1998, killing 12 Americans and more than 200 Kenyans.



Obama's Anti-Corruption Crusade: Aug. 27, 2006
The international agency that monitors such things calls Kenya one of the most corrupt countries on Earth. It ranked about 150 different countries.

A member of Sen. Barack Obama's staff adds this tidbit: the same international agency recently had to fire its representative in Kenya, because, you guessed it, the representative was allegedly corrupt.

We talk in Chicago about a "culture of corruption." And it's there. But I'm thinking that maybe it's time for U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to take some of his top staff and some of my media colleagues on safari here to Kenya. The people could not be friendlier. The scenery, Mt. Kilimanjaro, the wild animals (lions, elephants, hyenas) are all amazing. So is the capital city, Nairobi.

On Monday, Obama is going to visit a Nairobi newspaper whose offices were BOMBED when it began running aggressive investigative stories about the truly breathtaking culture of corruption that makes it so difficult here for average Kenyans to open even tiny businesses, to buy things that much of the world takes for granted, in short to go about their daily lives unmolested by greedy bureaucrats.

Obama'a now-deceased father was an economist for the government, a post that probably carried with it a lot of clout. But the senator reports that his relatives here still complain about having to pay the most outrageous bribes. Want a basic government service? Better be prepared to pay a bribe. Even if you're well-qualified for a job, you may have to share some of your new salary with the boss in order to get it.

Kenya's president came into office promising to start cleaning up the mess, and some people give him credit for improving things. There's a big office building a few blocks from our hotel in Nairobi with the intriguing name, "Integrity Centre." (As a former British colony, they sometimes spell things here in that weird British way.) Turns out it's the home of the national anti-corruption agency.

Locals report that President Mwai Kibaki put a Pat Fitzgerald-type in charge and the guy started to make some really promising progress, even bringing charges against some pretty fat cats. But then came the push-back. The former boss of Integrity Centre is now said to be hiding out in London, no doubt to the bitter disappointment of millions of Kenyans.

One of Obama's favorite statistics in this vein is that a generation ago, when his father was part of the Kenyan government, the economies of Kenya and South Korea were almost identical in size. Now, the Asian Tiger dwarfs its African counterpart, having benefited from huge amounts of foreign investment. Kenya attracts relatively little foreign investment.

Obama and others believe there are many reasons for that sad fact. But a big one is the hidden cost of doing business here: because everyone in the supply chain has their hand out and wouldn't hesitate to slow everything down unless their palms gets greased.

The cumulative impact has been a disaster. I still have the stench in my nostrils from a visit to Nairobi's notorious Kibera neighborhood, home to an estimated 700,000 people. No sewers, no clean water, damn few government services that I could see, beyond the police presence that always accompanies Obama's entourage.

HIV/AIDS has killed thousands there and the infection rate remains appallingly high. Kibera loves Obama's outspoken anti-corruption crusade, as does most of Kenya. It's one reason he's getting a hero's welcome wherever he goes.

There is, of course, some talk of Obama running for President back in the U.S.A. (something he still says he has no intention of doing.) Were he to run, it would be a battle royale. But Kenya has a presidential election coming up, too. Based on what I've seen in the past week, if Obama ran HERE, he might just win by acclamation.


Obama's Roots Tour: Aug. 25, 2006
The emotional highlight of Barack Obama's trip to Africa comes Saturday. He will visit his family's ancestral compound – named Siaya – near the shore of beautiful but environmentally troubled Lake Victoria, Kenya. The two relatives he has been in close contact with over the years will be there to greet him: the woman he calls his Grandmother and his Uncle Said.

Reporters have been cautioned that Uncle Said is deeply worried about the fate of the crops he has planted in and around Siaya. He fears that the expected crush of dozens of journalists from big-city Nairobi and from all over the world will do exactly that to his carefully tended plants – crush them.

My camera operator, Marcus Richardson, and I promised to be very careful wherever we stepped.

Obama said the home of his "Granny" is only large enough to allow four journalists at a time in to observe the family reunion. We'll all get a few minutes, then be ushered out. At some point, the family will spend private time together, something the senator hopes will prove beneficial for his two young daughters and two nieces accompanying him and wife, Michelle.

We talked to the Member of Parliament who represents the Kisumu region Obama's father grew up in. Anyang Nyongo, who is a 1977 Ph. D. graduate of the University of Chicago, knew Obama's late father, who was also named Barack Obama. He was born into a family of Luo Tribe goat herders but went on to study economics at Harvard University. He became an economist for the Kenyan government, had four wives and only saw the future senator for one two-week stretch after the age of two.

M.P. Nyongo said the entire region has been scrubbing and cleaning for weeks in advance of Obama's appearance Saturday. The region has what may be the highest rate of malaria in the entire world, and an estimated one-fourth of the population is infected with HIV/AIDS. Obama told reporters we will be struck by the absence of healthy adult men. Most are either dead or have moved away to urban centers such as sprawling Nairobi to find work.

Obama plans to take an AIDS test at a clinic to which he has donated part of the profits from his recent multi-million dollar book deals. Despite the terrible toll taken by the disease here, few are willing to be tested.


Bureaucracy Update: Aug. 25, 2006
At a diplomatic dinner here in Nairobi Friday evening, an official of Kenya's government approached Sen. Barack Obama. The official had an envelope containing the American cash equivalent of 60,000 Kenyan Shillings – the nearly $1,000 we reported on yesterday. My colleague, cameraman Marcus Richardson, had reluctantly paid the money to customs agents Thursday at the Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. We never got a receipt for all that cash, nor an adequate explanation of why we were paying it. We coughed it up, though, because after several hours of standoff we were told that otherwise we could not take our camera and video tape editing gear out of the airport. We had a story to cover.

Well, the man at the center of that story learned of our airport encounter. On Friday, U.S. Sen. Barack Obama took the issue up personally with the President of Kenya. During their meeting, Obama expressed his concern that Kenya's reputation as one of the world's most corrupt countries was damaging its economy … and scaring off foreign investment. President Kibaki turned to his Foreign Minister, who turned to another subordinate. They promised to look into the matter. A few hours later, the money was returned, along with a letter insisting that nothing illegal had been done. The letter cited a specific section of Kenyan law. The government said the fee charged us was legitimate, but that President Kibaki had decided to declare us official guests, hence not subject to the fee. A similar sum was returned to another Chicago-based camera crew. They are shooting a documentary on Obama's visit for a group that includes David Axelrod, the senator's media adviser and producer of campaign commercials during 2004.

On behalf of Mr. Richardson and myself, we accepted the President's decision graciously. We look forward to seeing other parts of this beautiful country, including a safari to big game country next week in Maasai Mara.


Battling Bureaucracy: Aug. 24, 2006
We arrived in Nairobi about 11 hours before Sen. Barack Obama, but he was whisked right through customs with few, if any, formalities. Our journey through Kenya's bureaucratic maze took a bit longer. And was a bit more expensive. Thousands of dollars more expensive.

Sen. Obama plans to speak at a local university while here in the land of his late father's birth. He says he wants to talk about the huge negative impact that endemic corruption is having on struggling African countries and their often-stagnant economies. He notes that a generation ago, when his father, also named Barack Obama, worked for the Kenyan government as a Harvard-trained economist, the economies of South Korea and Kenya were roughly the same size. Sadly, Kenya stagnated while South Korea went on to win global recognition as one of the Asian Tigers. Kenya is beautiful and has plenty of animals that roar, but there is no tiger in its economy's tank.

Obama believes that one dreadful side effect of corruption is to discourage outside investment. (Okay, insert your own joke here about a Chicago politician lecturing anyone anywhere about the evils of corruption.)

Here is what happened Thursday to me and my colleague, Marcus Richardson, when we flew in to Nairobi from London.

I was carrying just two ordinary bags and whistled right through customs without a second glance.

Richardson was pushing an airport trolley carrying his camera, and several boxes of gear we will be using to record Obama's visit and to edit and feed by satellite the videotape we shoot. When a Kenyan Customs agent stopped him, Richardson explained that he would bringing all of this gear back to the same airport next week for our return trip to Chicago. "How can I trust you?" declared the Customs man. Before we could depart the airport, we had to cough up another $1,000 in import fees. At first we thought it was a sort of bond that we could collect next week when we headed home to Chicago. We soon learned that, no, this was money we would never see again. No one seemed able to explain how that nice round number was calculated. A local source later told us that the fee should not have been more than 1% of the value of our editing gear and camera, meaning they apparently assessed its value at $100,000. The true value is far, far less than that.

We were far from shocked, having learned that this sort of thing is common in Kenya. Obama said relatives here tell him that ordinary Kenyans are forced to pay bribes all the time, including to their bosses at work, beginning when they hope to be hired.

We'd been planning for weeks in advance of this trip, getting eight different inoculations for tropical and other diseases, for example. We also got our travel visas through the Kenyan embassy in Washington, D.C. Nothing unusual or unexpected in any of that. We soon learned that Kenya, like a growing number of Third World countries, keeps tabs on journalists by requiring them to be licensed. I had to get a similar "Journalist's License" during my two trips to Fidel Castro's Cuba, to cover former Gov. George Ryan there. The cost was minimal. Castro apparently doesn't regard it as the kind of money maker the Kenyans think it is. Here in Kenya, though, the "Filming License" cost Richardson and me hundreds of dollars each.

Because of Kenya's reputation as one of the most corrupt countries in the world, Western news agencies and others routinely hire a local "fixer." The fixer "EXPEDITES" his (and our) way around Kenya's various bureaucratic toll booths. We paid our Fixer $1,012 to get us out of the airport today, money we assume he shared with some of Kenya's bureaucrats.

Adding that to the surprisingly stiff $1,000 "import fee" for heavily-used gear we will be "exporting" home next week, and the cost of our "Filming Licenses," we paid more than $3,000 in government-related charges before we'd even left the airport.

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