OBAMA AKA 'CHALAQUE'

Rais Barack Obama aliwasili rasmi jumanne Ulaya kuanza ziara yake ya siku tatu akianzia mjini Durban, nchini Ireland ambako alikwenda katika kijiji jidogo ambacho wanatokea mababu zake wa upande wa mama yake, pia alihudhuria mkutano wa kundi la mataifa yenye utajiri wa viwanda G8 uliofanyika Ufaransa.

Rais Barack Obama, shoto, na first lady Michelle Obama, kulia, wakisalimiana na waziri mkuu wa Ireland, Enda Kenny, wa pili kulia, na mkewe Fionnuala Kenny mara baada ya kuwasili ikulu ya Dublin, May 23, 2011

Katika safari yake kuitembelea Uingereza amepewa jina la kificho (codename) na wana usalama wa Uingereza 'Chalaque' neno toka kabila la Punjabi lenye maana Mjanja mwenye akili kupita kiasi, hii ni kwa ajili ya ulinzi wake. Kwahiyo walinzi hao wakitaka kupeana taarifa zozote kuhusu yeye hawamtaji kwa jina lake halisi bali wanatumia jina hilo mbadala.

THE IRISH connection:
TO AMERICANS, Barack Obama will always be known as their country’s first black president. For that reason, many Americans were surprised by his visit to his ancestral home in Moneygall on Monday.

For Obama, choosing to be Irish ensured an enthusiastic welcome in Ireland and may have brought some political benefits back in the US. But it also spoke to his appeal as an individual who offers hope for a post-racial future in which Americans can hold multiple identities (black and Irish) and can choose which identities to adopt and in what circumstances.

Yet, while most white Americans today can choose their ethnic identities, most non-white Americans do not have the same options.Obama knows this well. Indeed, he wrote perceptively in his autobiography, Dreams from my Father, about his adolescent confusion over his own racial identity. Even though he barely knew his Kenyan father, most other Americans treated him only as “black”.

In choosing to embrace his Irish roots along with his African ones, Obama is more the exception among African Americans than the rule. And his choice is more easily accepted in Ireland than in the US, where the Washington Post expressed surprise over “his Irish – yes, Irish – roots”.

Ziara kwa malkia Uingereza

Obama’s ability to choose Irishness also reflects the fact that he can embrace an ancestor through his white mother. For many African Americans with Irish roots, the story is different.

Lost in the discussions over Barack Obama’s Irish roots was the fact that Michelle Obama too could trace her ancestry back to Ireland. While Barack’s roots go back to Falmouth Kearney, who emigrated from Moneygall to seek a better life in America, Michelle’s can most likely be traced to Henry Shields, an Irish-American slaveowner who had children with a slave he purchased named Melvinia. (Megan Smolenyak, the same genealogist that traced Barack’s roots to Ireland did the same for Michelle. While the available evidence points to Henry Shields as her ancestor, it has not been confirmed by DNA testing).

Rais Barack Obama akiwa na Malkia Elizabeth wakati wimbo wa Taifa la marekeni.

Rais Barack Obama na first lady Michelle Obama walipokutana na Prince William and Catherine, the Duchess of Cambridge, at Buckingham Palace in London, May 24, 2011.

HISANI YA www.irishtimes.com

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