Obama's family in Kenya weary, wary of media

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

Said Obama, 52, works at a factory in western Kenya and attends night classes in business management. In between, he takes about 20 calls a day from foreign reporters seeking details about an American nephew he hardly knows.

It used to be that you could just roll up, and have tea and chat with Barack Obama's 87-year-old step-grandmother, Sarah Anyango Obama, in the western village of Kogelo near the border with Uganda; Said, her son, would translate for Mama Sarah, who is illiterate, goes barefoot and lives in a shack without electricity or running water.

But with all the attention and the election a little more than a week away, things are different in the small town not far from the shores of Lake Victoria 300 miles northwest of the capital, Nairobi.

"I've met very many good journalists so I've also met very bad journalists, people who come here looking for a skeleton, not even a skeleton, just a bone to develop a skeleton out of," said Said Obama. "We have seen such people, sometimes they ask questions which are irrelevant - it's not always hard to tell they are looking for things which are maybe going to bring Barack down."



Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/26/MNCV13INNO.DTL

Very astute, and colorful.