WASHINGTON — When Barack Obama visited Kenya for the first time nearly 30 years ago, he was astonished that an airport worker recognized his last name.
This week, Obama will make his first visit to Kenya as U.S. president, a trip that will bear little resemblance to the 1988 one, when he arrived aboard a commercial flight and his luggage got lost. Now, Air Force One will take Obama to a country where children, roads and schools now bear his name, and the world leader is seen as a local son.
Yet traveling with the trappings of the presidency appears likely to diminish the fulfillment of a trip to his father’s homeland.
“I’ll be honest with you, visiting Kenya as a private citizen is probably more meaningful to me than visiting as president because I can actually get outside of a hotel room or a conference center,” he said last week, adding that his trip still would be “symbolically important.”
