An eager welcome in a notorious slum
Security is high -- Kenyan police from different branches with swagger canes and clubs, officers in Kenyan military-style uniforms riding horses used for crowd control and safari-vested agents who are part of the U.S. State Department diplomatic protection service are on the ground.
Obama touched off a mob scene, but the mob was there already.
Kibera, a district in Nairobi, jams at least 700,000 people in an area of about a mile. Some of them on this day were chanting "Obama" as they ran en masse down the street.
People dwell here in ragged canvas tents and shacks covered with corrugated roofs. Garbage piles on the street are festering. It's filthy and smells of raw sewage. There is very little commerce -- the spindly street stalls do not count for much.
Late last year, Sen. Dick Durbin, the other senator from Illinois and like Obama a Democrat, also visited this notorious slum in Kenya, though with no media in tow.
Obama had a session on microfinance, with a roundtable touching on below-market micro-business loans pioneered by Chicago's Shorebank.
Crowds surged toward the Carolina for Kibera Center, where Obama listened to Kibera youths talk about programs designed to help them avoid being infected with HIV/AIDS.
Jackline Ngonyo, 14, a Girl Guide, sort of like a Girl Scout, talked about avoiding AIDS so she could be a neurosurgeon one day. Another talked of the need for abstinence.
"Every country that develops, develops because women are given opportunity," Obama said.
He said Kenyan men need to change their mind-set when it comes to how they treat women.
"Respect the girls," said Obama. Abusing or taking sexual advantage of women "does not make you a big man. It makes you a small man to do that."
By the time Obama left the center, the streets in front of it had become a sea of men. Grabbing a bullhorn, he urged the throng to use the clinic. Saturday, Obama and his wife, Michelle, took a very public HIV/AIDS test in the city of Kibera to try to destigmatize treatment and prevention.
"Everyone here is my brother," said Obama. "Everyone here is my sister. I love Kibera."