When I Think of Home....

It's actually kinda funny that in 6 hours, I'll be starting a 7,000 mile journey from Kenya to wind up in a place called the Hotel Giraffe.

But tomorrow at around this time Eastern Time, I'll be touching down in New York City, to start a 7-day journey in New York and DC. I've been so preoccupied lately that I've only started to get really excited in the past couple of hours.

I'm being considered as a board member for a major foundation that focuses on children's issues. One of my mentors, an amazing woman named Ruby, is the foundation's president, and I consider it a tremendous honor that she thinks I'm worthy of service. I'll attend the foundation's Annual Meeting and dinner on Thursday and then meet with board members members on Friday.

I sure hope drinking 4 or 5 Venti espressos every day will get me through foundation activities. On the other hand, thinking positively, I'll have a good excuse for drooling and slurring my words during meetings, cuz jet-lag ain't no joke. During the past few years, these long haul trips have totally knocked me for a loop.

Even so, I'm totally excited about seeing friends, eating pastrami at Katz's Deli on the Lower East Side, and briefly riding the crest of the wave of pre-election mania. It's felt really strange being so far away during the one of the most pivotal elections in American history--but then again, I've had the unique privilege of observing the action in Kenya. I think most people here are incredibly excited about the possibilities of an American president of Kenyan descent. But they're equally incredibly skeptical. In other words, there will be massive celebrations if Obama wins, the kind of vociferous joy and pride that will go a long way in mitigating some of the pain and bitterness of the post-election violence earlier this year.

But there'll be equally massive "I told you so's" if he loses. Most people I talk to here are firmly convinced America is far too racist to let a man with even a drop of African blood run the country.

Admittedly, I've followed the campaign far less closely than I might have under different circumstances. Say, if I'd actually been in the U.S., or if I hadn't been preoccupied by a major emotional watershed that just passed yesterday. But I have my moments when I completely agree with the Kenyan zeitgeist. You know, a black American can actually forget about "Racism, American-Style" while living an African country, because you can go days without seeing more than a handful of white people.

Don't get me wrong...it's not like class-ism is a breath of fresh air, and there's plenty of that over here. But you can actually forget that people could automatically consider you less intelligent, qualified, or worthy of respect based solely on the color of your skin when EVERYBODY has the same color of skin as you do.

I guess that's why a lot of people are so excited about the possibilities of this election. It would certainly send an astounding message to the rest of the world that America has done some hard thinking about race. I'm not saying we're all going to start holding hands if Obama is elected, and I don't pretend to expect to experience miraculous occurrences like being being treated civilly in upscale department stores after an Obama victory.

America still has WAAAYYY too much psychosocial baggage to unpack for stuff like seeing past racial stereotypes to start kickin' in any time soon.

But it's still AMERICA. I ain't gon' lie here and say I won't be really sad if Obama doesn't win, because I think it would be an enormous missed opportunity. But it's still my homeland, for better or worse. Truth be told, the more I travel, the more I'm focused on the better, and the more my pulse races whenever I realize it's time to head West again.

Even if only for a week.